I got stuck on Muratova Street and laughed: an interview with Yevhen Holubenko about Odesa, art, and change

Peace, quiet, cats and creativity. That's what you feel when you enter the studio apartment in Odesa of the artist, photographer and screenwriter Yevhen Holubenko. Since 1986, he has worked as a set designer at the Odesa Film Studio. He is the husband and creative partner of Kira Muratova, and he has designed all her films since 1989 as an artist, and he wrote short story scripts for Two in One and Three Stories, and he is a co-writer of The Sensitive Policeman and most of the others. Intent talked to Yevhen about the past and future of Odesa, the "cotton candy" mood, the monument to Catherine the Great, why he is not afraid under Russian shelling, and his vision of the world.

What is your attitude to the fact that Leo Tolstoy Street in Odesa was renamed after Kira Muratova? As far as I know, your wife was a Tolstoy fan?

I treat this with humor. Everything changes in life depending on the circumstances. All this talk about self-identity is just talk, because it doesn't come from the name of a street or a monument. Modern names often mean nothing to people. They have not read Ukrainian classics. They have not read Karpenko Kary, Kotliarevsky, or Lesya Ukrainka. I learned this at school. And for me, these are not empty words. And passersby will just see some names.

I have a witty friend. Once, in Soviet times, I asked him how a candy factory could be named after Rosa Luxemburg. He said, "Well, you can abstract it, Rosa is a flower, and Luxemburg is a wonderful country, and that's it. And that's how it goes. Half of the Soviet executioners after whom the streets were named did not say anything to anyone. It was just a coincidence, nothing more.

Photo: Yevhen Holubenko's Facebook page

When Ukraine finally gained its independence, and we were happy about it, there was a sluggish compulsion to learn the language. And it was done rather poorly. I thought that this is not how it works. People should want to learn, love the language. And then they will be proud to know it. It doesn't work by force. I know people who knew Ukrainian perfectly and hated Ukraine.

You have to understand that the concept of "cotton wool" is very broad. For example, there are imperialists who don't like Putin because he is dangerous for the empire and can destroy it. And others, no matter how well they treat Ukraine, believe that Odesa is a separate enclave. At the same time, they say that we need to look to the future, but they don't want to learn the language. And this is ridiculous, because now, no matter how you look at it, you have to learn it. If you look to the future and you have a normal brain.

And with Kira and Tolstoy, it's a joke, of course. She would have laughed. Kira was telling me about her trip to Switzerland for a festival with Herman Sr. He was witty, making jokes in the spirit of Soviet newspapers: "The town where Kira was born will be renamed Murativka, and the following texts will appear in the newspapers:" "Murativka regional committee members sneaked in.

Collage by Yevhen Holubenko. Photo: Intent

Everything is coming to this. I remember going from Novyi Rynok, pulling something heavy, some construction cardboard, and the trolley broke down on Tolstoy Street. I sat there for 15 minutes, realized that I had to go to the 28 tram. And I thought, Kira would be laughing. I got stuck on Muratova Street. Maybe it's all really funny?

Let's say the monument to Catherine II was perfectly integrated into the square in terms of sculpture and architecture. Change the plaque, write that she destroyed the Sich, that this lady is guilty of this and that. It would be more useful. People would simply see that she was the evil genius of this country.

Or another option is to make a monument to Odesa-mama out of her in the form of a cat-nurse. Remove all her henchmen and put a bunch of cats in bronze around her, and she sprinkles food on them. Who is she? We don't know, some woman. Is it possible in Odesa, which is proud of its humor, to show it seriously in something?

Anton, Kira Muratova's grandson, starred in Eternal Return. How did his artistic fate develop later?

No, he never really wanted to do that. He wanted to do business, he saw how actors live. He knew that it was an addictive profession, he heard all these conversations.

A good actor comes in, but there are no roles for him in this movie. It's such a humiliation. Anton didn't want to learn it, even though he was capable.

From the Editor: Muratova's two grandsons, Anton and Zhenya, were raised by Golubenko.

