Lecture Series: Doing Gender in Eastern European Art

Opening Lecture From the Revolution of Dignity to War: Critical Art Practices and Gender in Ukraine since 2013 
- Jessica Zychowicz (Kyiv)

Abstract: This presentation will provide a short history of protest and gender-based movements since 2005. Frameworks for understanding democracy, human rights, and feminism have been under threat among scholarly and artistic communities globally, yet Russia's war in Ukraine has brought into painful view the problems of disinformation, censorship, and authoritarianism with the most immediate and deadly consequences. This presentation will also include ways in which students and scholars can mobilize peer-networks of researchers, activists, and others to extend emergency aid, secure safety, and reduce harm.

Dr. Jessica Zychowicz is the Director of Fulbright Ukraine & IIE: Institute of International Education, Kyiv Office. She recently published her monograph, Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (University of Toronto Press 2020). The book has been reviewed in multiple languages and countries; it won the Honorable Mention for the Omelijan Pritsak Prize for Ukrainian Studies at ASEEES and the MLA Honorable Mention for the Scaglione Prize in Slavic Studies.The book will soon be published in Poland and in Ukraine. Dr. Zychowicz was a Research Fellow at the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs (2015-2016); a Visiting Scholar at Uppsala University in Sweden; the 2018-2021 Stasiuk Fellow of the University of Alberta in the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program (CUSP); and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She is a Board Member of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS), an Advisory Board member of H-Net H-Ukraine, and co-editor of the Forum for Race and Postcolonialism at Krytyka.com. She has given numerous public talks and authored many articles. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan and a degree in English literature from U.C. Berkeley. For more information: https://www.jes-zychowicz.com/.

Performing Queerness on Russian Stage: Grand Narratives of LGBTQ Theater under Putin and Their Discontents
- Tatiana Klepikova (Potsdam)

Abstract: The lecture will offer an overview of queer-themed performance in Russia, focusing mostly on the years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. It will outline the milestones that have shaped storytelling of queer lives over the past few decades and explore conversation about LGBTQ+ lives alongside two axes of thinking about grand narratives. First, it will explore broader narratives within which LGBTQ+ stories are told on stage. Second, it will examine hierarchies of stories within LGBTQ+ dramas: what are hegemonic stories in this group of narratives? What kinds of storytelling patterns dominate the field? Whose voices are harder to hear? Finally, the lecture will briefly address the position of queer drama in Russia since February 2022.

Tatiana Klepikova is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Culture and Literature of Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Potsdam. She studied Slavic, Anglophone, and Hispanic Literatures and Cultures in Yaroslavl and Passau and held a postdoctoral fellowship in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. Her work is focused on Russian queer theater and drama, gender and sexuality in Eastern Europe, publics and citizenship in the digital age, and digital body. She is co-editor of several edited collections, including Outside the “Comfort Zone”: Private and Public Spheres in Late Socialist Europe (De Gruyter, 2020) and editor and translator of Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021). Starting October 2022, she will lead a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism at the University of Regensburg, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Struggle for Visibility in Current Women Art Practices in Ukraine
- Natasha Chychasova (Kyiv)

Abstract: The problem of visibility is one of the key points of the Ukrainian women's contemporary art scene, for many reasons. On the one hand, it comes from the colonial policy of the Russian Empire (Maria Barshkirtseva) and of Soviet Union (Maria Prymachenko, Kateryna Bilokur, Tetyana Yablonska, Ada Rybachuk etc.) which oppressed the Ukrainian language for over a hundred years, appropriated or censored Ukrainian artistic voices and deprived them of the opportunity to make history. According to Kateryna Iakovlenko (2022), this produced a fragile representation of women artistic practices in general and the lack of Ukrainian written art history locally. On the other hand, Ukrainian women artists still face discrimination on social, institutional and individual levels (Tamara Zlobina, 2011) due to ignorance and fear. Despite the absence of support by institutions, the prejudices of traditional media, domestic and social violence, women art in Ukraine continues to develop interdisciplinary practices and to establish its horizontal structures. By confronting the patriarchal discourse and aestheticization of power, women art articulates its own vulnerability.
This variety of art practices was analyzed and represented in the articles by numerous of Ukrainian researchers and curators such as Tamara Zlobina, Oksana Briukhovetska, Olesia Kulchytska, Olesya Ostrovska-Luta, Olena Chervonik, Kateryna Iakovlenko and Tetiana Kochubynska. Today, Ukrainian women artists continue their struggle for being visible and to be heard both locally and internationally. After a brief historical background of the art process in Ukraine from the ХIX century until today, we will talk in detail about Ukrainian women art heritage and its wide palette of practices and genres.

