Industrial Dreams

Description

At the turn of the twentieth century, Ebbw Vale and Mariupol were two of the largest steel producing regions in Europe. Today both are gone, as a result of forced de-industrialization, in the case of Ebbw Vale, and Russia’s neoimperial war of erasure, in the case of Mariupol.

In this workshop, we explored the ways that the industrial legacies of these places, and other industrialized regions in the UK and Ukraine, are entangled and how they speak to each other through the archive. We brought together archival documentation of the steelworks, including records of their demise and utopian projects for the post-industrial future (e.g. the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival), with contemporary art from Wales and Ukraine that responds to the post-industrial condition in various ways, from mourning to humour and resistance.

Our workshop culminated with the UK premiere of EURODONBAS, a documentary film exploring the historic links between industrial communities in Europe and the Ukrainian East, and the local communities in Ukraine exploring these links before Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022. The film also addresses the history of Welsh labour migration to Hughesovka (today’s Donetsk) at the end of the nineteenth century. We were joined by the film’s director Kornyi Gricyuk and producer Olena Kirichek for a discussion and Q&A after the film.

Period	21 Oct 2022
Event type	Workshop
Location	Ebbw Vale, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International