The COJECO BluePrint Fellowship
All Projects
The Cheburashka Project
The Cheburashka Project examines a generation of Russian Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. as children in the late ’80s and early ’90s. This generation uniquely absorbed several worlds of influence during its formative years- the impact of a Soviet Russian background, the experience of immigration, an immersion into American culture, and a shift […]
Alice Kogan was born in Moscow and immigrated to the US at the age of three. Her family settled in New Jersey, where they were embraced by the local American Jewish community, an experience that eased her family’s transition and introduced them to Jewish customs. She went to Dartmouth College where she studied Economics and History and traveled to Western Ukraine on a Hillel trip called “Project Preservation,” an initiative in which a group of students from diverse backgrounds restore an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe. After college, Alice worked in strategy consulting, corporate strategy and finance. She is currently pursuing her MBA at Columbia Business School. Alice is interested in human behavior and experience and the way in which both art and science can express and explain it.
The Collective Effort: A Sartorial Journey
Documentary “The Collective Effort: A Sartorial Journey” follows the creation of a dress made from fabric hand-painted by Jewish youth, and its odyssey from a sketch, onto the cutting table, under the sewing machine, on the model’s body at a photo-shoot, to an auction to raise money for a Jewish cause. The documentary highlights the […]
Leonid Gurevich is an NYC-based fashion designer, editorial stylist, fashion photographer, and producer. Gurevich is best known for creating strong fashion looks with luxury flair, characterized by an extreme degree of individuality. His editorial work has appeared in numerous print publications including The New York Times, Martha Stewart Weddings, New York Weddings, US, and HELLO. Leonid Gurevich has styled fashion presentations, editorials, workshops, look-books, print ad campaigns for bridal and eyewear brands, a two-part ad campaign for NIKON Europe, and most recently, an ad campaign for the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism.
The Egypt In My Looking Glass: A Novella
Yuri Kruman’s BluePrint Fellowship is a book of short stories about Russian Jews who grew up as kids in New York and have become urbane American adults. Summary: Twenty-five years after their hellish emigration – thirty from their famous father’s exodus – a sister and her brothers hear his voice again. All three have long […]
Yuri Kruman is an American entrepreneur, author and blogger based in New York. Yuri has published two books of fiction, including a novel, “Returns and Exchanges” (2013, Author House) and novella, “The Egypt In My Looking Glass” (2014, Author House). He has made appearances at the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, JCC of Manhattan Salon Series, Russian American Cultural Center and Roger Smith Hotel Creative Program. He is a recipient of the UJA Shapiro Family and COJECO BluePrint Fellowships (2012-2013) and is also a member of the Asylum Arts International Jewish Artist community and the Jewish Book Council.
The Hidden Matzo Chronicles
The Hidden Matzo Chronicles is a culinary exploration of the Soviet Jewish Identity recounting the plight of Soviet Jews in an effort to retain their Jewish traditions through food, culminating in a cookbook, which will includes recipes and related personal stories. The event took place on June 23, 2015, at Loft 172, Brooklyn, NY. https://www.facebook.com/The-Hidden-Matzo-Chronicles-337091416453091/timeline/
Olga Benis was born in 1978 in Kharkov, Ukraine and immigrated to the Unites States with her family in 1991. While Olga had pursued a career in Accounting, she had always exhibited a creative sense. Her creativity expressed itself through cooking and it became her passion and outlet. This culinary journey aroused an insatiable desire to explore the world, connect to others and has led Olga to develop Holy Schmear – a small family venture of jam and spread. Food has become a central element in Olga’s family, connecting four generations, from her grandmother to her daughter.
The Mountain Jews Cuisine: a cookbook
The cuisine of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus is as rich and savory as their long history that preserves their unique culture and customs. This project seeks to introduce the history of Mountain Jews of the Caucasus through the gastronomical senses. The event will introduce the wider Jewish community to our history through food. […]
The Mountain Jews Cuisine: a cookbook
The cuisine of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus is as rich and savory as their long history that preserves their unique culture and customs. This project seeks to introduce the history of Mountain Jews of the Caucasus through the gastronomical senses. The event will introduce the wider Jewish community to our history through food. […]
The New Wave of Russian Jewish Cultural Production
Over the past 15 years, young Russian-speaking Jewish writers such as David Bezmozgis, Sana Krasikov, Gary Shteyngart, and Lara Vapnyar, have captured the attention of the American reading public. However, their work has not yet received the proper acknowledgement in the academic world and does not appear in college anthologies. For her community project, Anna […]
Anna Katsnelson immigrated to New York from Leningrad in 1989 when she was 10 year old. In 2011 Anna received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation “Ethnic Passing across the Jewish Literary Diaspora” is an interdisciplinary, transnational study that examines history, culture, and literature. The dissertation shows that sociological identification with the hegemonic group and nativist influences in the United States, Brazil, and the USSR, led a number of ethnically Jewish writers, to create a literature which was completely devoid of ethnic markers. In 2007-2008 Anna was a Fulbright IIE Scholar to Brazil. Anna teaches in the English Departments of the Lander College for Women and Medgar Evers College.
The Purim Spiel Shadow Theater
The unique staging of The Purim Spiel Shadow Theater gives a new life to the Jewish tradition of the Purim Spiel. The joyous holiday of Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews in ancient Persia thanks to the cleverness of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai who prevail over the King’s evil adviser Haman. This […]
Luba Proger has a background and education in fine arts, graphic design, and photography. Upon moving to the United States, Luba continued her studies and earned a degree in photography and graphic design from the Pratt Institute, NYC. Luba has been making photographs for over a decade. In recent years she got involved in curatorial work, where she conceived, and developed a number of arts, photography and theater projects. She currently resides and works in New York City.
