Loaded with a plastic bottle of fruity red wine and our Fuji X-T20 camera we strolled a Sunday afternoon through the legendary Starokinnyy Flea Market in Odessa, Ukraine – capturing its unique atmosphere with families and their playful kids, young couples, bachelors, old babushkas, sleepy kozaks, enterprising guys, fashionable girls, soldiers on leave, students and tourist looking for a good find at the many vendors selling second hand cloth, kitchen items, books, children toys, guns, hand grenades, workshop tools, electronics, car spare parts, workshop tools, statues, jewellery, paintings, toys, pets, vodka, honey, herbs, potent enhancing medicine, and what else there is to be found in Ukraine homes, attics, storage rooms, garages and so on. The flee market is situated outside on the streets of the Moldavanka district. A good starting point is Rozkydailivs’ka Street, Odessa. Open 8 AM to 6 PM in weekends.

Photos: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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Starokinnyy Flea Market is a huge sprawling Odessa flea market on the weekends with local vendors for second hand cloth, old weapons and military equipment, electronics, car spare parts, workshop tools, household items, statues, jewelry, paintings, toys, pets and what else there is to be found in Ukraine homes, attics, storage rooms, garages and so. The flee market is situated outside on the streets of the Moldavanka district. A good starting point is Rozkydailivs’ka Street, Odessa. Open 8 AM to 6 PM in weekends.

Photos: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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@suncats_od

The band Sun Cats came to our place in Odessa a Sunday afternoon. Four young guys in their early twenties. Sharing some one litter bottles of ciders and smoking cigarettes they told us about how it is to be an independent band in Ukraine. They meet in their teens in 2014 where two of them lived in the same small town. Soon they found out that they shared a passion for music and wanted to start a band. So they looked for a drummer and in the process they ended up being a band of four. After one year they had their first concert in the village’s local culture house playing cover numbers. Then they began making their own music.

“We are independent,” the Sun Cats tells proudly. “One hundred percent of what we do are paid for by our own money. In that way everything is under our own control.”

Today independent musicians in Ukraine have much better possibility of recording their own albums because they can do it in their home studios and then use social media and concerts to promote. It gives them as artists much more freedom to experiment. Sun Cats second album was made like this.

“Most important, what we’re trying to do is to create this special atmosphere that gives the feeling of being friendly and open with the people who listing to us, being down to earth.”

Now that they have begun to get a bigger audience, more recognition and people giving more feedback they are going deeper into the project.

“All this gives us energy and enthusiasm to go further. Not that we have any big dreams or goals. We just want to hang out together, and can’t stop playing music. We feel there are no limits for us, all possibilities is open.”

Advice from Sun Cats
1. Choose a good name. It has to be original!
2. Record Record Record!
3. Reflect of what you did, how you did it and how you should do it!

Sun Cats are …
Volvakov Valentine – lead-vocal, rhythm-guitar
George Sorokin – drums, backing-vocal
Yarysh Slava – bass-guitar
Ostapuk Maksym – lead-guitar

Photos: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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Ivan Herm. Film Director. Lives in Odessa. Has his studio at the former ship repair factory SRZ.
@iv_herm

Studied film in Poland for four years. After he finished film school he returned to Ukraine. Even that there is much more possibilities for him as a film director in Poland he feels that Ukraine speaks to him. When walking on the streets in Ukraine, seeing and listing to people he gets a inner refection that he did not experience in Poland even though he had learned to speak Polish.

“Maybe because Ukraine compared with Poland is a more chaotic place,” Ivan says. “In Poland things are formalised and controlled while in Ukraine things are uncontrolled, so people much easier goes to an extreme point. People have the last decades learned their lesson and know that they can’t plan a fucking thing. The only thing you can trust in is yourself and your chance to enjoy life. People therefore lives more day to day and don’t thinking about what will happen to them in five or ten years.”

While in Poland he stopped dreaming when he slept. However, the dreaming returned when he went back to Ukraine. Dreams is an important part of his work as an artist. He tries to follow the ideas he find in his dreams, and believe that instead of having just one fixed reality you exist somewhere else simultaneous e.g. in your dreams. The thing he likes about dreams, is that in your dreams you have to be involved whatever happens and whatever your situation is, you can’t just close your eyes or walk away. Instead you can learn more about yourself if you look closer to your dreams.

