INFORMALITY OF CULTURAL AND SOCIAL LIFE AS THE ONLY OPPORTUNITY TO SURVIVE IN THE FRONTLINE CITY KHERSON

KHERSON REGION: STEPPE AND WILL/FREEDOM. Abstract for the Global Informality in the Arts conference, to be held at University College London (UCL) and Pushkin House, London, 15-16 January 2026

Introduction

How to overcome our powerlessness before the system? How to create our own powerful system of self-determination - individual and group? In Ukraine, a unique situation of unification has developed significantly: individual and national, state and non-state (NGO), all-Ukrainian and local (city, village), personal and social, systemic and informal for the sake of one great goal - Independence of Ukraine in all senses: freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights, resistance, decolonization, "away from Moscow", etc. The war with russian fascist invaders is a real game changer, in a split second everything changed. 

I will talk about my city - unbreakable Kherson, about its unique Kherson cultural intellectual underground, which gives us strength and joy to live in our hometown. It makes it easier for Kherson residents to realize the highest mission and the great meaning of our lifes. So, by the very fact of our stay in Kherson during all 4 years of the war, its residents already play the most important role in the life of Ukraine and fill our lives with sense and significance. We hold the front line in our city together with the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We are defending Kherson from rashists together with the soldiers (with weapons), and peaceful unarmed residents - by the very fact of our stay in the city under bombs, with our bodies and open palms. And this is an incredibly rich existence. We are not surviving – we really LIVE!

The main part 

1. Patterns of Informal Power -  the invisible and immeasurable dimensions  

- It is the unwritten rules and hidden practices from the beginning of Ukraine's Independence that keep society together and mobilize our people: we have already experienced two historical miracles – there are our two magically victorious Maidans  and currently indomitable popular resistance during the war, and I will show you how this happens.

- It is the informal power, informal networks that shape cultural production in various genres in my unbreakable Kherson. Residents of the city of Kherson - population of the country and the city - inhabitants - citizens - inmates created the Kherson people's informal spontaneous self-government as the city's self-awareness, self-organisation which united residents, raised our pre-war small but proud civil society to the highest level and formed the unique Kherson cultural underground.

- Informal indomitability - unbreakability. I can show thousands of photos and videos about invincible Kherson, in which unarmed, defenceless people, with empty hands and unprotected bodies, without bulletproof vest - stand and chant to the orcs: «Go home, russian soldier - fascist and occupier»./ They all stand with open faces and palms facing the occupiers and look into their eyes, who are armed from head to toe, who are wearing masks on their faces, who are on tanks and who are very afraid of ordinary peaceful Ukrainians. And this is our truly Informal Unity, which creates a System of a new kind, a System chosen and created by the people themselves, and not by the authorities.

- Informal authorities create hubs as Kherson's people's spontaneous self-organization to unite society and to form a unique cultural underground. At the end of the fourth year of the terrible war in Kherson, dozens of different cultural spaces in shelters are brightly blooming: these are our hubs - our points of invincibility. They are actively operating underground, in dungeons, in basements, where is a bright, colourful, eventful life - cultural, artistic, social, public, intellectual, emotional, creative. This is our newest Kherson cultural underground, as a socio-cultural phenomenon of the 20s of the 21st century. The underground has never been marginal, although it has always been informal and was a manifestation of cultural polycentrism. And now the underground has become a kind of realization of a metaphor: now Kherson life in the literal sense of the word has moved under-ground. We turned out to be UNBREAKABLE and moved our socio-cultural life underground, and this is not only a real-geographic-spatial indicator, it also has a metaphysical, spiritual, symbolic meaning.

- Invisibility in the philosophy of Grigoriy Skovoroda as help for us: his concept of three worlds (Universe - Man - God) and two natures (one - visible, the second - invisible. Visible nature is called "creature", invisible - God"). Skovoroda considered happiness to be the most important for a person, which should be built on an unshakable foundation, which is made up of invisibility - the second nature and the third symbolic world.

- Informal diversity of the cultural underground. AND WHAT DOES "THIS UNDERGROUND" MEAN FOR US? - AND THIS MEANS TO LIVE! And this means - that we LIVE! We do not survive, we do not experience, but we live our lives here, on the front line, a life full of meaning, feelings and impressions, knowledge and learning, joint useful deeds and help to our heroic defenders. And we preserve the life of our city with our lives, our warm with our own daily breath, we protect the thin "candle of the letter “Ї" of the Ukrainian language and the small light of the vibrant existence of the city of KHERSON.

