Central Europe as a no man’s land, an in-between space, a vessel filled by successive, external narratives. We can perceive literature as the art of mapping, where prose and poetry mark places, uncovering traces of concepts in space. It becomes easier then to see the movement of air, the invisible stories that shape our paths. In this case, all paths led to the very edge of the map, to the imagined West. At the same time, every map is inhabited by people, filling the space in their own unpredictable ways. Central European-ness, rather than being a concept or a project, may be an experience of a person, something very different and resistant to the logic of a flat map. By deepening our cartography, we are, in fact, collecting new stories, and today we need those that will make us subjects, finally protecting us from the powerful, imperial narrative of objectification. When space ceases to be a uniform, predetermined mass, it turns out we experience place differently, we take deep root. Andriy Lyubka reminded us of something else – after all, we are meeting in Uzhhorod, in a Ukraine different from that of Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Donetsk. We are speaking on lands where the connection to the territory of war seems unreal. The experience of time is also diverse, usually deriving from space – in conditions of war, no one looks ahead beyond the everyday now. Our meeting intertwines different times, seeking hope beyond the horizon. In the exhausting timelessness, a war without end stretches on, authoritarian regimes take shape, enduring street protests for months. Timelessness has stifled the energy of Belarus, and today Serbia and Georgia are facing it. Anna Dziap-shipa brought us a film to Dilemmas Cinema – “Inner Blooming Springs” by young Georgian director Tiku Kobiashvili, and it is hard to find a picture that better encapsulates the themes of this day. Reality in her film flows naturally – the director films her friends, young students in Tbilisi, and the camera witnesses both their first romantic dramas and the street protests they join. Today we already know that the demonstrations have been deprived of time; so far, they have found no point of arrival. The characters’ initiations, their open identities, the free everyday life of shared days, meet here with a time of breakthrough that does not arrive. Into their world, violence seeps without a beginning or an end, mixing dimensions, blurring imagination and cycles. Life goes on despite everything, which always gives hope, but also forces us to ask about the new normal of such timelessness, about a generation of Ukrainians who remember nothing but a world at war. Once again, the answer comes from culture, that reservoir of deep energy capable of restoring time, creating new, shared stories. We return to cartography, to the many small and shifting maps drawn by our places. In a true encounter with space, it is about people and their memory, slowly crafting a shared time. We restore what was erased, and transformation naturally takes root in our world.
phot, text: Piotrek Szroeder
ICES - The Institute for Central European Strategy
Dilemma Academy
PEN Armenia
Georgian Literary Initiative
