← The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
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- [00:00]
Max Gorbatsky
Once the worst broke out, we faced enormous amount of problems and we had an option to like break down, give up. And the second option, okay, what can we do to save first of all our country? And what can we do to save our studio, our people and our team is greatest value?
- [00:24]
Dan Rubenstein
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a well lived life. On today's episode, as you may have realized by now, we're taking a moment to appreciate that not everyone in the worlds of art, design and culture have the privilege of that well lived life at the moment. For some, art and design can be matters of life and death, hope and resilience. Since the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, our TV sets and news feeds have been filled with stories of a plucky country fighting against a behemoth five times its size as a matter of sheer survival. And refugees have spread out around the globe while others have stayed to fight or to persevere. On today's episode, I'm going to meet five incredible individuals from the worlds of art and design who are each confronting the realities of war in their own way. We'll meet a young couple building a progressive design business amidst rolling blackouts and satellite Internet. And a New York based curator who is bringing to light the many creative and herculean efforts our compatriots back home are achieving to resist and rebuild. But first, I chat with the curating couple, Max Gorbatsky and Victoria Bavykina, a young Ukrainian couple currently based in Liverpool. And they're hot off the heels of curating Net, the Ukrainian pavilion at the recent Venice Art Biennale. The pair also founded a platform called Ukrainian Photographies, which collects research on the art form from Ukraine. For Net making, an oval shaped gallery was created using low cost camouflage that would be a familiar sight to most Ukrainians today. In this space they highlight various works by Ukrainian artists, including video works documenting the struggles of everyday people, as well as Best Wishes, a photographic work documenting neurodivergent artists coping with the war. I caught up with Max and Victoria from their home in Liverpool.
- [02:20]
Victoria Bavykina
And so how did you. How did both of you wind up, you know, coming together and living in Liverpool, was it? Tell me about that story of yours of yourselves.
- [02:29]
Max Gorbatsky
We moved together from Ukraine to London in Autumn, in September, October 2021. Okay, the plan was maybe we stay for one year because I got the Juvenile scholarship to study and then we stayed in London for two years and then we moved to Liverpool a year ago.
- [02:53]
Victoria Bavykina
Okay, and so was that because of the job that you have in Liverpool, moving to Liverpool?
- [02:59]
Max Gorbatsky
Yes, I'm a curator at OpenAI Gallery here and Vika is doing. Victoria is doing a MA in University of Liverpool.
- [03:09]
Victoria Bavykina
Okay, so what is. How would you describe life in Liverpool to your friends back in Ukraine?
- [03:19]
Rainy and no sun.
- [03:22]
No rainy and no sun. Okay. For Ukrainian that sounds like quite the. Yeah, no that sounds true. That sounds very true. And so have you found the arts community in Liverpool to be welcoming?
- [03:38]
Max Gorbatsky
I think we have, yeah. We. So we work with Open Eye Gallery, both of us and Open Eye is a part of Liverpool art scene, very active part. So we often get in touch with people from other galleries or museums. And yeah, I think it's. Liverpool is not such a big city but the cultural scene is quite big and active. So it's. It's easy and interesting to be in the, in the art community here because. Because of its more like more compact size but the activity.
- [04:15]
Victoria Bavykina
I'm sure everybody knows each other or at least heard about. Yeah, compared maybe to London. So and, and where are you guys from in Ukraine originally?
- [04:26]
Max Gorbatsky
I'm from Kharkiv and I'm from Krivery but we met in Kiev and lived in Kiev.
- [04:33]
Victoria Bavykina
You guys founded Ukrainian Photographies, which is this organization and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that and how that started.
- [04:40]
Max Gorbatsky
We founded it in spring, summer 2022, shortly after the full scale invasion because we started to think what we can do being in the uk, being in London. So maybe we can try and use our contacts and network to invite the researchers, curators, art historians to write and engage with Ukrainian culture, especially photography. So it's not becoming something when we just talk about ourselves, but the way around we trying to involve international cultural professionals and community to write and research Ukrainian photography. And that was basically the idea.
- [05:26]
Victoria Bavykina
And obviously being chosen for the first Ukrainian pavilion is quite the honor. How did that come about? And did you apply? Did you. How did that happen?
- [05:36]
Yeah, we applied like in Ukraine we have like the system of open call. And like in Ukraine the commissioner of the pavilion is a Ministry of Culture and they announce like every two years they announce like open call and independent comm. Like board commission from different like Ukraine Ukrainian curators, researchers and previous curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion. They just choose from the applications. But like it's quite difficult to be in this process because you have just one month because this open call, it's only during one month, but for this one month, you need to prepare everything, like the budget, the artistic works, architecture, like design, everything, everything. So you need already have quite a finalized project.
