The connections that keep us going

Conversation with Darya Tsymbalyuk

Interview conducted by Kateryna Babych

I really liked your film: it’s incredibly insightful and relatable to the experience that many of us have been going through since February 2022. How did the idea for the film come about? Why did you decide to document these moments?

Apart from cooperating with scientists in a completely different format, this is my first video work. In fact, I didn’t even think about applying for Filma because its standards seemed too high for me. I’ve been a fan of Filma for the past three years. I was considering moving towards video as I combine visual and textual self-expression in my life, and it appears that everything works together well in this format. This spring, I attended a two-week residency at Nida Art Colony (Lithuania), organized by Asia Bazdyrieva and Egija Inzule. Together, we were reflecting on the environment, infrastructure and space in Eastern Europe. Teta and Sasha from ruїns collective and Lera and Sasha from fantastic little splash participated in it too. Their stunning video works were shown alongside Freefilmers’ work at screenings, which was very inspiring. So, I decided to try to make a video essay. When Filma launched the call for projects, I shared it in the residency chat because I wanted my colleagues to apply. And they encouraged me to apply myself. It is actually a great honor for me.

As for the theme, this is a very long story. It began in  2015 when my colleagues Yulia Filipyeva, Viktor Zasypkin, and I created the “Donbas Odyssey” art project. It was dedicated to stories about displaced persons from the east of Ukraine, specifically the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where people cooperated very closely. In many stories, people talked about plants. For example, when in Odesa in 2017 we held a session drawing maps of ‘home’ or ‘hometown’ (there were a lot of stereotypes and prejudices against the East), one participant, Ms. Olha, drew a ficus in her apartment in Makiivka. The pot bore the inscription “I am a ficus”. I began to wonder what she meant by that. Had that ficus remained in Makiivka? Was the drawing self-identification with the ficus? Is this ficus talking to us? Since then, I’ve developed a separate academic and creative interest in plants. It became the focal point of my dissertation, the animated film “Displaced Garden” (which I am working on together with Katia Voznytsia, Yulia Serdyukova, Victor Zasypkin and others), and, indeed, the subject of this video essay.

My mother and I are very close. When the full-scale invasion by Russia began, Mom kept sending me pictures from Kyiv. She spent a lot of time in  Dorohozhychi subway station. We live right next to the TV Centre, and the essay mentions people who died in early March when the TV Centre and Babyn Yar were bombarded. Being in the subway was very challenging for my mom, and she felt really happy when she started to go outside. Everything seemed so beautiful, and she took a lot of pictures. I am a visual person and I think her photos are very cool, although she laughs about it. In addition to the pictures, the essay incorporates some of my notes written in the early days of the war, reflecting on our conversations. Working on this video essay is a way for me to extend our discussions, and I introduced changes to it through these dialogues with my mother. She was initially cited as a co-author, but she insisted I remove her name, as she felt uncomfortable being credited like that. So the text is now attributed to me, and the images to my mother.

Actually, I was very moved by the fact that this is a co-authored project, a captured dialogue between you and your mother, reflecting many universal things: war, life, nature… It’s an experience that resonates with many people: it’s intimate, insightful, and highly relatable. When the war started, I was abroad. My mother and I exchanged photos, and the moment when plants started sprouting and blooming was symbolic for her. After the occupation ended, she said, “My roses overwintered so nicely. Why did they come here? Why can’t they just live their lives?” That’s why I genuinely appreciated seeing your mother’s name credited.

The story about roses is about just that. In this utterly horrible situation, you have to grasp at something. It seems we are holding onto the rhythmic cycles of nature, the certainty that there will be summer and spring. 

I hadn’t been home for two and a half years before the invasion, and at that point, I was just hoping we’d all meet again. So, these conversations and photos became this fragile connection I clung to. Eventually, I managed to visit home three times. I spent quite a while here in the summer – I was conducting research, and my mother decided to go everywhere with me. It was cool, cute, and sometimes funny. We sometimes even reminded ourselves of that mother-and-son duo from My Thoughts Are Silent.

The film uses rivers as a  metaphor, with this simultaneity and interweaving of everything. It’s about this flow of life and, at the same time, about the neighbors’ balcony, where the flow stopped, where they will never return. When deciding which moments to include, were you aiming to evoke specific emotional responses? How did you navigate the selection process for the film’s content from the recordings you made?

I did it rather intuitively. I strongly associate water  with life and the act of pulling oneself free when constantly under stress. This idea that one must swim to avoid drowning is the reason why I go swimming – in order not to drown emotionally. I consider swimming to be essential exercise. To a large extent, it’s about liberation because it is the closest we can get to the feeling of flight.

