The place where revolutions were made over coffee and cognac in Lviv. Memoirs of Lviv residents

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05 August, 20:35

Crazy ideas were born here over coffee and cognac, and later could turn into a festival, radio, or artistic event. We tell the story of "Dzyga" through the people who created the cultural revolution of Lviv here.

The city remembers only as much as we can preserve. Since "Dzyga" got new owners, Lviv's cultural environment has keenly felt that its unique institutionalism is gradually dissolving in time. The gallery and business remain, but the history and spirit of the artistic association are disappearing and need to be documented, otherwise they risk turning into a myth without a material basis. Especially now, when the war has sharpened the sense of fragility of what we love. Everything passes, suddenly disappears, and iconic phenomena remain unexamined.

Маркіян Іващишин біля галереї "Дзиґа" у Львові, 1990-ті роки / Фото: pravda.com.ua

That is why people for whom "Dzyga" meant a lot – Hrytsko Semenchuk, Lida Savchenko-Duda, Yulia Khomchyn, and Vlodko Kaufman – came up with the idea to create a live archiving laboratory, which grew into two complementary projects. The foundation was laid by the initiative "30 Years of Dzyga in Lviv: Archiving a Cultural Phenomenon", which focused on the initial systematization of materials.

The project began on July 18 with the event "Dzyga Phenomenon" in Markiyan Ivashchyshyn's corner, where the memoirs were actually recorded, a part of which is presented in this text. And the logical continuation, aimed at digitizing the database and recording oral history, is the project "Dzyga: A Living Archive."

Вхід у артцентр "Дзиґа" / Фото: Діана Безсмольна

"Dzyga" as a Phenomenon of Freedom

Memory has its own smells, sounds, and geometry. For several generations of Lviv residents, it smells of coffee, cognac, and cigarette smoke in the office, where its owner – Markiyan Ivashchyshyn – was not always visible through the dense smoke screen. It has the shape of a round table to the right of the gallery entrance, where Marek used to sit. It sounds with the songs of "Mertvyy Pivin" at "Prokyadannya" in the town hall courtyard, and now – in Markiyan's corner. "Dzyga" is a place where our Ukrainian identity was born. Founded in 1993, the artistic association became one of the first independent cultural centers in Ukraine. But behind this official formulation lies much more.

Journalist and musician Roman Chaika describes the atmosphere in which this ecosystem was born: "Dzyga" started in 1993. "Mertvyy Pivin" already existed then, but we were wandering around like homeless people, and it became a home for us (for me, it's still a second apartment). But there had to be a father at home: there was a round table in the corner, there were always 50 grams of cognac, a pipe, and Marek Ivashchyshyn was sitting there. Marek, during his lifetime, gathered a very cool ensemble of people, where everyone was free and independent. Synergy arose precisely because it was possible to gather in completely different combinations to create the craziest projects here and now..

Oles Dzydra aptly notes that artists finally got an illusion of freedom and just wanted to break away from Soviet greyness: "Just like Hesse has 'The Glass Bead Game,' the guys wanted to play. They invented nonsense (what is called myths and legends here), gave a reason for fun, enjoyed it, and infected others with it. This game lasted for 33 years. Vlodko Kaufman played, quietly academicized some wise words, conducted research, and came up with justifications for it. But he played with pleasure, and he can be envied. And we are here thanks to Yaroslav Rushchyshyn and Markiyan Ivashchyshyn, who were not artists but generators of these initiatives. Because without the belief that everything would definitely work out, none of the artists would have gone for it; we had a bad experience.".

Cultural Polygon: From "Vyvykh" to the Performance Art School

The first large-scale explosion that laid the foundation for this freedom was the festival "Vyvykh" (1990, 1992). Culturologist Zenoviy Mazuryk believes that the second "Vyvykh" gave a powerful impetus to the creation of "Dzyga", uniting Kurbas theaters, "Voskresinnia", and many other people.

"Vyvykh" was incredible! Vlodko Kaufman wants to downplay his role a bit, but "Vyvykh" wouldn't have happened if he and Yurko Koch hadn't created a phenomenal visionary video sequence, which was already a revolution in Lviv, where there was "sovok" all around. But what was later easily born at "Dzyga" over a coffee or cognac nullified everything that was born during "sovok" for 30-40 years, – says Roman Chaika, who unequivocally calls this festival the first act of mental revolution. – "Vyvykh" was an attempt to detach Lviv from "ragulizm" and "sovok" simultaneously. When "Vyvykh" happened twice, we firmly believed that everything was over, that a return was impossible. But, walking around Russian-speaking Lviv today, I understand that "ragulizm" and other things are passed down genetically. Because the carriers are people who don't know how Khrushchev stole ice cream from Americans, what "sovok" is, or about queues for sour cream in a grocery store where there is only kelp.".