- [06:38]
Wow. So you basically had to do the entire work before you knew you were even being chosen.
- [06:43]
Yeah, it could be really frustrating because you need to do all this work and to prepare everything and already live with this project together during one month. But then you never know will you choose or not?
- [06:58]
So, Max, when you guys sat down and decided, okay, we're going to do this, we're going to apply, what did you guys talk about? What did you want to. What kind of statement did you want to make?
- [07:08]
Max Gorbatsky
I think we started from asking ourselves the question, what would be the most relevant approach in this particular moment in time and particular situation? Of course, Ukraine being attacked by Russia. And we started to think, what, in a sense, what would be the general framework of our project? What would be the general message and who might be the artist we work with? Because we thought that we probably need to do a group project. We had this idea since the very beginning because Ukrainian society and Ukraine as a country is probably can be characterized now as many different initiatives which people build themselves, so how they get together in order to. To confront the enemy. So we thought that group project and involvement of communities probably should be the thing we need to concentrate on, to focus.
- [08:12]
Victoria Bavykina
And so tell me about the theme of the show called net making. How did that come about? Like, what did you tell me about the theme and what it means?
- [08:22]
Max Gorbatsky
Net making refers to the very widespread practice of weaving of camouflage nets, which is when people get together and they weave camouflage nets, because there's a lack of this kind of things at the front line. It started in 2014 because when Ukraine first was attacked by Russia in 21st century, no one probably expected such a large scale military campaign. So the country wasn't just really ready for it. So some things were just missing and camouflaged nets were among those things. So people just realized they need to make groups and to try do them themselves. But since 2022, since the full scale invasion, this practice become even maybe more popular. And not only in Ukraine, but also among the communities of Ukrainians based outside Ukraine, of displaced Ukrainians, because it's not only something practical, it also can be a way to socialize, a way to be in a group, to have this sense of belonging, to have the sense of being useful for your country. So we found in this practice probably the most suitable in our vision, at least Metaphor for the modern Ukrainian society. So we wanted to. To go with this quite straightforward and simple metaphor and the same title. So Net making or Plutonia Sitok in Ukrainian just say Ukraine. All Ukrainians perfectly understand what it's about. Like now we first realized that we need to really explain what does it mean and what does it mean for people and why. Because for you got biased. Because in Ukraine when you say net making or something like that, people immediately understand what you're talking about.
- [10:24]
Victoria Bavykina
It sounds a little bit like quilt making. Like, you know, which is a sort of an American custom in the south of like women coming together and making quilts together or blankets together, you know, with pieces of scraps and things like that. Victoria, tell me a little bit about the. From an architectural point of view. There's an installation that kind of is built on that theme of the war and have found materials that sort of like embody the whole exhibition. Tell me about that.
- [10:52]
The beginning of this architectural structure was like needs. We need to somehow work with this place because the place for Ukrainian pavilion is really difficult. And it's like not the best place for exhibition because it's like have a lot of. It has a lot of restrictions. You have this four or five exits and like you cannot touch anything like a roof wall.
- [11:26]
Historic space.
- [11:28]
It's historic space and it not well researched yet. So even like Biennale teams, they like don't know what we allowed to do with them or not. So it's better just don't touch anything. So. And our architect and our artist at the same time, Aleksandr Brulaka, he just started to think what it could be and he thought that the best way is to create a self standing structure that will be really independent. And of course the first thought was to. To use some real camouflage nets maybe that we could create with different communities, Ukraine and abroad. But then we thought so like maybe we need to dig deeper and to understand and to find like not like the roots of this, of this movement, of all of this action, but in more metaphorical way to understand to bring some Ukrainian tradition or some Ukrainian culture and history in the pavilion, but not in such really strict way. So we found this really popular action that was like in the middle of 20s in a lot of Ukrainian villages, like we win like home weaving of canvases, of linen canvases. And then we understand that this practice was not like not only popular in Ukraine, but in Poland, in Germany, in different villages, our grandparents did this weaving. But in Ukraine, of course it was not from a good life because after Holodomor that was caused by like Soviet government. Like, people start to think, like to prepare themselves for like, not the great time and start to do this, like linen canvases or maybe like suit from them, some clothes or maybe keep them or maybe give them to like grandchildren. And now like a lot of Ukrainian grandmothers, they have still a lot of these canvases in their homes. And so we found a lot of canvases from. In different regions, from Ukraine. And we thought that it will be great to build this narrative and this story from past to our, like, today life and make this like our background and our history, like an actual background of the exhibition and of our actual works about Ukrainian nowadays.
