Alex Bykov: March Must Go On

In his report Alex Bykov will tell the story of activist movements in Ukraine within the urban context. These examples will show the ability of Ukrainians to consolidate and act together in crisis situations. The joint action of Ukrainians takes many forms: marching together; joint dialogues that shape the vision of our future; uniting in physical and intellectual labour to protect and care for each other; uniting for the common good. Ukraine is a powerful example of collective responsibility for its future. Presentation will be based on the "March On" project held as part of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.

Alex Bykov is an architect exploring the legacy of Ukrainian urban planning of the second half of the 20th century. His main research methods are photographing, preserving and systematising rare archive materials and conducting interviews with authors and participants of the projects. One of the main representative approaches that Alex uses in his work are exhibition projects. He exhibits and curates his own art and research projects, as well as projects of other architects and artists. Among the most important of them is a series devoted to Soviet modernism in Ukraine, which began in 2015 with an exhibition Superstructure. Another field of Alex’s work are publication projects. Alex Bykov is co-author of the books Soviet Modernism, Brutalism, Postmodernism. Buildings and Structures in Ukraine 1955–1991 in collaboration with Eugenia Gubkina (Osnovy Publishing and DOM Publishers, 2019) and Orthodox Chic in collaboration with Oleksandr Burlaka and Sasha Kurmaz (Osnovy Publishing, 2020). He also curated and edited “5.6” magazine issue Architecture. Community. Time (Viktor Marushchenko School of Photography, 2018) dedicated to the topic of uncontrolled urban development in Ukraine. Alex Bykov is an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture (Brno University of Technology), where he led his atelier and course on architectural photography. Among his last projects were participating as co-curator at the exhibition “Retrotopia” in Berlin (2022-2023) and at the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2023.