ZABIH performance group
Zabih - a platform of graduates of Sandra Johnston and Alistair MacLennan educational course “Finding Ways” on the festival Days of Performance Art in Lviv in 2017. It was established in 2017 by artists located in Lviv: Micro Cuts, Andriy Helytovych, Roksolana Uhryniuk, Taras Pastushchuk, Roman Khrushch, Olha Skliarska, Zoriana Savka, Bohdan Yanchuk-Zuher, Olha Chyhryk and Halia Boyko. The aim of Zabih is to support art practice of participants by shearing a common creativity, also promoting development of performance art in general both – nationally and internationally.
Since 2017 Zabih have organized and co-organized, took purt in a number of events concerned on Performance Art in Ukraine, mainly in Lviv region. It was projects in big and small cities, villages – in institutional and not institutional contexts. In 2018 Zabih was invited to present itself in Dzyga gallery in Lviv, so there where held two projects with group and solo works. As an art group Zabih, following an impulse from Sandra Johnston and Alistair McLennan workshop, practices open stage performances, performances in public space with a big part of improvisation. Zabih was first in Ukraine who started to participate in the Bbeyond initiative “Equinox to Equinox – Public actions for freedom and democracy” and spread that idea inside other parts of the country, involving new artists.
The main event of Zabih is ZABIH International Performance Art Festival. In the frameworks of our festival on a lecture and debatable platforms we are taking away themes that becomes communication in a middle of Ukrainian and international measuring of performance art. In principle, these discussions aims to form a network of connections in the youth context of performance art development.
Another aim of the festival is to develop a discussion with the polish art scene, keeping a good tradition of dialog with the Western border. Perhaps the key approach that we are deliberately applying to our festival is the concept of “performance- festival”. A type of performance which we practice is the study of oneself and others, experiment, risk, sensation and response to the situation. It is based on the same principle that we approach to the organization of the entire event as well as the running of the platform. We are jointly looking for and finding ways to embody the festival, allowing events to interfere with its development, are constantly ready to respond to changes in the environment. In such circumstances, we want to give maximum freedom to the participants and allow the whole situation to unfold to the fullest extent. This goal forces us to abandon the uncompromising scheduling of the program, which leads to its continuous flexibility. A move from one place and hosting somebody from another place (in local and global dimencions) give a context which may serve an opportunity to refind each of us, a visitor and a hoster, in a new way. It will be supported by a strong differences. In between appears a memory of a trauma, sharp political and historical dissonances, different types of involwment in Performance Art, contemporary art practises in general and Art at all.
We strongly belive in potential of our place, remenmbering words, which one of us heared from Sandra Johnston in Oberhausen in 2017: “I love to perform the most in Poland and Ukraine”.