- [14:39]
And Max, if you could talk a little bit about one of the films that's a part of the show called Civilians, which is described as a horror encyclopedia of the Invasion. I was wondering, as curators, were you struggling with this idea of when you were coming up with the concept of the whole show, how much do you lean into the obvious using of the war itself as fodder for. As material for the show versus trying to also just show a completely humanistic and a peaceful positive thing versus a negative thing? How did you guys balance these two things?
- [15:28]
Max Gorbatsky
We didn't have this choice, right, because we thought this is the case actually for the Civilians invasion, that it has so many aspects to it. So you couldn't say it's only an encyclopedia of horror. There are also some very funny moments in it. There are terrifying moments in it, but these are all direct and like immediate witnessing of the events. And we thought we might go with this exactly because of it, because maybe in times of war we need to question again the, you know, the representative functions of art and artistic creations. So going with this film, which is basically a creation of real people, thousands of people who just recorded their ordinary life. I think we didn't have this question because it wasn't something staged or over dramatized, something artificial, but instead it's just a real thing. So we basically shown it in the pavilion and it's some sort of a statement that if someone will be scared, sorry for this, but it also would be normal, someone will be laughing. It's great, but we didn't like censor it and at the same time we didn't alter it. Even the artists, they put it together as a film. So it's really interesting to watch because it has this, you know, internal dramaturgy in it. So it just keeps your attention. But at the same time, these are just real pieces of footage and, you.
- [17:05]
Victoria Bavykina
Know, Another project in the, in the show is called Best Wishes, which is quite beautiful. And it's about, you know, it's a project around neurodivergent artists in Ukraine. And tell me a little bit about, you know, why you chose this project and why you feel it resonates with this idea of net making.
- [17:25]
So we started to speak with Katya Buchachka, the like the main artist, the main mediator of this group project. And like we went to Katya with this idea of like net making and of socially engaged project that we want to show in the, in the pavilion. And Katya came up with this idea to work with Nehru diverse artists because like this is her practice I think last seven, eight years. So last this period she has been working with Neuro diverse artists in different workshops. And I think they had these workshops in Kiev. But then the full invasion started and they started to just make some zoom calls with different participants, just to talk, to have a nice time, to maybe have some like therapeutical talking because everyone needs someone at that time and it was like better to be in a group and to share like feelings and emotions with others. And then Katya had a thought that maybe this zoom calls and this online conversation could be continued in real life and maybe they could create some project. So I think we found each other because we talked with Katya about our idea and she already had this idea about to create something with Neurodiverse people. So we start to thinking how it could works. We start to talk about like wishes and greetings, like habit and practice that we all used to. But for neurodiverse people, this is practice like really handy maybe because they use this practice to maybe to understand better some social rules, some social habits, patterns. And Katya was exploring at that time how this like really regular practice was transforming in, in the terms of war, in terms of some really difficult times.
- [19:53]
How did it transform?
- [19:55]
No, like really simple example in Ukraine, like in every country we like wish something like have a great day or have a great like evening or so on. But in Ukraine it doesn't work now. And like in Ukraine we now say have like a calm night, a silent night or something like that. So your night will be great if you will have no missiles and no rockets like in your, near your building or your home. So it's like this common sense really transformed in Ukraine now and this project mostly about it, how the language transforming. And I think one of the best thing about this project that it's really direct and in some way it's really simple because you could read these wishes, like in postcards and like they did some books, handmade books, and this is like really direct wishes. And it's like, it's not a metaphor, it's not something like artsy, really complicated. It's like it is what it is and I think it's really great because it's like a real life, real people, their real feelings. And that's why I think this project really like in some way even overwhelming because it's so, so real. And I think it's great that we could show it in the pavilion like now.
- [21:44]
And speaking of that, I mean, you guys, you know, obviously you're living in Liverpool now, in the uk.
- [21:49]
Dan Rubenstein
Do you.
- [21:50]
Victoria Bavykina
Do you feel settled there? Do you think you're if hopefully with, you know, with the war, God willing, coming to an end on the right side that you guys would return to Ukraine or would you feel. How do you guys feel right now, just on the day to day in Liverpool?
