Kateryna Mishchenko
Fellow 2023/2024
Literature
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
21mi-ka@wiko-berlin.de
Bio
Kateryna Mishchenko, born in 1984 in Poltava, Ukraine, is an essayist, translator and publisher. She has worked as an interpreter in the human rights and co-founded the magazine for literature, art and social criticism "Prostory". Her essays have appeared in international magazines, anthologies and as a book: "Ukrainische Nacht/Ukrainian Night/Ukrajinska nitsch" (2015). Together with Katharina Raabe, she is the editor of "Aus dem Nebel des War: The Present of Ukraine" (Suhrkamp, 2023). She is working now as a Ukraine consultant at the project group Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the German Federal Agency for Civic Education. Currently she is a Berlin Fellow at the newly founded Ukraine Institute for Advanced Study.
Publication of the anthology "Common Horizon” (Gemeinsamer Horizont)
The anthology that I will be working on as editor has the working title ‘Common Horizon’ and deals with the second year of the Russian war of annihilation against Ukraine. The authors describe the war landscape in and outside Ukraine both from close up and from a distance.
All places in today's Ukraine are under permanent threat, but the temporalities in which they exist are different: some are under occupation, others are battlefields, some have already been liberated. There are reports from all these periods, crimes and resistance strategies are documented, the reality of ever new catastrophes coexists with memory and attempts to heal. There is already a ‘before’ and ‘after’ within the country.
The countries that officially support the Ukrainian resistance are under a completely different time pressure. The proclaimed turning point is being delayed, the war is gradually being normalised and its global consequences suppressed. Major processes of movement, be it people fleeing, humanitarian or military aid, run parallel to processes of geographical and mental isolation. The gap between different experiences, between safe and threatened places is widening.
And yet - is there a prospect of a common horizon, of future action and thinking that can overcome isolation and destruction? This question and conceivable answers will determine the composition and themes of the volume.