Відвідувачі фестивалю "Вивих" / Фото: Любомир Петренко

Dzyga was a magnet for ideas that arose spontaneously, literally out of thin air. And Marek was the center of gravity, to which crowds of people flocked: from musicians to people's deputies. Everything instantly moved from word to deed.

“Once, Marek came up with a radio station on the go. He suggested buying one of the two frequencies from Russian speakers for money, because they love money. Can you imagine? The turn of the 1990s, and the person says – let's make a radio, and not a plebeian one! ...This is how Radio Initsiativa was born, which was made in the pre-digital and pre-YouTube era, he continues, Roman Chaika,who hosted Initsiativa. – News broadcasts arrived by fax… to the toilet in Sykhiv. But it was a radio where everyone had their own programs. When Yurko Izdryk received the magazine Chetver from Yuriy Andrukhovych, Marek immediately suggested making it at Dzyga and simultaneously launching a radio program of the same name. The main principle then was creative freedom.”.

Other legendary projects were born just as easily. When the band Mertvyy Piven needed an album cover for "Shabadabada," which included the song "Starenky Harley" (a parody of the Pikardiyska Tertsiya's "Starenky Tramvay"), Vlodko Kaufman, over coffee, drew a rooster on a Harley on a napkin with colored pens in a few minutes.

And when the idea for the "Listen Ukrainian" event arose at the Lyalka club, Serhiy Proskurnia suggested taking the festival to the streets. The loud concerts of Viy, Komu Vnyz, TNMK, and Tartak played in a tiny 100-person club, while thousands of people watched the live broadcast on large screens in front of the Puppet Theater.

Dzyga not only provided a stage for musicians and a space for writers, but it also became a salvation for contemporary visual art. Artist Mykhailo Barabash describes those times as a void, when art academy graduates simply had nowhere to go.

“Today, young people have many such platforms – art centers across the country, private institutions... When I graduated in 2005, this did not exist yet, unfortunately. It was Dzyga that gave me the opportunity to continue creating after the academy. Markiyan, of course, was the engine that drove things here, but among artists interested in visual art, Kaufman was more well-known. And I met Markiyan later, when Myroslav Vaida, Oleksiy Khoroshko, Serhiy Petliuk and I created the group KOMA, it was around 2007. My wife Teresa, our organization, and students from the Lviv National Academy of Arts Department of Contemporary Art Practices still hold exhibitions at Dzyga. I regret not taking T-shirts from the Fort.Missia festival with the inscription "Don't shoot in the back – I'm an artist," which were given to artists who worked on the objects back then. I wear it constantly during installations.”.

Photographer and journalist Audrey Stakhiv also recalls Fort.Missia: “It was an unusual use of space – World War I forts, which were interpreted in different ways, installations were created. But each time you came and immersed yourself, lingered, examined, deciphered something, and mainly looked for your own interpretation. And this is a big plus of everything that Dzyga did: it always gave an opportunity to perceive everything in your own way, rather than getting a thought imposed on your mind.”.

For many young artists, Dzyga was a space where risks were allowed. Artist Yaryna Shumskaya recalls how art academy teachers forbade performances, telling them to "do it somewhere else."

“Dzyga was the first place I went to meet artists. It was here that the inspiration began, which in 2018 led to the opening of the Department of Contemporary Art Practices at Lviv National Academy of Arts. My journey with performance began in 2009 at the Days of Performance Art in Lviv, initiated by Yuriy Onukh, who was then the director of the Polish Institute in Kyiv. Thanks to these Days, people from all over Ukraine came here to study. And we later traveled to represent the country abroad, including Poland and Tel Aviv. Dzyga was a place of freedom; there was always support here. If something failed, you weren't written off, but told: 'Try again.' I volunteered a lot here and never thought about money. Everything was done from the heart, so it was so alive.”.

Aesthetic Resistance and Statehood: Art as a Weapon

Culture and politics at Dzyga always went hand in hand, but it was a politics of values. In the late 1980s, as psychotherapist Roman Kechurrecalls, peasant culture dominated, and pro-Ukrainian youth were just beginning to test the boundaries.

“We wore jeans with embroidered shirts and hotly debated whether rock music in Ukrainian was even possible. So, Dzyga, like the Student Brotherhood or the Dzyga Society in their time, belonged to romantic politics, where everything was done for the sake of grand ideas and without personal interests. However, romantic politics always loses to pragmatic politics. People at Dzyga absolutely couldn't save money. As administrator Serhiy "Boroda" Kaleniuk, my godfather and friend, recalled, as soon as Marek had even "ten kopecks," they were instantly spent on financing cultural projects. It's a different worldview and different motivational systems – freedom and creativity, not control, money, dominance, or power.”.