- [22:13]
It's a hard question. For me it's a little bit easier because I'm visiting Ukraine from time to time because my old family are still in Kharkiv, so I try to visit them like every like four, six months, something like that, but you never know because for instance, like I had a plan to visit them in July or June, but situation now is so horrible. So like, maybe I will postpone my journey, but I don't know, like, it's really hard to stay here and enjoy all possibilities and all this calm life while everything is going on in Ukraine, because of course we have a lot of friends in Ukraine, relatives and like. So it's like really a frustrating situation because like you at the same time, like here and there, trying to balance between these two things.
- [23:18]
And Max, what is your as a curator, what is your wish for sort of the cultural life of Ukraine in the future, when you might one day return? What is your sort of a vision for our country which is trying to struggle for its independence and its. Its identity? Essentially?
- [23:45]
Max Gorbatsky
I think my wish would be to not the cultural life at something ephemeral and general, but maybe to people who make part of this cultural life. The artists, curators, historians, technicians, designers, architects, everyone. So I wish them all to be safe and I think this is the way to. For this cultural life to continue because I have zero doubts or questions about the Ukrainian cultural identity and potential because I think it's becoming even stronger, more vibrant Ukrainian art. And we had the chance to see it, how it has been changing, but it hasn't stopped. The cultural institutions work, the galleries work, the exhibitions being opened. Some people, of course, depends on their personalities. Someone cannot work in these circumstances, but others become even more productive. But in order for all of this to continue existence, everyone has to be safe. So it's the only wish actually. And I think they understand the whole international community can help with this because you can use art to maybe raise questions and challenge things. But some questions are being decided really on the battlefield and with the hardware, not the software. So it's not something theoretical. It's really pragmatic and real.
- [25:34]
Dan Rubenstein
Next up, I speak with Sasha Topolnyca, one of the curators of the summer exhibition Constructing Hope Ukraine at New York's center for Architecture. The show brought together a wide variety of decentralized reconstruction projects, from modular furniture and grassroots efforts to replace glass windows, to document memories and spaces, to my personal favorite, something called Rave Toloka, which we'll get into. I caught up with Sasha from her home stateside to discuss this important show.
- [26:04]
Sasha Topolnyca
Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you taking the time. Tell me a little bit about this exhibition and sort of how it came about.
- [26:17]
So the exhibition, it's worth mentioning. I am a co curator of the Constructing Hope Ukraine together with another two curators, Ashley Begum and Betty Roidberg, and the exhibition is currently on view at the center for Architecture in New York City. The exhibition includes a work of resilience, imaginations and inventiveness on the part of the contributors that are on the exhibition in response to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. As you know, the work mostly showcases how architecture skills can serve as a tool to direct outrage and grief into the effective action and it mostly concentrates around grassroots organizations and how they respond to the immediate and long term needs of their communities. At the moment, as the invasion is still ongoing.
- [27:20]
How did you get personally involved with it?
- [27:22]
So I am, I am American Ukrainian designer. I lived here for 20 years, but I was born and raised in the Kiev, Ukraine when the invasion started in February of 2022. As an architectural designer and as a Ukrainian, I have been following a lot of the contributors in our exhibition and their work either through Instagram and other social medias as they've been doing their work and trying to spread awareness about what is happening in Ukraine as well as bring funds in order to be able to do their work because a lot of them are volunteer organizations or started as volunteer organizations. So when, when throughout two years and kind of respectively, the other two co creators have also have friends have Been also looking at different project. Ashley Begum has been always in good relationship, friendship and professional relationship with Kharkiv School of Architecture, which is currently exhibited in our exhibition. And Betty has been friends with couple of the contributors and I have been also following some of the contributors. So we collected all of that work and decided to showcase it to the American community. Since there has not been much conversation about Ukraine and reconstruction in United States there have been a lot of conversations. In Europe there have been some exhibitions, but in United States there have been none until now. So a lot Architecture community really knew nothing or very little about what is currently happening in Ukraine that there's actually actively a lot of projects that are happening in relationship to the exhibition. We also believe that the work that we're exhibiting resonates beyond Ukrainian context and we hope it will engage in interdisciplinary and global audiences.
- [29:33]
A lot of the projects in the exhibition are. They're really, you know, active, ongoing efforts. Right? You know, you're kind of documenting them in the middle of their work. Not, it's not. Nothing is being done necessarily in the past tense. And instead of it something that's more forward looking, you know, there's. There's no part of the exhibition of someone saying, oh here's the Ukraine of the future with flying cars and you know, parks on rooftops and things like that. Was that a conscious choice like when you guys sat down to be like, what is. What is needed here? Like you know, what is best serving is there to kind of root it in the here and now rather than the sort of the immediacy of everything, rather than making it something more frankly hopeful or forward looking.