2. Informality and Creative Labour - deeply intertwined creating networks of support, collective resilience and joint action. Informal labour practices simultaneously challenge and support creative work, creating ecosystems that are clearly visible in the creative sector of art events in Kherson.

- Informal spiritual intellectual decolonization, Get out of Moscow! Kherson artists in various genres challenge traditional categorization, exploring themes of decolonization: this is the liberation of Kherson, this is the struggle for the independence of Ukraine, but at the same time it is also the decolonization of oneself. Example: a solo performance by a Kherson author in forced exile from the war entitled “Deoccupation of the Self” (https://gb1960.blogspot.com/2022/09/blog-post.html ), or his photo-performance “Doors and a Sliver” (https://gb1960.blogspot.com/2022/07/blog-post.html ). 

This is also the gradual creation of the Museum of Resistance in Kherson, the name could be “I am Kherson” or “Museum of the Liberation of Memory” - our community will decide. The idea of such a museum is already being implemented in Kherson through small initiatives, exhibitions, the publication of books with memories and diaries of the occupation, attempts to collect materials - artefacts of the occupation and texts. (https://www.khersonua.com/  ) The occupiers were looking for organized partisans, and the secret was that the resistance movement was created by ordinary Kherson residents, each on his own and all together. But the rashists cannot even imagine this, never.

- A little theory. Informal self-awareness: cult manifestos as a formalization of informality, spontaneity, loneliness and community in various art projects. The founders of the great creative movements of the 20th century often wrote manifestos - collective statements about the values and goals of the artistic movement as an attempt to formalize their informal art: in the sense of systematizing, verbalizing, explaining, creating a philosophical basis as a self-consciousness of various types of art. This is such an attempt to theoretically form one's own creative process in practice. The most famous: manifestos of the symbolists, expressionists, the futurists, Dadaists and so on. Similarly, all Kherson visual art events necessarily have their verbalized component.

3. Lecture Performance and the Edges of Performative Informality. Museums and other 'formal' institutions have traditionally struggled with the disciplinary nature of the medium. The Kherson local history museum used to traditionally publish periodic "Scientific Notes" - this is a formal systemic requirement for the museum, but in 2023 our museum published "Non-Scientific Notes" - the memoirs of all museum employees who survived the occupation of Kherson and its liberation. And this collection of memoirs as a manifestation of systemic informality on the part of a state museum institution was presented at an innovative exhibition in the museum dedicated to the occupation and de-occupation.

4. (Secret) Art in the Workplace. The workplace is always a hierarchical structure with restrictions, rules and competition. But sometimes the workplace becomes a place of informal resistance and subversive activity.

About informality in the workplace of one Ukrainian soldier - a young guy from Kherson. His workplace is the frontline and in the trenches, but he organized an informal event there about the philosophy of Stoicism - right in the trenches, and wrote about it on social networks with photo evidence as follows: "We discussed several letters to Lucilius Seneca in the trenches between battles. The result was a reflection on the extraordinary circumstances in which each of us, by our own will, found ourselves. Although these circumstances were created by the evil, hatred and meanness of the orcs, we chose our place in the new conditions independently. Therefore, this discussion was dedicated to tempering the spirit, and the Stoics are our best helpers in this. We talked about death and its perception, about valuing life, ourselves and the common good. About how to be content with the necessary, striving for enough, working for more according Seneca, how to strengthen yourself... Well, I want to convey my admiration for those who were there: to return, even for an hour, to the world of meanings, thoughts, interpretations and the depth of the worldview of People is priceless. " A colleague's comment after this post: "I simply cannot remove the smile from my face - you wouldn't be you if you hadn't done that…” 

5. Protest Art and Informality - Political or protest art often focuses on political crimes and illegalities 

1) People's resistance as an informal need of life. For us, the war with rashists is illegal, criminal, heinous, vile. Our informal activities - both political (protest rallies) and in art (protest art) opposed the systemic occupation authorities and that small part of the systemic Ukrainian authorities that became collaborators. These are our daily public protest rallies during the occupation and active cultural and social life after liberation.