“There is some sort of energy going on there. Your dreams shows that your are not quite the person you think you are. They tell you that there is something unknown inside you and in the world around you. Dreams can surprise you, and take you on a journey of discovery which you can use to enrich both your art and your life.”

Photo: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen
 
 

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Dear God, calamity again! …
It was so peaceful, so serene;
We but began to break the chains
That bind our folk in slavery …
When halt! … Again the people’s blood
Is streaming! Like rapacious dogs
About a bone, the royal thugs
Are at each other’s throat again.

Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) was a famous Ukraine poet, writer, artist, public and political figure. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator. Shevchenko was politically convicted for explicitly promoting the independence of Ukraine, writing poems about how society was being suppressed by authorities, and ridiculing members of the Russian Imperial House. Contrary to other prominent member of the society who did not understand that their activity could led to the idea of the independent Ukraine, according to the secret police, Shevchenko was the champion of independence. Taras Shevchenko spent the last years of his life working in exile. Shevchenko died in Saint Petersburg on 10 March 1861 seven days before the reform that abolished the pesant from serfdom (a condition that in many ways was simalar to slavery) thought the Russian Empire.

At the entrance to the Taras Shevchenko Central Park of Culture and Recreation is a statue of the poet.

Poem: Taras Shevchenko (1854)
Translation: John Weir
Photo: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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Photos: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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We at Die Dada Welt believe that the world will become a better and more fun place as Bernie Sanders dared to challenge the political fashion and wear woolen mittens to Joe Biden’s inauguration.

After the inauguration Bernie Sanders explained Die Dada Welt how President Joe Biden’s government could unite people of different viewpoints if only everyone was allowed to wear each their individual woolen mittens.

“It is the weather and the well being of the world that is my primary concern – not political fashion,” Bernie Sanders stated before he left Capitol Hill to spread the message of the Woolen Mittens.

Photo: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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We at Die Dada Welt has a passionate fascination with the world around us and want to participate in everything that is of interest to us. In these days it is especially politics that preoccupy our minds, since Donald Trump finally is leaving as president. What is he up to, what is his plans, how do he perceives the world, what will he be doing in there future? To find some answers, we would like to invite you with us on a journey into Donald Trump’s world of thinking.

Mr. President … Mr. President … Mr. President, wake up …

… uh uh and then the world all of a sudden turned the other way around so I hit the ball all wrong … what can a man do about it … just because I’m the greatest president of the greatest country in the whole universe … no, I’m not God, only superhuman … cool and superb … it makes me so hungry to think about … stop it, Donald … don’t think … act … you have people to do the thinking for you … act and consume … that’s why we are put here on this wonderful consumable earth … to use it all up before someone else comes and takes it from us …

Mr. President … Mr …

… oh oh I know … I know … you don’t have to spell it out … not like that supreme guy and his prayer rug … Ali Kha-something praying all the time … every word that comes out of his mouth is like soul stuff send straight from God … eating it raw, they do … it is the way of their God … it’s not even fried or anything, as we Americans do … not like making a good American cheeseburger …

