Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 3pm

Registration link: https://forms.gle/LjRzjYajwrQ647G18

Live Stream link: https://evt.live/wounded-culture

In October 2022, Maksym Davydenko, co-founder of the Cultural Heritage Fund of Ukraine, with Olha Honchar, director of the Territory of Terror Museum in Lviv, Ukraine, spear-headed the Wounded Culture project. This initiative is an act of non-violent cultural resistance to the colonial practice of destroying public memory. Focused on the recording of cultural crimes and professional, scientific documentation of oral testimonies, the Wounded Culture team strives, not only to draw the attention of the international community to cultural losses in Ukraine but also to reduce these losses by utilizing VR technologies that enable the preservation of the images of museums located in endangered borderline areas.

Mr. Davydenko and Ms. Honchar have been touring North America, meeting with museum professionals, academics, cultural heritage advocates, and Ukrainian communities in New York City, New Jersey, Detroit, Chicago and here, in Toronto, to spotlight the diligent work of the museum professionals in Ukraine and the Museum Crisis Centre.  The Museum Crisis Centre, a grass-roots initiative, is a network of over 150 museums, many of which fall into the top risk group and remain potential targets of seizure by Russia during the on-going war. Since the start of the invasion, they have forged peer-to-peer access to 1,380 museum workers from the most war-torn areas of Ukraine.  MCC members have assisted colleagues in difficult life circumstances and helped them preserve their unique collections.

The CC’s fundraising aims to support museum employees, preserve, and relocate endangered artifacts, and document the war through oral histories and virtual reality (VR)-based projects.