- [30:18]
The answer to this question is there's few answers. One is a space constraints. And I will elaborate on that through our research. There were projects that we started with, but also as we start curating this exhibition and talking to more and more people, we have discovered probably five times more projects than we started with. So at first we were worried that we don't have enough project to fill in the center for Architecture space that we were given generously. Then we actually had to figure it out. How do we cut some project off, unfortunately. So one of the decisions was trying to keep them in the theme, right, the theme of grassroots organization and immediate response. It was an intentional choice. We believe that hope for people can be built in many various ways. But I think with considering that the invasion is still ongoing and rebuilding society and communities is a priority right now, a lot of things are still unpredictable or. And they developing very quickly. There is interest from large organizations, international organization in Ukraine, which is great. But it is also important to make sure that we are not forgetting, working from the start, right from kind of the ground and involving people and community and citizens of Ukraine into response of these projects. Because while some of these projects might seem temporarily, I mean very often temporary housing ends up being a permanent housing for a very long time. So working together, as I was kind of mentioning, cohate project with the citizen, it's not really, really permanent. It is for some people. It's going to be a model possibly for a long term reconstruction.
- [32:35]
Just tell me a little bit about this sort of emotional component and rave to Loka and what is a Taloka?
- [32:42]
To loka and Taloka. Actually it is a traditional word and a traditional action, a common action which involves people gathering and working together address urgent community needs. So back in the days when there was no architects, how would the city or small town or village would build a new house? For example, my daughter got married, I need a new home. They would usually ask a village to come and help them. And as part of the tradition, the host or the person who's asking for their home to be built, they would at night host parties or feed their guests together with hosting these music events or dancing, which is basically what Repair Together is doing with the rave Taloka. There's a lot of emotions in every single project in our exhibition. For the given reason, Taloka is interesting in its way because it's uniting tradition together with kind of this new generation. So a lot of the, a lot of the volunteers who are working on the Reif Taloka projects, they are young, young professionals, creatives. There are a lot of folks who actually grew up in the cities and never actually been in the villages or had kind of a grandma or grandpa experience, which is, which is. It's a big, big part of the Ukrainian culture. So the young folks that are coming from these cities, they are, they're not only clearing the rubble, they are constantly interacting with the local older generations and learning all of the traditions about Ukraine by that. What's interesting is that there is a constant also exchange of knowledge. The exchange of knowledge happens through the older generations or locals teaching them how to rebuild houses because for example, they might be too old or physically there's just not enough people. And they teach these young professionals basically how to rebuild their traditional homes while also kind of getting this new, new experience of these city folks who just showed up out of nowhere and trying to help.
- [35:18]
So they're doing so they're so these, some of these organizers are coming in and they're kind of like, while people are doing the backbreaking work of clearing rubble, let's say, in a destroyed house, like they're kind of putting on a rave, like they're essentially kind of doing with DJ sets and kind of making it a kind of a positive, social, fun experience.
- [35:35]
Andrey Anissimov
Correct?
- [35:36]
Sasha Topolnyca
Yeah, there's a lot happening there and it's actually quite amazing. There is one aspect is the rave parties that the intention of the raid parties is clearing out debris and doing physical work. It's a lot. It's a lot to ask a volunteer to do whole day and do the next day and the next day. So in order to. In order to keep people coming and also in order to make them feel like a community, the repair together they start bringing sets, DJ sets to play during the debris clear out. That kind of became a big thing in a way that it became not only just DJ sets, every night now they have parties, they have music concerts where different Ukrainian artists come. Very famous Ukrainian artists have made their way to these Tolokas in order to sing or perform, comedians to perform for the volunteers who have been working all day.
- [36:43]
So they're kind of taking this idea. They're taking this idea and they're. They're kind of bringing it into the 21st century with some dance music and.
- [36:51]
Yeah, by that educating a larger community of Ukrainians and international community about our traditions that maybe got lost and have not been spoken to. So there's a lot happening in that project and it's actually quite fantastic. There's also an amazing, interesting, I think deserves its own exhibition is the exchange of knowledge that is happening between the two generations and people who know the construction techniques and younger folks who are rebuilding houses. So a lot of the knowledge about traditional architecture in these small villages and towns doesn't live in books. It really lives in the minds of the people who live there. So now these young folks are getting an opportunity to learn from people, local people, what the traditional architecture of their towns and villages.