2) Another situation is when the activities of informal forces, customary law, give meaning and normalization to political crimes, everyday corruption, nepotism, “blat”, repressions against dissent. This was the case in the USSR, and I have a stunning story about one component of such generally accepted informal evil – namely, about “blat”. One young girl in her first year of work as a university rose up all alone against everyone, not only at the workplace but also in the entire Soviet Union, where “blat” was the generally accepted norm for everyone. And she alone defeated all of them, did not receive any punishment for this – neither physical nor moral. On the contrary – she received a complete ethical and moral victory. But this is a separate great story, and it had its deep roots in the formation of this girl’s worldview.

3) Informal power together with formal power in Kherson is the newest phenomenon of unification and cooperation after the liberation of the city and half of the Kherson region. We work together not only for our survival – but also for our bright life. 

6. Forms and content of the art of resistance as an informal force of the whole society and each person separately   Center of Cultural Development Here 

1) Exhibition in the theatre art hub. It was in Kherson for the first time, in the theater - but not in the hall, not in the lobby, but in its basement, in the art hub, under the bombs, there was an exhibition "Ukraine Soborna Nezalezhna (independent). Emotions of friends". 25 Ukrainian and foreign artists dedicated their paintings to the cities and villages of Ukraine and the struggle of the Ukrainian people for independence. "This is the art that carries not only an informative, but also a therapeutic function," said the general director of the Kherson Theatre.

2) Informal cultural production in various contexts in Kherson - a frontline city in southern Ukraine during 4 years of war, under daily bombs and drone safaris on people. The latest event in chronology is the exhibition "Sky over Kherson", created by Kherson residents themselves (adults and children) in the city and from different countries of the world as refugees. Everyone drew their own sky over their hometown. For example, this is the sky through a broken window and a broken wall in an apartment after the Russian shelling of peaceful houses in the city. There is a book - a bright colour catalo. More than 500 authors joined the sky over Kherson - children and adults, professional artists and those who drew for the first time in their lives. The youngest participant is 3 years old, the oldest is 82. This exhibition and book are a testament to our faith in revival and restoration, because we know that every sky is once filled with light. This light is already the people of Kherson.

3) Informal creation of a museum of resistance. 20 THINGS FROM KHERSON, UA is the name of the collection-e-book with the first 20 exhibits – the beginning of the future museum. This collection presents artefacts and stories of Kherson residents who survived the occupation and themselves INFORMALLY created the phenomenon of Kherson resistance – this is our newest identity. It is the Museum of Resistance that has the potential to become one of the starting points of restoration, a powerful “place of strength” that will heal the collective trauma of the Kherson community and attract people. We see it as modern, modern, maximally human, truthful, and therefore decided to contribute to the formation of the vision of such a museum.

4) Informal primitive art of a Ukrainian grandmother. Art album and research book "POLINA RAIKO: INVISIBLE". Polina Raiko's artistic heritage became widely known in Ukraine and the world after her house-museum of primitive art was flooded and the paintings were destroyed as a result of the Russians blowing up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. The book contains rescued photos of the paintings of her house and her paintings. With the help of modern technologies, the book gives the opportunity to see and hear Polina Raiko herself, her songs and stories, as well as see her characters in augmented reality. Polina Raiko is a bright marker of the Ukrainian identity of the Kherson region, the Ukrainian soul of the south. From this, another new art  project "Seeds of Polina Raiko" was born - about her influence on the cultural and artistic landscape of Ukraine and the world. New ideas for the “diffusion” of Polina Rayko’s legacy into various spheres of art and creative industries, which we call “seeds”, were generated by participants of various workshops in 2024.

5) Informal ART PRACTICE GARDEN. These are various artistic practices that can be implemented on the basis of botanical gardens, parks, and the natural environment. The Art Practice Garden is a collection about art as restoration and restoration as art, about the feeling that we are cultivating Ukrainian culture as part of European culture. Main method: documentation and analysis of artistic practices that exist on the basis of botanical gardens of Ukraine (in particular Kherson) and European countries (in particular Lithuania). 

6) Informal self-analysis "OTHER LANDSCAPE" is a platform for group artistic analysis of our experience after February 24, 2022. We are a community of Kherson artists, which at different times and in different forms was united by the Centre for Cultural Development "Totem"., our collective and personal memories, memory carriers, litmus tests of the changes that have occurred. these are eyes that try to see the future through a window with a different landscape. 

7) Informal resilience and the street gallery "Afloat". 2023, Kherson is liberated, but under constant shelling, and in the summer the russians blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. A catastrophe, but Kherson is staying afloat - as is its culture and art. That is why we created street galleries in Kherson. 

