18 October, 2023
Authors: Pavlo Bishko, Daniel Lekhovitser
Editors: Marusia Pedorenko, Nastya Pravda
Illustrations: Kateryna Kruhlik, Maria Petrova
Layout: Sonya Hryn
Perhaps everyone has an old photograph, a coin, or a postcard that has managed to reach the present through decades or even centuries. Zaborona’s editor-in-chief Daniel Lekhovitser and bild editor Pavlo Bishko have rummaged through their own archives and are sharing the biographies of the antiques they have found. Every day for a month, they will take turns telling the stories of their items, and through them, the chronicle of their families: from forced deportation by the Soviet authorities to mobilization into the Austro-Hungarian army. If you like strange Borgesian lists, where there is place for headless deer, ghosts of dogs, void, and a watch that has turned into Theseus’ ship, this is the project for you.
Instructions:
This is a zettelkasten, an old drawer for storing notes, which we believe symbolizes the archive of memory. Each drawer contains a memorable item owned by the project authors. Every day, we will open one drawer (and you just need to click on it) until all twenty are collected.
On October 18, at night, during the shelling of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian missile hit Daniel’s apartment and destroyed all the things he wrote about for this project. Luckily, Daniel survived and was pulled out of the rubble by rescuers. After that night, the project took on an even deeper meaning.
