Displaying Ukraine, Negotiating Europe: An Unexpected “Success Story” at the Eurovision Song Contest
Displaying Ukraine, Negotiating Europe: An Unexpected “Success Story” at the Eurovision Song Contest

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines two decades of Ukraine’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), charting the trajectory from “no place” at the periphery to a “success story” and a safe bet at the ESC. Departing from the positionality of a “double subaltern” in a blind zone between the West and Russia, it sought visibility and recognition to validate its claims to sovereignty and Europeanness. Moving beyond the commercial logic of accessing the pan-European music market, it prioritized elevating its geocultural status by disentangling from the Russian orbit, embedding itself in the European cultural space, and contributing to it. The empirical basis of the research is the author’s fieldwork at the 2024 ESC in Malmö, where successful strategies of artistic performances and Ukraine’s national projections, as perceived by external observers, were identified. Ukraine has carved out its distinct cultural profile at the ESC as “making folk cool and modern”: bridging and blending authentic musical traditions with contemporary aesthetics, it has advanced to the position of a subversive hegemon, simultaneously mimicked and contested by others.

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