The Kyiv Biennial’s discursive program invites academic debates on matters of migration, exclusion, and co-existence, as well as extractivism and petrocapitalism. Through a series of keynote lectures by political scientists, decolonial researchers, and feminist thinkers, it examines contemporary conditions and interconnected histories of different regions of a “Middle-East-Europe” shaped by imperialism, war, economic crises, and their aftermath.

The program also features panel discussions reflecting on personal experiences of displacement and resettlement, as well as gatherings tackling the ecological implications of colonial infrastructures and the situation of Indigenous peoples, also embracing the therapeutic formats.