Stebnyk Disappearing. A Town Sliding into an Abyss
Zaborona presents Khrystyna Solomonchuk’s autobiographical visual story about her hometown of Stebnyk, Lviv region. The author explores the issues of personality formation and identification, immerses herself in memories, and communicates with the phantoms of her childhood in a town threatened with collapse due to its location on abandoned salt mines. In conditions of anxiety and despair arising from the possibility of not returning to Stebnyk one day, when everything will be destroyed, Khrystyna thinks about the issues of the Motherland and Home.
Khrystyna’s world
Street of Enthusiasts, where I grew up. The grandmother is resting. After working for 45 years as a dentist in Stebnyk Town Hospital, at a school, and the Potash Plant, she finally retired 2 years ago.
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Not all roads lead to Rome: this unpaved path is trodden by visitors to the job center.
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Salina. The building of a salt distilling plant was erected during the times when the Galician territories were under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Within its strong walls is the 150-year history of the town.
“My native place, where I was born, grew up, formed, and gave life. My place of strength. How much longer will you stay? And I?”
A. Melnyka Street (formerly Enthusiasts Street). Ahead is the job center, and on the right is a store of funeral merchandise. The Cuba district of Stebnyk was named so because of its remoteness and the construction of the buildings during the Caribbean crisis. In the early 1960s, this small neighborhood was built up with two-story wooden houses of the Finnish model.
Underground
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Huge underground voids pose a threat to about 130,000 residents of Stebnyk and neighboring settlements.
Laboratory on the territory of the Stebnyk potash plant. A view of A. Melnyka Street through Stebnytskyi Park. Some of the trees were planted by my mother back in Soviet times.
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Necessary things. A poncho that I inherited from my aunt. I loved wearing it in my early childhood – it is still the brightest item in my wardrobe.
“What kind of foundation can be laid on a void? Will my self disappear along with the parental home?’
‘Khvosty’
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The waste of the chemical enrichment factory, which produced calimagnesia, was transported by pipeline to the storage facility located on the outskirts of Stebnyk near the Solonytsia River, the right tributary of the Tysmenytsia. “Khvosty” or Salt Lakes are artificial reservoirs covered by dams.
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It is usually very quiet at the “Khvosty” storage facility. Once I came there at dawn and scared a flock of laughing gulls that had recently settled there. Their laughter seemed very creepy to me. That’s how I started making field recordings, based on which Ihor Khorkavyi later created a track.
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Marco Polo in search of miracles and artifacts on the territory of the Stebnyk storage facility.
The one that goes to the water Sometimes, or maybe always Needs to go to the water Getting up at 5 a.m. to go to the place, Where there are 2 suns at once 5 am Having just woken up and barely dangling your legs from the depths of the subconscious, you move through a thick fog. Night blackness gradually fades. As if seen through the milk, nature acquires intensity and colors, the silence is torn apart by birdsong – a new day is born.
Ghostcatcher
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The ghost of my childhood still walks familiar streets.
“Childhood and the unique history of an individual is the foundation that determines his future.”
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This is a site near the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My family and I consecrate the easter cakes here, and the storage facility of the Stebnyk state mining and chemical enterprise Polymineral is located nearby. -
In some places, Stebnyk is like a ‘pop it’ toy under someone’s invisible giant fingers.
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Grandma Liuba near a blooming cherry plum tree. Here are my roots. It’s the void below, but the cherry plum tree is blooming.
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Solaris. Here I make contact with the phantoms of my childhood and find the necessary things that emerge from the depths of my ocean.
About the author:
Khrystyna was born in the early 1980s, during the baby boom in Stebnyk. She was brought up by her grandmother, who still lives in the town. She talks to her by phone every day. Khrystyna is raising her son Mark, who is fond of rare cars and photography and sometimes accompanies her during filming in Stebnyk.
Most of the photos were taken in 2021. After leaving her job and breaking up a relationship, Khrystyna starts life with a clean slate, returns to herself, and remembers her dreams. To do this, she visits her small homeland every weekend.