8) New Khersonites. After 24.02.2022, children were born in the occupied part of the Kherson region, they will definitely be different. Their mothers at that time could not evacuate, and every story of childbirth during the occupation is a story about the victory of life over death and destruction. We decided to collect these stories about the power of women and the power of life in an e-book. We want children born in the Kherson region during the war to be perceived not as victims, but as a symbol of a new Ukraine.

9) Informal Chronicles of the Vyshyvanka. Almost 9 months of russian occupation and resistance - first visible, then quiet, almost invisible, but tangible. From the first days of the occupation, the famous tour guide and craftswoman Inna Mikutska began to write a diary, which she called "Chronicles of the Vyshyvanka", because every day she embroidered (вышивала) - made the Vyshyvanka of victory. Chronicles of the embroidery is a diary with illustrations for every day from 41 artists from Kherson, which for all of us has become the soul of Ukrainian cultural resistance. There is such an ancient Ukrainian belief: women, starting a new embroidery, made a wish - to find love or for a husband to return from the war alive. When the embroidery is completed - then the wish will come true. The result is an e-book-album on the website. 

10) Informal adaptation. About the human dimension of war. About the phenomenon of getting used to war and its consequences, when people outside Ukraine get tired of content related to the war, and people in Ukraine are forced to get used to and adapt to a new terrible reality. Photos and confessions of different people about survival and adaptation to life in war conditions - an e-book-album on the website. 

11) Informal visual art with collages and performance. The exhibition "Kherson from the inside/outside" is a dialogue that we conduct, standing on the border between free Ukraine and the occupied land, between understandable expression and nervous breakdown, between art and attempts to destroy it. Works created during the occupation and in emigration. Emigration is not a privilege, it is coercion and uncertainty. Occupation is not a sentence, it is a space of resistance and the need to preserve oneself and one's creative individuality. The project has been exhibited in several regional canters of Ukraine since August 2022

7. Informal power of struggle for values during occupation - How and for what to live? NATIONAL-LIBERATION FORMAT OF VALUE TRANSFORMATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE OCCUPIED KHERSON REGION

1) The war and value - informal, but authentic - transformations of social relations in Ukraine have acquired a driving national-liberation format: The value of courage and boldness as the basis of self-salvation, daily protests from the first days of occupation, rallies in front of the occupiers armed to the teeth;

- The value of solidarity, mutual support and synergy - not formally organized from above, but spontaneously emerged from below;

- The value of new informal leaders. The first to raise the city after the stupor of the first days of the war was quite unexpectedly the director of the Kherson Drama Theatre Serhiy Pavlyuk, not a politician or a deputy, not a public leader, but simply a man of art, but he was the first to overcome his fear, and all the fearless Kherson residents followed him to rallies of open protest.

- The value of historical symbolism. March 13, 2022 - the day of the liberation of Kherson from the German-fascist invaders - the largest march of protesters took place in a symbolic and symbolic way through the central streets of the city, they chanted "The Russian soldier is a fascist and an occupier".

- The value-semantic dynamics of individual and mass consciousness: the value of the native land, "not to give away the native land", "how will we prove that this is Ukrainian land if all the Kherson residents leave here?"

- The value of trust. who is in front of you - friend or enemy? But the pro-Russian sentiments of 10% of Kherson residents also surfaced, and the conspiracy began.

2) Post-traumatic syndrome – due to the CHALLENGES of the occupation: in complete opposition to the formal structures of the “Russian world” of the occupation authorities and ideology – we felt the Value of testing stable values, a psychological test, preserving life and dignity; the lack of information as torture! a feeling of lack of freedom: “it’s like you live in a thick gray concrete fog and you move like in slow motion”. The main evidence of the informality of Kherson residents: “But souls cannot be occupied – they are free”.

3) Invisibility - Testimony: "Monday. I look around to understand what happened in the past week and I don't remember anything. My life is like a path in a fog, in which I wander, slowly moving my feet. A few steps and a continuous milk of fog ahead, stones come under my feet, I stumble, then I bump into a wall, a few more steps, some kind of puddle, and behind the same wall of fog as in front. That's how my life is: I don't see where I'm going, I don't remember where I came from. The limit of visibility is only the fingers of an outstretched hand. And you hear your intermittent breathing. And from outside, from the darkness, terrible sounds are heard and something terrible sometimes flies by”.