Writer and journalist Oksana Forostyna (Press Secretary of the

My friend Yevhen Hlibovytsky once aptly noted that .

Responsibility for those around became a key feature of this environment. Alina Nebelmes, who worked as a journalist in Lviv media for a long time, shares memories of the first student protests: “In 2001, we, Lviv students, went to Kyiv for the “Ukraine Without Kuchma” rally. When we were waiting for the train to Lviv in the evening, we were warned to remove our identification marks and stay silent, because our Ukrainian language immediately gave away where we were from. Memory recorded how Marek took our group to the nearest McDonald's so we wouldn’t freeze on the platform, and then put us on the train. He stood by the dumpster on the platform and watched. Only now do I understand what responsibility he felt then”.

The entire movement required colossal resources, and the most acute clash with the system was the fight for a free press. Yaroslav Rushchyshyn and Markiyan Ivashchyshyn created the "Lvivska Hazeta" – the most unprofitable project, which exhausted the business but preserved independent journalism. The first editor of the newspaper Oleh Onysko recalls the furious pressure of the repressive government machine under Kuchma.

“When Lviv entrepreneurs complained about pressure from tax officials (the Lviv tax office was headed by Viktor Medvedchuk’s brother at the time), we balanced our coverage of these conflicts. Otherwise, our publication wouldn't have become a phenomenon. But this led to terrible problems: Marek was arrested, and armed men broke into Slavko’s factory. But they held firm bravely and never asked us to write something ‘softer’ or compromise, ” he says. – When “Lvivska Hazeta” was being pressured, Medvedchuk’s closest associate Taras Kozak drunkenly shot a pistol in the “Vienna Cafe”. We, having a daily newspaper, knew about it, but couldn’t publish it, because we would have been flattened. So, we leaked this information to our Polish colleagues from Rzeczpospolita, then reprinted their material – and still lost the lawsuit in Lviv because our translation was not notarized. Today, such a wild situation is unimaginable”.

It was difficult to carry out cultural and political projects without dialogue with local authorities. Vladko Kaufman recalls these relationships without embellishment: “Once, you could easily enter the regional council without any passes... During “VIVYKH,” the authorities helped to resolve various issues. Back then, we were given rent for a symbolic hryvnia, then for some reason it increased to extraordinary amounts, and the authorities wondered why we were paying so much. Culture was considered something sacred then, not like now – we see the results of that. Until the authorities realize the significance of culture, we won't have it”.

Culturologist Zenoviy Mazuruk was the bridge that often connected officials' offices with the bohemian environment: “Today I saw materials about Jazz Bez being handed over to the archive. So, the first time Marek came to my office and said: 'Save us, because there will be no Jazz Bez, there is no one to help.' Then he first received a small amount of budget funds, and the festival survived... In those times, the authorities did not want to allow private cultural initiatives that operated independently to develop. But they should have understood that such institutions perform functions that state museums or theaters cannot handle”.

Ivashchyshyn was excellent at communicating with anyone. As recalls Roman Kechur, Marek could tell an official: “You think you'll repent for arguing with your wife at confession? No, you'll repent because you didn't give money for culture!” He constantly repeated that his generation was the “overgrowth” that had to create the soil for the cultural breakthrough of future generations”.

Walls that heard everything: the living memory of the community

If the walls of the gallery and cafe could talk, they would tell thousands of stories. For the poet Olenka Pavlova "Dzyga" was always a magnet, especially during the Publishers' Forum: "I have a dream report that I never wrote: to cover the Publishers' Forum without leaving "Dzyga", because everyone gathered here. It was the Forum in its best times, when you come here and drink beer with Lyishya, Neborak, Midyanka. Serhiy Zhadan told how from the second-floor window, right above the entrance, he and Mysko Barbara read poems. Somewhere on YouTube I have a video from under "Dzyga", where we sit at Marek's table. Forum, evening, Taras Prokhasko and Andriy Lyubka sing "We are forest devils", rats run like in Paris – and it's just beautiful: everything is bohemian, it's wild, it's gorgeous! And then some old ladies call the police. I was so struck by this: the history of Ukrainian culture is happening here, the best Ukrainian artists have gathered, they are singing songs, and you are calling the police?".

For the people who worked at "Dzyga", it was never just a place of work. Zheka Chernov, who came there in the late 1990s, describes the art association as an "organizational molecule": "I still have business cards from "Dzyga". Only two people didn't have positions indicated, but just "Dzyga", first and last name – Marek and me. Now they would call it a producer or project manager, but back then we were people who did everything... For me, "Dzyga" was the best place to be, which later became a family. Work implies a plan to earn money, which I didn't have then, but everything turned out even better because of it. For the first time, I saw a place where I could combine my own "madness" with the madness of people like me or even better than me.".