it would look funny … God’s words made of cheese … he speaks and people goes crazy jum-jum … five times a day … down on their knees … eating all the cheese that comes out of their supreme leaders mouth … some of it sticking to his beard … he wants the best stuf for himself, that sneaking Iranian guy hide the best so he can eat it while nobody watching … no wonder they grow them beards so long … now then, where is that cheeseburger … maybe I put it in my back pocket … I’m sure hungry … all that thinking … I’ll try a little prayer before I eat it, that should do it … the world will again turn my favorite way … to be hungry is sure a strange sort of feeling, it just somehow stick to you … like a cheeseburger turned upside-down … almost impossible to imagine, I’ll have to think twice … else the cheese would fall out … whooops down on the dirty earth it goes … I would eat it anyway, yes, you would Donald … down on your knees boy and stuff it all in … when nobody is watching I would … in case the other kids would mock me … I hear them quiet well, when they called me a clown behind my back … I just pretend I don’t … just laugh of it, Donald … such a bluff, Donald … I wonder if they have clowns or even a circus in Iran … they are always so serious … boring … that cheeseburger, where … the whole thing annoys me … the Ali Kha-guy should just know how difficult it is to be a world leader … making the decisions of who is cool and who to shoot … he has doo a really cool name … supreme leader … much better than plain old president … the supreme leader of the United States … I’ll give a truck load of cheeseburgers for that title … I wonder if he ever has tried eating a cheeseburger on his prayer rug, when God was not looking … muuunch … one mouthful … what a thrill … God knew in that moment that something important disappeared out of this world … cluck cluck the supreme guy continues to pray picking up the crumbs on the rug like a hungry chicken … then he lay down on his asking-for-divine-help-rug and sleeps like a little baby while God is watching over him … uh ah I miss my bed … eating cheeseburgers in bed Friday evening after a long tiresome week where the world as alway has been turning endlessly around me … me and my cheeseburger hidden away under the duvet … alone at last …

Mr. President … President, you need to sign here … no, not there … let me hold your hand, Mr President …

… well, it’s not that other people scares me … no president or supreme leader is a match for Donald … it can doo be lonesome being so mighty and powerful … only God understands … we even became friends today … after my early lunch in the House … no don’t be silly, Donald, it was not with God, but all the others, the ordinary people … just a little bit … I think, therefore we became friends … at least tiny friends … if it not was for that Putin mocking me all the time … always he tries to be greater than me … just because he once was a cool spy, and is riding on bears, and has this black killer belt and plays around with tigers … isn’t that enough, I ask … he even came late … as I meant nothing … me, the supreme president … only to annoy me of course … riding into the United States of America on this polar bear of his … but still late … blaming traffic jams in Alaska and … where was it … ha ha I have the thought tickling on my forehead … ah ha yes, now I know … S … I … B … I … R … I … A … A … A …. a long shot for such a small guy, I would say … as from another dimension … coming straight from a hunting trip, he boasted … meeting nature where it is best, he said … gives him the ability to see straight through the tough things in the world … straight through the human soul … like blowing holes in people with a bazooka so you can see what they are hiding … then he smiled … or maybe, he was laughing inside of me … I wished, I had one of those bazookas … another toy for Donald … and what about our sovereignty and individual rights … that has always been a city in Russia for them … and nature … what about it … him and his nature … thinking that just because I’m an American I don’t like being too close to my nature … but you thought wrong, my Russian friend … where do you think I play golf … in the American ghetto … way to much African jungle to me … we have to be civilized … that is what America stands for … something everyone else first have to learn … and then the smart-ass ruski says, that he has come to the Promised Land because he wants to show the world to his polar bear … adding, that it is not the Russians fault that the polar bears are almost extinct … not so smart, Mr. Windbag Putin … not cool at all … polar bears has to know their place in the world … everything else will make them sad … that’s what happens when you miss your home … uh uh things suddenly went complicated … this yin-yang fellow from China, always interfering … saying that the polar bear is not sad, it is depressed … knowing that it and its friends will soon be bye-bye … he has seen a similar reaction with his own peoples precious panda bears … and from his pocket the yin-yang fellow take forth a communist spring roll … tiny tiny … toothpick size … no wonder these yellow guys are so tiny small … it will make the polar bear happy, he says … he even has a slogan for it: Our spring rolls are created with the strength of the united Chinese people, the wisdom of our celebrated ancestors and the gratitude of our beloved children … talk talk talk always this yin-yang talk … if I hadn’t stepped on his small tiny feet he would have continued for hours … that’s the way small people are … talk talk talk is what they do to compensate … it makes me fell as there were billions of voices inside my head … everywhere … many many tiny yin-yang people … where do they all come from … hopefully they won’t all jump at once … my advisors says that the earth then would roll into the sun … pew not good not good … all those red haired people with such sensitive skin … think about them … think about your president … uh uh I could eat some hot sauce barbecue …