Luba Proger and Leonid Khanin have been collaborating since 2004 under the name L2coLab. Their combined multidisciplinary education and experience in fine art, architecture and photography has allowed them to create multidisciplinary art and theater projects, addressing ideas of inner beauty, multiculturalism, and belonging. They are experimenting with immersive environments by use of space, innovative video and audio sampling techniques that stimulate viewers’ perception between themselves and their environment.
Leonid Khanin is an architect and an artist. He has been involved in a variety of art projects utilizing conceptual design and realization. His art projects combine set design, video and photography. Through the Blueprint Fellowship, in partnership with Luba Proger, Leonid created a unique theater experience through a staging of The Purim Spiel Shadow Theater which gave new life to the Jewish tradition of the Purim Spiel. The show was performed on an inflatable sphere and accompanied by new musical arrangements of well-known songs from Russian cartoons.
Luba Proger and Leonid Khanin have been collaborating since 2004 under the name L2coLab.
Their combined multidisciplinary education and experience in fine art, architecture and photography has allowed them to create multidisciplinary art and theater projects, addressing ideas of inner beauty, multiculturalism, and belonging. They are experimenting with immersive environments by use of space, innovative video and audio sampling techniques that stimulate viewers’ perception between themselves and their environment.
The Red Tent
Masha Pekurovsky project “The Red Tent” is a dance and video tribute to the feminine – An exploration of the Jewish female identity through the eyes of the artist. Building upon her passion for design, video art and tribal belly dance, Masha seeks to bring a multi-disciplinary performance experience to the audience.
Masha Pekurovsky was born in Kiev Ukraine. She was 9 years old when her family repatriated to Israel in the wave of 1990. Masha holds a Cum Laude Bachelors degree of Arch. from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. She immigrated to California in 2003 and has been calling New York “home” since 2007.
Her project “Passageways” is a dance and video tribute to the feminine – An exploration of the Jewish female identity through the eyes of the artist. Building upon her passion for design, video art and tribal belly dance, Masha seeks to bring a multi-disciplinary performance experience to the audience. Masha is a designer at HOK. She is also a member of the East Coast Tribal dance community and has been performing live video art under the stage name VJ nasha_masha.
The Russian and the Jew: Спасите наши души (A Play)
Staging of “The Russian and The Jew,” an original physical theater piece that explores anti-Semitism and misogyny through a female friendship in the Soviet Union in 1969 that underlines the eternal question of fidelity to oneself, to one’s partner, and to one’s country. Drawing on autobiographical material, this piece focuses on blending and re-visiting Russian […]
The Silenced Project
The Silenced Project is a multimedia and piano recital including documentary footage about forgotten composers of the Holocaust and Soviet era. It brings to light and celebrates the music of Jewish composers who lived, worked (and in many cases, died), under two most oppressive regimes in the mid 20th century Europe. As the reign of […]
Sergei Deych is a classical pianist holding a BA from the Manhattan School of Music with a scholarship from Eubie Blake Foundation, and an MA in Piano Performance from Aaron Copland School of Music . At both institutions he studied under renowned professor Nina Svetlanova. He was also a frequent participant in International Suolahti Piano Festival (Finland), where he worked with Finnish pianist Carlos Juris. He also collaborated with Elena Kushnerova based in Baden-Baden and in New York. Sergei’s main ambition as a musician is to expand the audience of classical music by reaching out to people of his generation. He is experimenting with new ways of delivering musical experience to the listeners and expending the performed repertoire.
Daniil Deych was born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. He moved to the United States at the age of 15, and currently lives and works out of New York City. Daniil has a Bachelors Degree in Film Studies and Physics from Queens College as well as a Certificate of Completion from Vancouver Film School. While in school, Daniil participated in number of projects, working with various formats, such as 16mm, DV and digital.
The Things We Carry
“The Things We Carry”: An evening of poetry and prose at Cornelia Street Cafe exploring the intangible baggage of immigration – superstitions, home remedies, and other peculiar beliefs – among Russian Jews. After the reading by BluePrint Fellow Olga Rukovets, the Yiddish Art Trio performed a special CD release preview for their upcoming album.
Olga Rukovets was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but immigrated to the US when crying was still her primary form of communication (and her fellow passengers were not happy about it). She is a first-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Florida. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Jelly Bucket, Brink Magazine, 5X5, Punchnel's,Mixed Fruit, Opium Magazine, The Fiddleback, and others.
The Wanderings of Vera, or Live Souls
A coming-of-age novel about immigration, finding and losing faith, loss, friendship, guilt, family, the American Dream, the wonderful, complicated, close-knit ultra-Orthodox community, and the other communities and connections we find along the way.
The Yiddish Old and New
With his project, Mark aims to capture in a photographic essay the new Yiddish culture and revival in New York; to relate it to its roots in the older Yiddish speakers, and to document how this cultural gift is being passed on to the younger generations. Mark Gurevich is a New York-based photographer whose work has […]
Mark is a New York-based photographer whose work has focused on narrative portraits and documenting community experiences through photography. Born in Moscow, Russia, Mark is two generations away from the small Yiddish-speaking shtetl in Belorus where his grandfather grew up. When not shooting portraits, Mark is a corporate attorney at a New York law firm.
This Side of the Sea
An animated film that will connect multiple generations through their stories, using multiple animated mediums and incorporating traditional Jewish and Russian art motifs as well as real life anecdotes and family stories. “A young woman struggles with understanding her inherited fears, and moving through urban America as a Jew, as current events threaten to drown […]
