Welcome to Our Ruins

When the war began, the Ukrainian artist, writer, and activist Nikita Kadan moved into a bunker. There, he continued drawing and working on his projects to preserve cultural heritage. Like other men between the ages of 18 and 60, Kadan is unable to leave the country, but he was invited by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to install his work in the exhibition T

 at the Venice Biennale — a brief respite where he was also

 married to his artist partner AntiGonna by Nan Goldin

 . Here, he talks to curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and founder of isolarii Sebastian Clark via Zoom on March 13, 2022, about the past still being in the subjunctive and the need for a new anti-fascism.

Portrait Friederike Mayröcker

The Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker, born in 1924, and sadly passed away today (4 June), has written dozens of highly acclaimed books of poetry and prose. Her works are occasionally accompanied by her own drawings, sketches of floating figures with handwritten captions. The following excerpts are from a series of conversations between Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Sarah Ortmeyer, and Friederike Mayröcker, who drew as they talked about her writing routine and the price of a life dedicated to literature.