Natasha Chychasova is an independent curator and researcher from Donetsk, based in Kyiv. She works on post-Soviet legacy and on strategies for its deconstruction, and on feminist art practices. Chychasova graduated with a master's program in art history from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Among her curator projects are: Finally, we're here! (Gorzow Velikopolsky, Poland, 2019); By memory (Odessa,Ukraine, 2019); This is not a museum, this is a plant (Dnipro, Ukraine, 2020), Non-Human trilogy (Kyiv, Ukraine, 2020); Letter To Mother (Kyiv, Ukraine, 2020). Her articles were published at You art, ARTSLOOKER, Syg.ma, SHUM magazine, Spaika media.

Russian Feminist Poetry: From Trauma to a Political Manifesto
- Yulia Podlubnova (Moscow)

Abstract: Yulia will talk about fempoetry in its state until February 24, 2022 but her optics is somehow different from the military solution, a catastrophe that affects our views and changes/transforms many cultural meanings and practices. Should Russian-language fempoetry be "abolished"? - the main question to which it is important to find an answer.

Yulia will also touch upon such questions:

• What is fempoetry? Its place in modern culture and Russian poetry. Women's poetry and fempoetry - is it one and the same?
• With what institutions is fempoetry connected? Management practices (non-state regulators of mechanisms).
• Political agenda in fempoetry. Problematization of violence. Antimilitarism and decolonialism.
• Femliterature and queerliterature. Corporality, transgression, trauma.

Does Russian-language fempoetry have the right to exist "after Auschwitz" in the conditions of a terrible war and a humanitarian catastrophe?

Yulia Podlubnova - literary critic, poetess. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Ural State University (Yekaterinburg), Candidate of Philological Sciences. Lecturer at the Ural Federal University, researcher at the Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Editor a number of poetic anthologies. Co-editor of the poetic series "InVersion" (Publishing House "The Cabinet Scientist", Yekaterinburg). Published in academic publications and magazines "The Ural", "The Air", "The New World", "The Znamya", on the portals "The Articulation" and F-Letter. Laureate of the awards of the magazine "Ural" and "Frantic Vissarion". Author of the book "Poetics of Feminism" (Moscow, 2021, together with Maria Bobyleva).

Is Feminism Born Between Highbrow and Lowbrow Art? The Testiminies from Belarus

- Irina Solomatina (Minsk) & Victoria Schmidt (Graz)

Abstract: We aim to map the space of contemporary women's fine arts in Belarus, to identify the location of feminist discursive practices and main trends, as well as the driving forces of their development. By deconstructing a set of interconnected binary oppositions, we question our basic ideas about the criteria for feminist art in Eastern Europe.

Is feminist art highbrow or lowbrow, who is the target group of feminist art in Belarus, who do female artists reach out to and why? How do mass genres such as a poster or an educational project for girls and art installations correlate with complex art forms?

Should feminist art be freed from the vestiges of an old-fashioned tradition, and is it true that feminist artists are not those who paint in oils, have a classical academic education, or belong to the Union of Artists, one of the remnants of the Soviet past?

What does "Belarusian artist" mean? Is there a clear line between insiders and outsiders? Who are these outsiders, artists who left Belarus: Those who paint for foreign audiences; or those non-Belarusians who make an artistic statement about Belarus?

Who are these “true feminists” in the visual arts? Who and how identifies an artist as a feminist or not? Is it possible to make a feminist statement without calling yourself a feminist? What role does the feminist agenda play among Belarusian artists?

What options are there to bring together subjectivity and agency of feminist artists in Belarus? What should be the response to the risk of imposing political leeway? How do artists overcome obstacles to practice their subjectivity? What collective action in favor of defending subjectivity works effectively, and what are the limits and opportunities to make this practice sustainable?

Irina Solomatina is one of the first cohort experts who started introducing a gender agenda into Belarusian civil movements.  Since the 2010 Irina initiated the creation of the annual gender stream of the International Congress of Belarusians (Kaunas, Lithuania) and led it until 2018. As part of this activity, she brought together female scholars from various post-socialist countries together with activists, which led to numerous joint projects aimed at promoting the gender agenda in various areas of public life in the post-Soviet space. Irina established several Internet-resources targeted with providing analytical and critical information for women who are interested in advancing their rights. In 2014, she organized an exhibition and workshops under the umbrella idea of ​​"Feminist Art Critique" and brought together a wide range of feminist activists from various post-Soviet countries. The book, based on these events, has become a source of inspiration for the next generation of feminist activists interested in combining art performance and political action. Another recent project worth mentioning is the educational book "She Was" (2019), aimed at informing a wide audience about Belarusian women who have contributed to the development and survival of humanity in different dimensions. Irina invited 16 artists who were free to choose one or another woman to represent her story in the book. Irina used a crowdfunding strategy to finance this project, which ensured the collective participation of the target audience from the very beginning of this project until its completion. Irina and her co-authors, artists, plan to continue this project, and it is one of the fields for practicing historical justice so demandable in contemporary Belarus.

