Wim Crouwel Lecture #10

DATE: Friday, 21 November, 2025

TIME: 16:00 - 17:15 hrs

LOCATION: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

RSVP (free entrance) mail to: info@wimcrouwelinstituut.nl

Introducing speaker: Lilet Breddels, Director Archis Foundation, Project Manager Ro3kvit, Urban Coalition for Ukraine
Speaker: Vasyl Cherepanyn, Organizer/Curator Kyiv Biennial, Head of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv

PROGRAMME

15:30 Registration _ Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam

16:00 Welcome _ Thomas Castro, Curator of Graphic Design, Stedelijk Museum

Introduction _ Astrid Vorstermans, Co-Chair Wim Crouwel Instituut

16:05 Introducing Speaker _ Lilet Breddels, Director Archis Foundation, Project Manager Ro3kvit, Urban Coalition for Ukraine

16:15 Main Speaker _ Vasyl Cherepanyn, Organizer/Curator Kyiv Biennial, Head of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv

17:00 Q&A _ Vasyl Cherepanyn

17:15 End of the programme

'Staring into the Dark: Visual Culture in Times of War'

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has put its people – and Europe as a whole – under direct existential threat. This has forced the West to question the very foundations of the institutional order it had been based on since the end of World War II. Vasyl Cherepanyn, the director of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv and organizer of the Kyiv Biennial, puts this new catastrophic reality into perspective of today’s political imagination and visual culture. The talk focuses on the modalities of image production and perception in a revolutionary situation and under conditions of war and conflict, as well as explores the connections between symbolic and real violence and their influence on cultural processes, encompassing visual communication. In the current ideological setting, the arts (including design) have to be or to become political anew. This talk traces how visual and political antagonisms have evolved from the perspective of a civically engaged cultural institution.

Vasyl Cherepanyn (Ukraine) is Head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), an institution he co-founded in Kyiv in 2008 as a platform for collaboration among academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is the organizer of the Kyiv Biennial and a founding member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance. Cherepanyn holds a PhD in philosophy and has lectured at several universities, both in Kyiv and other cities in Europe, and is a curator, writer, and editor.

The Wim Crouwel Lecture is co-produced between the Wim Crouwel Instituut, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Allard Pierson, and supported by Pictoright Fonds, Cultuurfonds and the Amsterdam University Fund.