Born of shocks

The project “Born of Shocks: The Catharsis of Ukrainian Art in the Content of Cultural Media (2022–2025)” focuses on the transformative processes taking place in contemporary Ukrainian art, presented to audiences through various forms of digital communication. This phenomenon reflects the growing interpenetration of culture and digitalisation, which makes information about the essence of artistic phenomena- previously accessible mainly within the sphere of elite culture – more widely available and comprehensible. In Ukraine, this sphere began to develop dynamically with the onset of the full‑scale war, as the Russian–Ukrainian conflict also has a cultural dimension.

For many years, Ukrainian cultural media were limited to a few individual websites dedicated to art (e.g., LitAkcent). Only after 2014 did new media initiatives begin to emerge. By February 2022, active cultural media included LiRoom, YouArt, Moviegram, ChytomoBooks, Suspilne Kultura, Cultprostir.ua and Yabl.ua. Three years of war contributed to the emergence of further projects such as PostImpreza, SensorMedia and Shtukango. Despite the growing importance of this field, it remains insufficiently studied within Ukrainian humanities.

The aim of the project is to analyse the media content of Ukrainian cultural platforms – @yourart, @liroomcomua, @moviegramua, @chytomo_books, @post.impreza, @yabl.ua, @sensormedia.ua, @shtukango, @svobodadumky.ua, @suspilne.culture, @kultprostir, @esthetic.intelligence, @kyiv_art and to examine the ways in which the phenomenon of transformation and renewal in Ukrainian art – catharsis – is visualised on Instagram. This phenomenon forms a foundation of contemporary narratives about Ukrainian culture due to its conflictogenic nature. Visualisations become the primary media tool, serving both as a means of preserving information and enabling its interpretation.

The Aristotelian term “catharsis”¹ is used here in a broader sense — as a designation of the essence of cultural transformation processes that extend beyond the individual experience of encountering art. Moreover, catharsis reveals conflict and war as sources of new artistic phenomena, including new genres, works, themes, and shifts in artistic functions. The relationship between conflict and the artwork has been addressed repeatedly in humanities research.

First thesis: visualisations of Ukrainian culture in cultural media depict the process of catharsis in Ukrainian art – encompassing literature, painting, cinema, music, theatre, sculpture, architecture and dance – during wartime. This process becomes enriched with new meanings and records the emergence of unique artistic forms.

• defining the concept of “catharsis of Ukrainian art”;
• identifying the methods and specific features of visualising catharsis on Instagram within the context of networked culture;
• examining the potential of artistic conflict as a factor shaping new forms and meanings in Ukrainian art;
• analysing the possibilities of using digital tools for cataloguing scholarly information in the humanities through the creation of a web archive (database).

Second thesis: phenomena of catharsis in Ukrainian art constitute a cultural phenomenon rooted in the cultural fissure between East and West². These oppositions generate a high degree of conflictogenicity in artworks, while simultaneously forming the basis for their interpretation. Consequently, each media material and each instance of catharsis conveys, to varying degrees, both the consequences of conflict and its artistic potential.

In my doctoral dissertation, I formulated an original concept of artistic conflict, and in the present research I employ the terms and notions I have developed, such as “conflict”, “conflictogenicity”, “collision”, as well as several related categories³.

Research questions:

• What is the conceptual content of “the catharsis of Ukrainian art”?
• What are the methods and specific features of visualising catharsis on Instagram within the context of networked culture?
• What is the role of conflictogenicity and the potential of artistic conflict as factors shaping new forms and meanings across different fields of Ukrainian art?
• What are the possibilities of using web archives and tag clouds in humanities research?