VOLUME 3 of the INSTITUT experiment. Every week, a different hypothesis. Underground at 620 Spadina Ave — around the back, through the lot to the steel doors, down the stairs, past the mechanical room, through the swinging wood laminate door.
Tonight: a panel on historical truth and the literature of war, a rare screening of banned Ukrainian Poetic Cinema, a live improvised score laid over one of cinema's most visually ravishing masterworks, and vinyl til close.
PWYC. RSVP so we know who to expect.
5 PM | PANEL | MARCI SHORE x KAROLINA KOZIURA | "Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened" | RSVP
7 PM | FILM | "Well for the Thirsty" (d. Yuri Illienko) | Ukrainian Poetic Cinema curated by Pylyp Illienko | RSVP
9 PM | LIVE SCORE | Shaunt Raffi x The Colour of Pomegranates (Parajanov, 1969) | RSVP
11 PM | VINTAGE VINYL | Shaunt Raffi | RSVP
PANEL | MARCI SHORE x KAROLINA KOZIURA
"NOTHING BAD HAS EVERY HAPPENED"
Facing the past with eyes wide open — what does it mean to grapple with historical truth at a time of war? Marci Shore and Karolina Koziura go deep on academia, poetry, and publishing in Ukraine, and take a closer look at Victoria Amelina's neighbourly essay.
MARCI SHORE is Chair in European Intellectual History at the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and formerly professor of history at Yale. She is the author of The Ukrainian Night, The Taste of Ashes, and Caviar and Ashes, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times.
KAROLINA KOZIURA is a cultural and historical sociologist whose work centres on the legacies of violence, identity, and the politics of knowledge in Eastern Europe. Her current research focuses on the politics of hunger and the transnational contests surrounding the Great Ukrainian Famine.
RSVP
FILM | "WELL FOR THE THIRSTY" (1965)
Set in a nearly abandoned village, Well for the Thirsty follows an old man surrounded by memories of a disappearing world. One of the foundational works of the Ukrainian Poetic Cinema movement — banned on release, rarely screened — presented tonight by the son of its director.
PYLYP ILLIENKO is a Kyiv-born filmmaker and the son of director Yuri Illienko. He served as Head of the Ukrainian State Film Agency from 2014 to 2019 and is a member of the Ukrainian Film Academy and the European Film Academy. He is presenting tonight's film as part of an ongoing effort to bring Ukrainian Poetic Cinema to new audiences.
RSVP
LIVE SCORE | SHAUNT RAFFI x THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES
Sergei Parajanov's The Colour of Pomegranates is less a narrative film than a waking dream: a sequence of painterly tableaux drawn from the life of Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, rich with symbolic imagery, sacred music, and colour. Tonight, Shaunt Raffi gives it a new sonic body — a live improvised Ableton set with vintage samples.
RSVP
VINTAGE VINYL | SHAUNT RAFFI
Armenian folk, desert blues, ethio jazz. Threads of the evening may resurface. New ones will appear.
SHAUNT RAFFI is an Armenian music curator, DJ, and producer based in Toronto. He is the curator of Tapestry Jam, a monthly improvised music series, and the host of Sonic Salon. As the founder of Antikka, The Oud & the Fuzz, and Tapestry, Raffi has long built environments where artistry and community intertwine, rooted in Armenian, South West Asian, and North African cultures.