- [37:50]
Well, and, you know, when this war is over and everything, you know, God willing, works out, do you think you'll return to Kyiv?
- [38:00]
Yes, I probably. Even if the war is. We really hope that war is going to be over soon, anytime soon. But even if it's not, I will. Yeah, I'm planning to go back home. One of our contributors, Betty, just went there for two months, so she just came back. A lot of people are traveling back home to show support, to see the ongoing efforts to help in any way they can. So I definitely want to go back home.
- [38:35]
What do you miss about home?
- [38:38]
I miss home. I miss. I miss. I think more than ever. I miss home than I think I missed before. Again, I lived here for 20 years, but. And maybe at some point I start thinking that United States is my home. But with the invasion, my love to my home has kind of gained a new value and a new life. Because when you see that something that you love so much and is so precious is trying to be destroyed, and it might, you know, there were moments where you think that it might not even exist, it makes you value and love it even more and wants to talk about it even more and spread the word about how beautiful our Ukraine is, how great the people are, how strong we are, and how much we need to continue to contribute to the world.
- [39:40]
Dan Rubenstein
My last guests today are designers Victoria Katrieva and Andrey Anissimov of the award winning firm between the Walls that does everything from cafes in France to seriously sexy offices and fashion boutiques in Kyiv. Starting a young and thriving firm is challenging just about anywhere, but doing it right after the pandemic and then dealing with a full scale war is something else. I wanted to ask the couple how they're coping, what design means to them as young Ukrainians and the importance of the built environment to a country's collective culture that pushes back against colonization and cultural erasure.
- [40:18]
Sasha Topolnyca
And where are you guys both calling me from today?
- [40:21]
Victoria Bavykina
Victoria, where are you guys?
- [40:22]
Max Gorbatsky
Kyiv.
- [40:23]
Andrey Anissimov
We are in Kyiv.
- [40:24]
Max Gorbatsky
Kyiv.
- [40:25]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay, Kyiv. And what is the electric situation there? Are you having electricity on certain times of day or is it being cycled through?
- [40:36]
Max Gorbatsky
Yeah, we have a few hours per day of electricity. We have like a plan so you can check when you will. When will you have an electricity or not? Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it works. Yeah. So maybe four hours. From four to eight hours per day we have electricity.
- [40:57]
Dan Rubenstein
Oh, okay.
- [40:58]
Victoria Bavykina
Wow.
- [40:58]
Sasha Topolnyca
All right.
- [40:58]
Andrey Anissimov
Yeah. But we need to say that, you know, we are totally independent. We have generator here in office and Starlink since 2022. So.
- [41:11]
Max Gorbatsky
Yeah. So nothing will disturb us during this call. Yeah.
- [41:16]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay, good, good. But you guys are. You're able to work?
- [41:21]
Max Gorbatsky
We are, sure.
- [41:22]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay, awesome. Amazing. And so tell me a little bit about yourselves, you know, before putting work aside for a moment. Victoria, where are you from originally?
- [41:33]
Andrey Anissimov
So I'm from Brevary. That's close to Kiev. That's a small city, but yeah, from Probary.
- [41:43]
Max Gorbatsky
Okay.
- [41:44]
Sasha Topolnyca
And what. What was your upbringing like?
- [41:46]
Victoria Bavykina
Did you have.
- [41:47]
Sasha Topolnyca
How did you get started into Design.
- [41:50]
Andrey Anissimov
You know, I knew from the very beginning when I was a child that I have two strong sides of my personality, which is creativity and mathematics. So I decided that interior design fits very good with both of them. But I need to say that my first profession was like a basketball player. I was a professional basketball player. Yeah. And after that I decided to be an interior designer because it was like with me from the very beginning.
- [42:27]
Sasha Topolnyca
Andriy, what about you? Are you from the Kyiv area also?
- [42:31]
Max Gorbatsky
Yeah, I'm from Kiev. I was born here. Yeah. And I'm not a basketball player or any sports. I didn't do it. So I was an IT programmer.
- [42:46]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay.
- [42:47]
Max Gorbatsky
Yeah. And I had some startups and our business with Victoria is my first attempt in business. So I have launched three startups. Previously two failed, but the third one gave me a small profit. But also closed down. Was closed down because I didn't find a way how to scale it. And then I met Victoria and since I was a little bit in real estate and have had an access to target audience, potential target audience, we decided to run our studio.
- [43:31]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay, and how did the two of you meet?
- [43:35]
Max Gorbatsky
It's quite interesting story in 2017. Yeah. I think my family decided to buy a few apartments. Like invest. Like invest in real estate.