4) The value of the national identity of Ukrainian citizens in the context of the semantic war with Russia. The value of the Ukrainian language as a marker of "own - stranger ". The value of self-sacrifice and dignity - Everyone did what they could - informal self-organization. The value of mutual assistance as a factor in the meaning of life. The value of direct democracy and self-government, real solidarity in the most terrible times. Monitoring the situation and collecting facts of crimes for the future Nuremberg of the 21st century. The occupation cemented the Ukrainian people. The value of bright moments of life during the occupation: our compatriot with a Ukrainian flag jumped onto a Russian tank right in the city centre.

5) Psychological means of combating collective psychosis - informal self-rescue: The occupiers acted according to the standards of the NKVD. Time to search for new meanings of existence. "From ourselves - to Ukrainians: no matter how difficult it is for us, the most important thing, when fighting a dragon - is not to become a dragon ourselves. We must carry within ourselves not only anger and revenge, but also, above all, humanity and truth. Otherwise, Victory will have no value."

8. Informal personal decision – choice for the sake of such a general formal system: the state, the people, for the sake of our Ukrainian Steppe and Freedom. Testimony of one soldier from the front: an ordinary Ukrainian boy went to the front as a volunteer in the first minutes of the war, never had anything to do with the army before, worked as a psychologist at the International Creative Children's School – director of the formation program for the upbringing of the future elite. On his page in social networks in the first days he wrote informally, from himself, but essentially for all humanity. Here are small excerpts from his messages:

- “We were born in a great hour, From the fires of war, from the flames of fires... Under the blue-yellow flag of freedom We will unite all our great people”

- “They say that God created man on the sixth day. Soon the day will come when He will destroy the inhuman. Today, a month dedicated to the Helicopter View competency was to begin in our schools. The night before the russian attack, I was just developing a presentation and wanted to start it like this: "Interaction, mutual trust and solidarity of the world community in education, culture, science, business - this is the future of humanity. We choose civilization."

- "But it didn't happen. The russian federation declared war on the entire civilized world, built on trust and co-development. They are trying to return the course of humanity to its original state... I am Ukrainian. I have no illusions; we are not a superpower. But it was not elves who destroyed Mordor."

- "I thought for a long time whether to exhibit my military photo. But I realized that it is worth showing WHO had to take up arms. I am a psychologist; I work in education. I learned how to help people, not kill. How to develop, not injure (травмировать). But the bloody russians came to us to destroy our very existence, our development and our culture. And hundreds of thousands of people who want to live their ordinary or extraordinary lives took up arms – clumsily (неуклюже), without experience, but with anger at the invaders.

- "My countless plans for self-development in experimental pedagogy, axiology, epistemology, developmental psychology have radically changed the vector."

The main conclusions

Can we collectively propose a conceptual tool to explain artistic re-evaluations and explorations of informality in the grand political but also the mundane everyday? Can we collectively offer a conceptual tool for explaining artistic re-evaluation and the study of informality in big politics, as well as in everyday life?

You need songs - I have them!

1) There is only one way out for all of civilized humanity to have a great meaning of life and its creative any activity – art, science, education, production – is to enter the great planetary battle of good and evil on the side of good: give Ukraine a lot of the most advanced and powerful weapons, have everyone who can fight voluntarily join the Ukrainian army, form an anti-rushist coalition (just as the anti-Hitler coalition of 56 countries was created during World War II, and it defeated that fascism) and only through united efforts completely defeat neo-fascism – the Russian fascism of the 21st century, forcing this country to completely capitulate, undergo many years of denazification and demilitarization, and pay reparations to Ukraine for a hundred years. And we will never be brotherly nations both formally and informally. 

2) This is what has already happened - and now it is forever a fact of history and an eternal shame for Russia - a complete fusion of the concepts of fascism, neo-fascism, rashism, occupation, barbarism, murder, looting, a crime against humanity and every single person on earth, against the planet and civilization. It is precisely these horrors and shame that are now associated with Russia—and there is no longer any great Russian culture. They have failed the test of simply being human, let alone - not to mention a civilized living being. And we will never be brotherly nations both formally and informally. 

Ukrainian poet Anastasia Dmytruk, author of the famous poem "We will never be brothers", written after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And a month after the start of the terrible war, she published a new poem "For Kharkiv, Marik, for Irpin". Dedicated to the Ukrainian army, territorial defense, volunteers, doctors and everyone who is fighting for Ukraine today.

here – video, read by the author

Halyna Bakhmatova