Mr. President, it’s time …

… I know I know … but first I have to solve the Chinese threat … it’s for sure an impressive weapon the Chinese has when mobilizing all those feet … if each Chinese were a golf ball they would reach around the world one and a half time … one jump and the world would be split in half … I have to talk with my advisors about this … they could help lift this heavy Chinese burden of my head … together we could carry it into my cabinet … close the door … dim the light … if it became public … the angry democrat thugs would not hesitate to make it a major issue … I would be forced to do something about it … make promises … quick … before they all find out what’s in the cabinet … I’ll tell them what ever slips through my mind … you must not think, Donald … if you don’t think of the Chinese … that will keep them away … d o … n o t … t h i n k … o f … t h e …

C h i n e s e … t h r e a t … strange so empty one’s head feels without all these Chinese talking and walking around in there … but not for long … I have to act … repress the craving … no, I do not want any Chinese food … find that cheeseburger … sniff it out … act before the democrats discover the truth … uh, but what can I do … they will soon overrun us … I need a bigger cabinet … but will it be big enough … even their yin-yang wall is bigger than mine … uh uh uh … I know … I know … I’m more funny … everything is soooo big in China except the Chinese them-self, they are so tiny tiny small … ha ha Donald, you’re the worlds funniest president … no no not now … there is no time to be funny, Donald … Donald, be serious … be for God sake the Chosen One … I will .. I promise … I once put my hand on the holy bible and swore an oath about it … Donald, that is not funny … look, I’ve just put on my Serious Face … I will think … yes, I know why they are so many over there in yin-yang land … they are compensating for their lack of size by the numbers … oh oh and I know just what to do … God has touch my ding-dong … the whole world, rise and give me your attention … Donald knows about his ding-dong because right now he’s touching it … I’ll have to ask Boeing … that splendid American company … what a PR-stunt … those air plane guys can’t turn us down … they owe us big time … we just need … let me calculate … uh uh ah oh uh ahhh right that sums up to sixty of their 747 plains … the idea is bullet-prof … golf balls … I repeat and spell it out just right: G O L F B A L L S … millions and millions of golf ball are flying before my eyes … all of them … the planes will be stuffed with golf balls … and just when all the Chinese get ready to jump … yes, they won’t get one foot to the ground … they will hear some wruuummm wruummmmm and as many golf balls as there are Chinese will fall down from the sky making them stumble and topple all gagging while the rest of the world will have so much hilarious fun … ha ha ha thanks to you, Donald, Supreme President of Everything … and we’ll put the whole show into the magic box and hand it over to the social media mafia … no, not the usual fake news … this will be the real reality stuff … with me … Your Favorite Supreme President pushing the Golf Ball Release Button … we will go super viral … no more need for my potency pills … billion of viewers … I’ll be even more popular … could be elected World Supreme Leader … who wants to be President of the United States of America when he can have the whole world … if I thought hard enough, I would for sure get it … my supreme slogan: Freedom is a free golf ball to everyone … good business opportunity … I’ll set up my own golf ball company … they will produce all the golf balls needed by the people … I’ll have my advisors to do the business plan … they will say we cut everything down to nothing … we only do the thinking … the lowest production costs would probably be in yin-yang land … well there they are again … can’t live with them or without them … they’ll even re-sell me the golf balls that fell from the sky above them … so smart … so cunning, these yin-yang people are … we Americans could for sure learn one or two things from them … I’ll take some of the smartest yin-yang people with me into my cabinet … they could be good advisors … I’ll have to sit outside myself … there would not be room enough for all of us … I’ll also have to feed them some of these tiny communist spring rolls … there should be enough for everyone in the cabinet … no good thoughts has ever come out of an empty stomach … I’ll have to order some more take-away from China …

Mr. President … it’s time to go!

Collage: Sila Yalazan
Text: Steen Andersen

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“Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving … Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.” – Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Video: Sila Yalazan

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Two little mermaid sisters are sitting on each their stone in Denmark and Turkey waiting for their beloved prince to come. But waiting for your prince can be quite boring, so to pass time they gossip about all the things that makes the world go around – in this episode: the weather and Donald Trump.

Voice: Sila Yalazan
Video, Animation & Text: Steen Andersen

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