Yaryna Melnyk, who worked as an administrator from 2014, experienced both the old gallery and the renovated space: "When they renovated and the halls appeared on the second floor, I couldn't accept it for the first year – it seemed like the chamber "Dzyga" had ended. But that windowsill on the second floor became a place of peace for me. We met countless dawns there after festivals, listening to the silence over Virmenska Street... There used to be a joke that "Dzyga" could organize any festival in a day with everything: advertising, guests, catering. And this team spirit was amazing. No one complained, no one asked "why" or "what for". There's a project – we do it.".

Vitaliy Grabar, working as a photojournalist, turned the gallery walls into an analogue of social networks that didn't exist yet: "I remember the times of tax audits. I was a photo editor at "Lvivska Gazeta" then, and we were asked to find photos from concerts in the archive to verify the presence of sponsor photo banners. God, what times those were! And then I had a permanent exhibition at "Dzyga": photos from concerts in and around "Lalka". It was very convenient: when there was free space on the walls, or when it was necessary to cover some holes or stains, the photographs did a great job... Social networks didn't exist then, so collecting such live feedback was much more interesting. And it was near "Dzyga" in 2003 that I met my future wife.".

Yaryna Yakubyak from "Mertvyy Pivden" emphasizes the inviolable sacred status of this location: "When "Dzyga" arrived on Virmenska Street, it became a kind of place of power. You could always come here, meet the same people with whom you could consult, talk, cry... Here, after cognacs with coffee, crazy ideas were born, which seemed absolutely utopian with the first cognac, and with the last one, we were already signing contracts... There are places in the world that are not subject to any changes. This place is sacred for many people, and this is not an exaggeration. Including for the youth who come to our concerts now – they understand it too, they feel it.".

Archive and memory: preserve to move forward

Head of the Institute of Cultural Strategy Yulia Khomchyn says that the idea of archiving arose during Lviv's application for the title of European Capital of Culture (ECoC):

"Then it turned out that the need for new approaches to archiving exists in many environments. Thus, the "Active Remembrance" program appeared in the application, of which the "Dzyga" archive idea became a part. And although Lviv did not manage to win the ECoC title, the work on the application evolved into the city program "Responsibility to Be."

Preserving the thirty-year heritage of the legendary "Dzyga" turned out to be such a large-scale task that it was organically divided into two complementary stages. The foundation was laid by the project "30 Years of Dzyga in Lviv: Archiving a Cultural Phenomenon" (NGO "Virmenska 35" with the Institute of Cultural Strategy and the art center "Dzyga" with the support of Goethe-Institut Ukraine), which focused on the initial systematization of artifacts.

Its logical continuation, aimed at transforming this work into a public digital format and supplementing it with oral history methodology, became the project "Dzyga: Living Archive", which is embodied by the

Yulia Khomchyn explains: "Since Ukraine lacks experience in creating urban cultural archives, we took an experimental path: we gathered people involved with "Dziga" in a landmark place – Marek's nook. On July 18, we took the first step, and now we are working on a digital platform for the archive, developing its structure and content tools."

Yulia says that "Dziga" is a big part of her and who she is now: "I got there as a student, I started as a volunteer at the Publishers' Forum. After university, Marek offered me a job – and so I worked at "Dziga" for about 15 years. I was involved in managing artistic projects, fundraising, partnership development, and communications. For 15 years, I worked on the international festival Jazz Bez, "Flugery Lviv", and many other projects."

The interlocutor states that it is very difficult to give up what shaped her: "I deeply believe in the values embedded in these projects. I don't know how one can stop Jazz Bez, which has been around for 25 years. I recall 2014, when Marek said: 'We will take Jazz Bez to Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Kramatorsk. Because it's necessary. Because jazz stitches the country together and creates space for dialogue and understanding among all of us.' "Dziga" laid the foundation for the emergence of such powerful organizations as NGO "Virmenska 35", the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Art Council "Dialogue", which continue this work. Therefore, I continue doing it."

For archiving, Yulia brought her badge from Sevastopol. Once, at the invitation of local activists, she, Vlad Troitskyi, Sviatoslav Pomerantsev, Yurko Vovkohon, and other cultural figures traveled there to develop the idea of revitalizing the Petropavlivska Fortress and planned a festival there.

The launch of the digital platform within the "Dziga: Live Archive" project is planned for September 2026. Until then, the project team urges everyone who has photographs, posters, flyers, programs, videos, audio recordings, or other materials related to "Dziga" to join the creation of the live archive. After all, the history of this place is the history not only of one institution but of thousands of people who created the culture of independent Ukraine, and this memory deserves to be preserved for future generations. Contact person for project communications: Olesya Levytska, [email protected].

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