“Well, first of all, it’s the way I was brought up. This was ingrained in me through the way I was raised by my mom, grandpa, stepdad, through all that I’ve heard from them, through all that I’ve read. It’s something like a cross between aesthetics and religion. And I think ethics is a version of aesthetics but applied to humans. Second, it’s shame… When you’re on a bus and see a woman getting beaten, even if the guys are bigger than you. Well, yes, it’s scary, but on the other hand, you can’t just sit there and do nothing. Now, that’d be a crying shame indeed — embarrassment in front of your friends and onlookers. Third, it’s understanding history, understanding that we’d never been in a better place than now. That those who didn’t perish in a fight to gain Ukraine’s independence a century ago had to eat their children during the great famine Holodomor. That we now have a chance — though it sounds corny — to finish the fight for the cause, the fight of people before us, people who died, labored, fought, risked, and put in precarious positions themselves and their families. People from generations before, yet people just like you. I don’t have this high feeling ‘I’m going to fight for the Ukrainian nation.’ Well, what do I have to fight for — something along the lines of a good life for folks I’ve met at Dzyga [art center], for my peeps, for those who see the beauty in the world the way I do. And for other people who… well, because I know history, read books, listen to enlightened beautiful pieces created by generations before me, I understand that right now [many] people, just as cool as me and even more awesome, risked their lives and went through a lot of pain, much more than I did, for the sake of this beautiful dream by the name of Ukraine. It’s something on the intersection of aesthetics and religion. Yet supported by logic and thinking. On one hand, I recognize that lots of people know me, especially in 2015 and 2014 when I went in as a volunteer, I realized that my actions would send a message to all who know me. On the other hand, growing up reading books and watching movies, you’d sometimes wish to be the hero of these books and movies. Yet, when you do get to be such a hero, a thought creeps in, 'screw that book.' It’s a big blob of emotions. How am I ever going to look in the eyes of kids whose parents died? That’s also there.”
“Whenever fighting intensifies, people treat you like a hero. When fear subsides, well, they treat you like… I mean, after the revolution, I got it, at the end of the day, no one will take your problems too close to heart, so I didn’t have high hopes for the public. And fellows from the Armed Forces did say that when they returned to Lviv after their first tour, half of the city came out to welcome them, flowers and all. When they came back after their second, a year later, nothing. That’s how it goes. The way we roll, and nothing will change that. I knew it’d come to ‘Oh, we didn’t send you there, you were itching to go to war, so off to war you went.’ But anyway, it never bothered me. I knew what I had to do and why I was doing it. I only care about the opinions of people I respect and my closest friends. As a metal music fan from my teen years, I’m not one to seek validation from society, really.”
“Holding festivals and fighting war is probably the best way of creating a community. I’ve come to understanding that Ukraine was forged by poets and warriors. That’s how it is, really. If you have a crowd, you can turn it into a people only by shared emotions and shared thoughts, and that’s what culture does for you. And people… people need to feel support, connection, this unity, this, I don’t know, mutual trust, feeling of community — that’s what they get at festivals. Probably at soccer games, too. In uprisings and wars. TV, maybe, but it never did rise to the same level, and now it’s too disconnected actually to connect people as face-to-face interaction does. And so this air of unity, community, goodwill, that drew me in and that makes us one people — I felt it at the Weathervanes [Jazz Fest] and Sheshory [Music Fest] — at the large open-air events, where you take a sip of your beer and pass it on into the crowd and have a stranger hand you another. Of course, this is a way to spread not just culture but also germs, and yet, perhaps, that is also a way to bring in the unity of a vast community.”
“It was such a throwback. We even looked different from them (Donbas locals), and they themselves treated us as foreigners. Totally.” — “Were they hostile or just confused?” — “Both hostile and bewildered. And perhaps there was curiosity, and some understanding that we were on a different level culturally, and, because of that, some aggressiveness. Just like foreigners were probably treated in the Soviet Union back then or in Russia today. Oh, how’d they put it? ‘And who let you have this way of living well?’” — “How did Makiivka and Sevastopol compare?” — “Oh, they were quite different, first and foremost in the way of life. Also, different architecture and culture. Makiivka was such a shocker. I saw for the first time there when we went in — some of us stayed, some went about with a ballot box to visit elderly, shut-ins, and disabled people that couldn’t make it to the polling location — so I saw for the first time that apartment buildings could have firewood stockpiles next to it. People living in those apartments had potbelly stoves and had to bring in water and firewood. It was my first time seeing discarded syringes in the entrance hallways and seeing windows not with glass but with plastic sheeting. In high-rise apartment buildings. And by those tall buildings on the street were water hand pumps. And outhouses. Like in a village. In my mind, it was wild. And overall, this dullness and gloom… I had a feeling you could spend your life going to work, coming home, there and back, and just hang yourself one day without ever knowing why.”
“And the book that left the most profound mark on me is ‘White Mustang’ by Sat-Okh. It’s kinda… the story goes that this author is the son of a Native American chief and a Polish woman who, fleeing the Russian Empire, crossed the Bering Strait and was taken in by the Shawnee tribe. And these are the memories of this young Polish-Shawnee boy growing up among the Shawnee people. How they always were on the run from the Royal Mounties, who tried to move them to a reservation forcibly. And probably my own understanding of Ukraine’s history somehow mixed in with this feeling that we are just like those Native Americans, that our entire history is so alike to what they went through in their homeland. And that’s the only loot I took in Pisky in 2014 — this book that I found. It, too, was from a library, and I really, for quite a while, wanted to have this book. I found in a house, a destroyed house in Pisky — I found the book ‘White Mustang’. And that’s the only spoils I got for myself.”
Yuriy Vovkohon was born on August 14, 1982 in Kolomyia. He spent his childhood in Pechenizhyn urban-type settlement, which is located in the Kolomyia district of Ivano-Frankivsk region. His mother was a geography teacher, a tourist, and a mountaineering instructor. Besides her, the formation of Yurii Vovkohon was significantly influenced by his grandfather, a history teacher, and stepfather, who was a descendant of rural intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fighters. Yuriy Vovkohon graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv with a degree in political science. In 2001, during the protests against President Leonid Kuchma in Kyiv, he met like-minded members of the Lviv Polytechnic Student Brotherhood, who later became his close friends. In 2004, he started working as a journalist for the Postup newspaper. He was an observer at the elections in Makiivka and Sevastopol. He also participated in the events of the Orange Revolution. In 2005, he worked as a journalist for the Pora party, but soon realized that he was more interested in artistic activity. In 2007, he became a press secretary at the Dzyga art agency. Later, he took the position of festival coordinator there. In the fall of 2014, Yuriy Vovkohon completed military training and went to fight as a member of the Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps. From November 2014, he fought in the village of Pisky, Donetsk region, and at the Butivka coal mine near Donetsk. In July 2015, he returned to civilian life and work, organizing art festivals and cultural events. On February 26, 2022, he enlisted in the 80th separate airborne assault brigade. He fought in the south and east of Ukraine, was wounded on June 30, 2022 in Lysychansk. On August 18, 2022, he was awarded the Order for Courage of the III degree. He was undergoing treatment and rehabilitation in Ukraine and abroad. In the spring of 2023, he undergoes rehabilitation and is engaged in cultural and volunteer activities in Lviv.