- [43:53]
Sasha Topolnyca
Right.
- [43:54]
Max Gorbatsky
And when we did it, we decided that we don't know absolutely what to do the next. And someone suggested us to call hire the designer and the designer will help and. Okay, where who will be the designer? And someone, the classmate of my sister told me that his ex friend has an ex wife and this ex wife is Victoria.
- [44:24]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay.
- [44:25]
Max Gorbatsky
And yeah, so we met with each other and I didn't find. I didn't find anyone. I didn't look for anyone later because when I met Victoria, I understand that it's perfect match. So I was a client of Victoria. Yeah. And Victoria made a few apartments for my family and then we decided to run our studio because I had access to potential clients.
- [44:55]
Sasha Topolnyca
Okay, amazing. And so how is your practice set up today?
- [44:59]
Victoria Bavykina
Like how would you describe what between.
- [45:02]
Sasha Topolnyca
The walls is Victoria?
- [45:04]
Andrey Anissimov
Why don't you start with that almost multidiplutionary studio. We're working with interior design also sometimes with art. Now we're like 13 people with us trying to get out to the international level, not only to work in Ukraine.
- [45:24]
Sasha Topolnyca
And Andrey, like what. Tell me a little bit about what would you say to a new client? Like what is the signature of between the walls? Like why. Why would someone, you know work with you guys rather than someone else down the road?
- [45:38]
Max Gorbatsky
I Think it's. I think our clients choose us not only because of world word of mouth that someone suggested us, but I think that new clients choose us because we don't work with some, you know, like, we don't choose some very specific stylistic. We like to combine very uncombinable thing stuff which could, from the first point of view, it could seem like it's uncombinable, but we like to unite some interesting things from different styles which reflect our client.
- [46:21]
Sasha Topolnyca
And tell me a little bit about Victoria. Tell me about One byone, which is one of your recent projects. It's like a very austere sort of fashion retail boutique, which is quite stunning. Tell me a little bit about that.
- [46:35]
Andrey Anissimov
Yeah, so the idea is really great because, you know, we faced with the war and some of big brands left Ukraine for two and a half years, like HM or Zara or something like that. That means that Ukrainian market didn't fall down. Actually, some Ukrainian brands started to grow up. It causes also a lot of projects for us. And the main thing for One byone retail design is that our client wanted to make their business more with entertainment things inside to their own clients, be there for a while, make photos and make the space more Instagrammable and, you know, spread the information about the brand widely.
- [47:31]
Victoria Bavykina
So they were.
- [47:32]
Sasha Topolnyca
So they were encouraging you to kind of like be a little bit more wild, essentially.
- [47:36]
Andrey Anissimov
I mean, yeah, but wild but not so, you know, so depressed, probably through the materials and colors. Yeah, and I'm. I was thinking that, yeah, probably I feel this pressure. Yeah, right.
- [47:52]
Sasha Topolnyca
You're feeling the pressure.
- [47:53]
Andrey Anissimov
Yeah, I'm feeling the pressure like all the time, actually. And it causes something with. I mean, my creativity also goes according to that position. And I imagine that, well, okay, what do I really want now during the war time? I just want to relax and have my old life. And probably I want to go to the sea or at least to the swimming pool. And that's why. And how this idea started from this swimming pool idea, like probably people also want something light, want something more, you know, to take to have fun with even during the war, because it's very, you know, it's. It's hard to live here. And after that, they took this idea, even for the marketing strategy, to use this theme of sea pool, something blue, et cetera.
- [48:59]
Sasha Topolnyca
And that brings up a good point. Andre, maybe you could take this question looking around, not just in your work, but in the work of other Ukrainian designers that are younger. The look is very contemporary, as I would say. It's very Sort of like European, colorful, very contemporary. Is that fair to say? Like, that the sort of Ukrainian design scene today is very progressive and very forward looking.
- [49:30]
Max Gorbatsky
Yeah. I think that for me, the Ukrainian designers, it's like a phenomenon because we grew from our country is 30 years old. We was in Soviet Union and we had post Soviet use. We grew in very hard times, but we found that passion to very beautiful things, to European design, if I can call it European design in modern, modern art, modern design. We don't want to continue what was 30 years old or 20 years old. We want to progress, and we want to progress even with bigger velocity than maybe developed countries. We want to have good life. We want to have good life, comfortable. And you know, that the design is what we trying to catch also.
