Dear readers!

It is very soon that the entire planet will be seeing in the New Year, and we haven’t even yet sent our greeting out to you on this great occasion. I would like to at last fix this and to thank you all for being with us in 2011.

For our magazine, the year 2011 has been very fruitful and controversial at the same time – we did our best to present you with interesting articles and news, developed an English version of ART UKRAINE, and published our first Russian-language issue of the magazine, which we successfully presented at the Art-Moscow fair. The TOP-100 personalities in Ukrainian contemporary art raiting, which we presented in our December issue caused a lot of controversial reactions, and this actually makes me very happy! Because it means that our art-scene is alive and if anyone was left dissatisfied or upset – our goal was not to please everyone but to apply the tool of independent opinion and rating-making to the local art-process. I personally found working on such a project very interesting, even though I had to deal with a lot of dilemmas and question during the process…. But, actually, this is not what I really want to talk about in my New Year’s letter to you.

So… 2012 will be the year of the Dragon. There is something scary and at the same time majestic about this despite all the cheesiness of horoscopes, right? The rumor also has it that according to the Mayan calendar this year will see the end of the world. To tell you the truth, I am neither fond of horoscopes nor prone to paranoia. But if you believe in semiotics then you will know that the world speaks to us through signs; so what kind of message can we deduct from all these apocalyptic predictions that those fond of sensational news give us? I think I found an answer for myself: we can either play a game and try to believe that the end of the world will really come on twenty-something December 2012, but what will this give us? I think that this gives us an opportunity to live this year as if it is the last one, to realize all those projects and ideas that until a little while ago we were even afraid to confess we had. Maybe thanks to our model behavior even the end of the world will be rescheduled?

Our dear readers, I wish us all to not be indifferent and to not be afraid of change, and also to not be afraid to be surprised. We are so tired of this age of global warming and cosmic boredom. But if you look at how the entire world is in turmoil – I think very soon things will change. So let us dream that this change will bring us inspiration which we are long since craving!

Alisa Lozhkina,

Editor-in-chief, ART UKRAINE

 

PS: our team is full of optimism and faith in art – yesterday we all engaged in launching many many ‘sky-lights’ and made many wishes – for our magazine to grow and for us to have interesting material for you, our readers, to read, for our team to be as close and joyful as it is now. And, of course, we couldn’t keep ourselves from shouting out after one of the lights – “LET THER BE HAPPINESS FOR EVERYONE, FOR FREE, AND LET NO ONE BE DEPRIVED OF IT!!!” We hope that our words were heard)))

Ab Rogers A day in the life of Ernesto Bones

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