Babyn Yar. Past, Present, Future
Book launch with Nick Axel and Maksym Rokmaniko
Please join editor Nick Axel and contributor Maksym Rokmaniko for the launch of Babyn Yar: Past, Present, Future (Spector Books, BYHMC; 2021), a book published just months before the invasion of Ukraine documenting the long history and struggle for remembrance of one of the most violent and tragic events in the Holocaust, when over two days in 1941, Kyiv’s entire Jewish population was massacred at Babyn Yar—a ravine outside of the city. The book contains a basic historical narrative and extensive archival imagery of the events, groundbreaking forensic research conducted by the Center for Spatial Technologies, an overview of memorialization projects undertaken by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (including works by Manuel Herz, Marina Abramović, sub, Anna Kamyshan, and Andrés Jaque), and more. A presentation of the book will be followed by a presentation of recent work by Maksym Rokmaniko and the Center for Spatial Technologies, including their collaborative investigation with Forensic Architecture on the 1 March 2022 Russian missile strike on the Kyiv TV tower, which missed and landed on Babyn Yar, killing five and further entangling the past and present.
Nick Axel is Deputy Editor of e-flux Architecture and Head of the Architectural Design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. From 2020–2022, he was Curator of Architecture and Chair of the Architectural Advisory Board at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC).
Maksym Rokmaniko is an architect, researcher, and educator. Maksym is the founding director of the Center for Spatial Technologies (CST), a multidisciplinary practice based in Kyiv that works on a broad range of topics using spatial analysis and visualisation techniques.