- [50:41]
Sasha Topolnyca
And do you think that maybe that's a little bit because, you know, let's say in Italian design, a lot of it is now backward looking. A lot of the young designers are doing more traditional things.
- [50:51]
Victoria Bavykina
A lot of craft, like a lot.
- [50:53]
Sasha Topolnyca
Of very sort of nostalgic work because they have things to look back to. But I think it sounds like, from what I'm gathering, Ukrainian desiders don't want to look back because they don't want to mimic the past that maybe they grew up with and the Russian influence. Is that right, Victoria?
- [51:12]
Andrey Anissimov
Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know, that actually the Soviet Union culture was forced to accept, you know, they forced us to accept this culture. And actually when Soviets came to Ukrainian country, they just ruined everything, like cathedrals, architectural buildings and all the culture, actually, they burned out all libraries and so on. And it means that actually. And they destroy the religion also, which is very important thing in culture. So that's why from one hand, the good thing is that now we like have a clean paper and can start like a clean page and we can start to go forward with something new. And we're like, you know, like a sponge that can take in all the information and we see it clearly and we are curious enough and courageous enough to try to do something new. But still, you know, the good thing is we reinvent Ukrainian culture to Ukrainian DNA. And sometimes, you know, it was hidden in the shadow of the Soviet culture and the Russian culture because if you have like one big city like Moscow or St. Petersburg, it was almost impossible to have something great in Kiev because it was not a huge big city, not a cultural center. And now we reinvent our culture. And that's very interesting. It's so cool. And, you know, sometimes when culture meets another culture, it just Engaged together and.
- [53:22]
Max Gorbatsky
Maybe each other.
- [53:23]
Andrey Anissimov
Yeah, probably.
- [53:25]
Sasha Topolnyca
And on a basic level, how is the war sort of affecting your day to day? Obviously we were chatting before and you mentioned that you've got electricity for four.
- [53:35]
Victoria Bavykina
Hours a day but you have a.
- [53:35]
Sasha Topolnyca
Generator at work and you have Starlink so you can get Internet and so on. But like as a, you know, beyond the beyond when you leave the office and turn the lights off at the end of the day, what is that kind of day to day everyday life like?
- [53:53]
Max Gorbatsky
I can tell you that each problem has a solution and for us and we never back down. We know that we, when the worst broke out, we faced enormous amount of problems and we had an option to break down, give up. And the second option, okay, what can we do to save first of all our country and what can we do to save our studio, our people? And our people is our greatest value, our team is greatest value. First months we didn't, we didn't have any incomes so we just paid salaries from our, you know, like financial safety. Yes, financial safety back which we made previously because it's very important. When we started our, when we launched our studio, when we started it in the end of 29th almost we faced Covid almost just from the start and we understood that we have to build business with understanding the next day could be absolutely another and the next day could be not so good. Like this. Yeah. And we created this financial safety bag for us. We didn't spend just all money we earned. We didn't invest all money we earned. We just did keep it safe.
- [55:35]
Sasha Topolnyca
And andriy, tell me a little about what you would like people, you know, when they listen to this episode. What would you like them to we call it a takeaway. What would you like them to really keep in their, in their, in their mind and then in their soul when they, when they stop listening to this podcast?
- [55:55]
Max Gorbatsky
Maybe we want people to live with Ukrainian resilience. I think that's a part of our culture and we want people to maybe Google what's a Ukrainian culture is what's how big it is and some Ukrainian identity. Because even now we understand that there is a lot of people who think that Ukraine is maybe like a part of Soviet Union or something like that. We want people to know that Ukraine has very good and great culture and something like that and etc. And we also want people to remember us.
- [56:41]
Sasha Topolnyca
And Victoria, what about you? What would you like people to take away from this?
- [56:44]
Andrey Anissimov
Even before the full scale invasion, it was a lot of collaborations even before with brands like Valentino Gaultier, they made some motives with Ukrainian DNA. And that's really something interesting. And if you can imagine our because Ukraine is like a post colonial country in the middle of Europe, even this fact is something very interesting to figure out how it is going on there and how people survive. And yeah, and also, you know, just to say for probably for everyone who want to create something, who want to be interior designer or architect, to go on to believe in themselves because even in a very hard situation, you can find a solution and be yourself. Stay as you are and just go forward.
- [57:46]
Dan Rubenstein
Thank you to all of my guests, Max, Sasha, Andre and both Victorias for making this episode happen. The editor of the Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, the Grand Tourist curator@thegrandtourist.net and follow me on Instagram at danrubinstein. And don't forget to follow the Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. And leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Till next time.