I also encouraged my mom to start going to the pool. I remember, on her birthday, on the eve of the invasion, she went swimming, and we wondered if it might be the last time. In addition, I was born near Mykolaiv and grew up there – the whole city is built around water. We spent a lot of time there this summer. Access to large bodies of water, be it a sea, a river, or a large lake, has always been emotionally crucial for us. I’ve been thinking a lot about spaces in Ukraine – how many of them have become inaccessible due to mines and other dangers. It seems the war has profoundly altered our everyday lives and our connections to what was once familiar. For instance, you can’t swim in Mykolaiv. The water is heavily polluted due to shelling and the blowing up of the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant.

I’d like to return to your answer to one of my earlier questions, where you talked about the inaccessibility of natural spaces. The impact of this war on nature is devastating: we know about polluted and mined areas and the threat of an ecological disaster in the east. There is also a list of plant species that may disappear altogether. How do you think we can attract more attention to the issue of ecosystem destruction?

Yes, the topic has gained momentum. Our Criminal Code has Article 441 on ecocide, a concept absent from many countries, and from the Rome Statute. The prosecutor’s office is currently investigating it in many forms: the death of dolphins and other cetaceans, Kakhovka itself, airstrikes on oil depots. As a researcher, I am interested (as the video essay shows ) in how it affects everyday intimate relationships with the environment and space in general because a city is also an ecosystem in which various life forms coexist.

About a year ago, I wrote an essay about mushrooms, their collection and the impact of mines. When I was finishing my dissertation, I really wanted to do a project about mushroom-picking culture in Ukraine. Skilled foragers  perceive the forest differently; they understand the intricate connections between weather, certain mushrooms, and trees. This project fell through because most of our forests are now inaccessible due to mining. That pains me deeply. For many, this is also a means of survival – earning a living by selling mushrooms, berries, and rose hips. Without it, the connection between generations gets lost, as the tradition of learning from your grandmother or going on these outings with your father diminishes.

The same goes for the steppe. At the beginning of the invasion, I came across incredibly beautiful photos of the coastline in the Kherson region, where you could walk long distances. And I understand that all this will be inaccessible for many years because these areas are not a priority for demining and we do not have enough sappers.

I am currently writing a book about the impact of war on the environment. I traveled a lot, meeting with environmentalists this summer. In July, along with Inna Tymchenko, Diana Krasynska, Oleg Derkach, and Natalia Yemeliantseva, I went to the Halytsynivska community in the Mykolaiv region to examine the Starohalytsynivskyi steppe, which is a nature reserve. This expedition was part of the larger project “Assessment of environmental consequences of war for communities”. The Starohalytsynivskyi Steppe has the largest population of Centaurea protomargaritacea [cornflower] and is almost the only place on Earth where it grows.

This cornflower is at risk due to the Russian invasion, and you also start looking at Halytsynove and the problems surrounding it, such as industrial waste. Sludge remains in the process of aluminum production at the Mykolaiv Alumina Plant, which produces a massive amount of toxic substances: they were found in the hair of residents of Halytsynove, and arsenic was found in the water, meaning this is also the colonial practice of extractivism.

This is such a good illustration of the colonial and capitalist approach, driven by the desire to exploit resources to the point of complete exhaustion, to exploit the environment as much as possible. What do you think: can a love for plants and nature, shared by a diverse range of people, including botanists deeply immersed in their work or individuals living close to forests or steppes with extensive knowledge of plants, be considered an anti-colonial statement? Is it a form of resistance to the consumerist approach to natural resources?

This is an interesting question. I have a fear of over-idealising our relationship with nature (including in my own work), especially as it can sometimes contribute to greenwashing, at least in the capitalist world. In Ukraine and Eastern Europe, people generally have a special relationship with plants. I visited hospitals a lot this year and photographed many plants there. In a lot of Western countries, there is no greenery in institutions. In Ukraine, plants are everywhere: dormitories, banks, hospitals, and libraries. Their presence symbolizes a certain knowledge about them, and coexistence with them. I remember the Ice Palace in Severodonetsk – there were palm trees there that were simply incredible. I wanted to find out who took care of them, assuming it must be someone with botanical expertise. I was told: “It’s the cleaning lady.” It turned out that the cleaner was also an incredible gardener.

I think it’s very cool that plants often appear in our homes – whether it’s a cutting from somewhere, nurtured to sprout, or bought from a local grandmother at the market. This contrasts with purchasing beautifully cultivated plants from Holland in a supermarket. However, I don’t want to idealize this vision.

On the other hand, anti-colonial movements among indigenous peoples throughout  the world often center around a different relationship with the land, a different understanding of it. In my view, Ukraine does not have a Western understanding of nature either, especially when delving into the knowledge embedded in songs and myths. From a Ukrainian perspective, nature is not inanimate. At the same time, it does not reflect only the symbolic world of humans – we think of animals and plants as agents that have their own life, are endowed with their own worldview. However, this coexists with the reality of corporations in Ukraine, contributing to the exploitation and pollution of the environment. It’s crucial to realize that a person is inherently connected to their surroundings, which can change our attitude towards living beings, and not just living ones. In this regard, exploring ancient Ukrainian culture might offer insights into alternative perspectives, providing a potential counterpoint to capitalist thinking.