Do you have any fear of staying in Odesa when the city is attacked by Russia almost every night?

I am not afraid. Do you know why? I'm old. I've lived a long time, I've lived an interesting and varied life, I've seen a lot, I've always worked and it's become a habit. There are people who eat up adversity with sweets. In an extreme situation, I tend to be distracted by things I love. I have never lived in anticipation of tomorrow, but always functioned. When the bombing started, my first reflex was to finish the work I had started. And the most anecdotal thing I thought was: even if they burn down, let them burn down ready. That's the kind of perfectionist I am.

I work on several projects at once. There are a lot of postponed works that I don't know how to finish. I pull them out and start fixing them when I know how.

The artist's apartment is located near the port, so he constantly hears Russian attacks. Photo: Yevhen Holubenko's Facebook page

And you still have to know how?

This is the trouble of all beginning artists. If they don't succeed, they break their brushes, tear their canvases, and hit their heads. And if you don't know, you have to put it aside to move to a new level, to learn something else.

Did you graduate from Hrekovka or Hudgraf?

I barely graduated from the Hrekovka School, I took a gap year.

I had a friend then, an older and more experienced one. We lived together in a studio that was located under the attic. He saw me redoing the same work all the time and explained that in order to finish it, I needed to master a new skill, a new mastery. "And you just paint ten works on one canvas, and none of them is better. They are all raw."

I have mastered this very well. Now I can take a work from 20 years ago and correct it a little. And only I see it, and I correct it for myself. Others, perhaps, do not see the defect.

Yevhen Holubenko's workshop. Photo: Intent

Zhenia, what about a photo exhibition? Because the public knows you better for your paintings and collages.

I stopped printing photographs. I have ten photo albums where I still printed photos.

Now you only take pictures on your phone?

At first I took pictures with a camera, but then I realized that the quality doesn't matter for Facebook. Now they are promising to send me an iPhone as an advance for the work I have to do - scanning archives for the catalog of a film retrospective in Amsterdam.

Have you ever shot on film before?

Of course. I started late, to be honest. After thirty, and I resisted for many years.

Photo: Yevhen Holubenko's Facebook page

Why did you resist?

I was already working in cinema at the time. I saw how addictive photography can be. It's like madness, like another infection. And I didn't want to do it.

I loved photography, I was friends with cinematographers, I saw how they shoot. All the time they were measuring and calculating something, exposure, focus, talking to each other as if in a foreign language of professional slang. It didn't appeal to me, it didn't seem easy. Then I went to the Berlin Film Festival for the first time. I was given a Zenith, loaded with film, and asked to shoot something. In the end, I didn't understand, I forgot how to open the camera and the film lit up. I got angry. I was hooked, and I started shooting non-stop. It was like a virus. Then the cinematographers taught me how to develop the film. And I began to better understand what they needed from me as an artist. For many years I was on the wet process. Now, with the full automation of the digital process, all this knowledge has become unnecessary.

And now I am no longer drawn to shooting on film. Why? I have a huge number of photos, and no one is really interested in them. They just lie there. The children are quite even-handed about it.

There is an opinion that photography harms painting. Do you agree with this?

I'll tell you what happens when you pick up a camera for the first time in your life after painting from life. You suddenly see things that you're not used to paying attention to.

When you paint from life, you automatically reject everything you don't like. Poles, wires, every little thing. And when I picked up the camera and started clicking, I was amazed. You can't pretend that something isn't there. It's all there. And you have to line up the shot somehow. You have to think that it will all come out.

As for painting, I combine everything as I want. The photo doesn't bother me here. On the contrary, when you start shooting and you realize that your eye is differently arranged than your artistic upbringing, your composition skills do not disappear. And it's very deep in you.

In general, I treat photography the same way as painting. Technically, you may be skilled, but the most important thing is whether you have a vision. This is your view of the world. If you don't have it, no technique will save you.

Did you study at the art school at Hrekivka?

