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Accepted Paper:
Narrating the steppes of Ukraine in time of Russia's invasion and climate emergency
Darya Tsymbalyuk
The presentation brings together video elements and text to examine limits and possibilities of narrating (with) Ukrainian steppes. By experimenting with forms of articulation, it questions how can we tell stories of the steppes decolonially and with the inclusion of alternative modes of knowing.
Paper long abstract:
This paper combines elements of a video essay and text and focuses on the environmental impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine's steppes, as well as the longer threat to the steppe ecosystems posed by industrial agriculture. It is based on the author’s return home to the south of Ukraine and her fieldwork there in summer 2023. By bringing in artistic aspects the presentation questions the frames through which we study and engage with environments, their suitability for the inclusion of subaltern knowledge, as well as the inclusion of nonverbal, nonhuman articulations. In times when both language and ecosystems are shattered by the Russian colonial invasion, what is the relationship between anticolonial resistance and colonial environmental knowledge and practices that had shaped the region for centuries, as well as between the resistance and the Western colonial gaze directed at Ukraine as a case study of disaster and/or resilience? How does environmental justice look like when we imagine it from the steppes of Ukraine?