No, I'm not a local. I had brilliant teachers not in Hrekivka at all. In Kamianets-Podilskyi, there were two teachers whom I still remember and bow to. (I'm talking about the teachers of the local art school: Volodymyr Voinov and Zbigniew Haykh - ed.)

Because a teacher is not necessarily a person who talks about something, but a person who finds something good in your bad work and draws your attention to it, emphasizing it.

Tell me, can you call any of the living Odessans geniuses? What are your criteria?

I analyzed for myself a long time ago and came to the conclusion that there is no scientific concept of genius. I developed my own interpretation based on my observations and reading art criticism. My criteria for genius are very high. And I don't apply them to myself, to be honest.

There are several types of genius. These are people who either open the gates to another world, from whom something begins, a certain direction emerges that develops independently of them. Or people who have absorbed previous experience and put an end to it.

Photo: Yevhen Holubenko's Facebook page

Of course, I know that Odesa is wildly talented. But do you know that there is a substitution reaction going on now? Now Odesa artists are leaving, Kharkiv artists are coming. There is already a Kharkiv diaspora here, and it gives a different color. They have a different school, different hobbies. They are all very talented people, but I can't say that any of them opened a window to some unknown new world.

There are just a lot of good artists. And these people are important for the city. But this is a regional level.

It's like when people come to Odesa and say: this is such a wonderful urban development! My God, but this building, objectively speaking, is a reflection of European architecture. It always happens in the provinces. But some people don't see it. Of course, there is a local flavor. But if you talk about architecture as art, it's different.

For example, you come to Rome. And the first thing that shocks you is that you are walking around like on the pages of an art history textbook. There are no such buildings in Odesa. Yes, they are beautiful, but there is nothing authentic about them. That's all.

When I say that, people start to hate me.

Yevhen Holubenko's apartment. Photo: Intent

Why? It's the truth.

Because people need to live in this magic, that we are the best, that we are beautiful. They believe that there is nothing better than the Odesa Opera House in the world. Although it is all plaster molding. And this is the first thing that distinguishes authentic things in Rome or Paris: the facades are decorated with hewn stone sculpture, it's not stucco.

There are few people who want to understand reality. No one is stopping you from loving it. But it would be nice to understand the value of things.

I read that you have mastered all the underground professions in your time.

Yes, I was always working somewhere. I was brought up in the Lutheran tradition. And all my life it annoyed me. "We are poor, but we are honest." The life of the bohemians does not fit well with such views. But there were professions that have now become a sign, a stigma, of the underground. The main thing was to find something that gave you a lot of free time and was out of the sight of your bosses - security guards, stokers, preferably a three-day-a-week schedule. Young people now need to be explained that there was criminal liability for loafing. Then 35 years in the movies. There you have to communicate a lot, talk to people. If you're an art director and you can't explain to people what you need, it's easier to go and hammer nails yourself. It has always been easier for me to do it myself. I'm not a boss by nature.

Yevhen Holubenko in the studio. Photo: Intent

At the construction site, I wasn't responsible for much, I did what I was told, as they said, "take more and carry it on," and I had bosses. If we are working on a script, we just communicate face to face. But if I have to manage, command other people, and the artist is forced to do it, I don't like it very deeply. I easily obey if I find what I am offered reasonable.

That's why I never wanted to direct. You have to manage a huge crowd, control them all the time, sometimes make suggestions, intimidate them, and so on. It's so wild for me, I've always avoided it. Just helping to do it, yes, but don't push me into that side of control.

Zhenia, how do you see Odesa in ten years?

I've been here since 1971, and Odesa has changed many times over this time. And how many times will it change again? In which direction? How do I know?

But it will not be the same as it was. To all those who are nostalgic for Odesa's humor: Odesa will not be like that anymore. There is no such function as rewind.

Could anyone in Odesa have predicted that the passenger ships in the port would disappear? Odesa can become multinational again, as it was at its core. Again, if people are allowed to work and trade. Then Turks, Germans, Italians, French, and Chinese will come here. They will change this city, but how? I don't know, and nobody knows.

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