Victoria Shmidt, a senior researcher of SOEGA, Institute of History, University of Graz, revises the role of race science in the history of Central Eastern Europe and especially its impact on the politics concerning minorities such as Roma and Jews. In the focus of her research are the inter-country cooperation among the racially minded scholars and public ramification of race science as well as its critique. Following the longue durée of race science as an agent and structure of nation-building, Victoria redefines the history of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Bulgaria in terms of internal colonialism and racializing Slavdom. Along with scientific expertise, she historicizes the impact of health films and conduct periodicals as main vehicles of dissemination of scientific argument in favor of nation-building.   Together with Irina, Victoria applies some of these approaches to the study of the current political and social situation in and around Belarus. In 2014-2015 they conducted survey among the female activists from different regions aimed  at indicating the options and limits for female activism in Belarus, the outputs were presented in the book “Female activism in Belarus: Invisible and untouchable”. Along with it, in co-authoring with Irina Victoria has written several texts targeted at critical revision of the options for political participation of women in contemporary Belarus.

SHVEMY sewing cooperative (Masha Lukianova, Tonya Melnyk, Olesya Panova, Anna Tereshkina) is an ukrainian-russian art-activist project created in 2015. Its field of working includes sewing and using of clothes and textiles as a medium for spreading the ideas. The aims of the project are: working out a model of non-hierarchical company with possibilities for all members for unalienated labor; building a network of similar cooperatives; actualizing the problems of exploitation and low wages in garment industry and of invisibility of women’s labor. We use the field of contemporary art to tell people about these issues.

Lecture-performance online:
The members of the SHVEMY will remember the work that was done by the collective, the banners that were created, workshops, performances, exhibitions, but also rejections, burnout, difficulties, friendship, while at the same time cooking the borscht. Borscht as a cultural product is also involved in wars: for example, the Russian media said that Ukrainians maliciously reject to share the borscht recipe. However, Ukrainians in different regions cook it each in their own way. Also, borscht has become a popular dish for charitable dinners, on the borders with European countries, in refugee centers, in field kitchens. In the process of cooking, we are going to conduct direct conversations and hear the voices of each of us.

Russian Feminism in the Last Decade: From Feminist Art Exhibitions to Anti-War
- Ella Rossman (London)

Abstract: In the 2010s, the Russian feminist movement was growing, despite the unpleasant political conditions. Like other opposition movements, Russian feminists couldn't get political representation; therefore, Russian feminists switched to different types of action, including political art. After the beginning of the new stage of the war in Ukraine, the Russian feminist movement turned into one of the active anti-war powers inside of Russia, using familiar art practices to protest against military aggression and Putin's dictatorship. The talk shows how the feminist art practices of the 2010s turned into a variety of anti-war actions and discuss the movement's future.

Ella Rossman is a doctoral student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. She was previously a researcher and a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities in Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Ella participated in Russian independent education and feminist initiatives. Her research is now focused on late Soviet girlhood; she is also interested in the history of gender studies and feminism in Russia. Ella's articles were published in Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, New Perspectives and Ab Imperio. She wrote for openDemocracy, Meduza, LeftEast and Riddle.

People and Plants in Wartime: Alevtina Kakhidze's Art Practice and the (Im)possibility of Dialogue
- Vitaly Chernetsky (Lawrence, Kansas)

Abstract: This talk offers an overview of the creative evolution of Alevtina Kahidze (b. 1973), one of Ukraine’s leading contemporary artists whose practice involves many varieties of visual, verbal, and performance work, exploring the ideas of consumption, gender, love, power, protest culture, experience of war, and plants and animals. A native of the Donbas region, she has been based in the village of Muzychi outside Kyiv since 2003. Kakhidze runs the Muzychi Expanded History Project, an ongoing on-site practice which includes a residency for international artists and an exploration of her concept of an adult garden. Her work about her mother, who stayed in the Russian-controlled territory in the Donbas after 2014 until her untimely death, became one of the most powerful artistic projects on the impact of the war on ordinary citizens. Kakhidze’s recent work, since the escalation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, includes a trenchant critique of what she sees as the failures of contemporary Russian artists to respond to the conflict in ethically and creatively constructive ways.

Vitaly Chernetsky is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and previously taught at Columbia, Northeastern, and Miami University (Ohio). He is the author of Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007; Ukrainian-language version, 2013) and of articles on modern and contemporary Slavic and East European literatures and cinema where he seeks to highlight cross-regional and cross-disciplinary contexts. A book in Ukrainian, Intersections and Breakthroughs: Ukrainian Literature and Cinema between the Global and the Local, is in press. He co-edited the anthology Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry (2000), a bilingual anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry, Letters from Ukraine (2016), and an annotated Ukrainian translation of Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (2007), and guest-edited a special issue on Ukraine for the film studies e-journal KinoKultura (2009). He has been translating poetry and prose into English since the mid-1990s; his translations include Yuri Andrukhovych’s novels The Moscoviad (2008) and Twelve Circles (2015) and a volume of his selected poems, Songs for a Dead Rooster (2018, with Ostap Kin), a book by the Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze, Zhdanovka (2006), and two children’s books by Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, Sound (2020) and Sight (2021). He is a past president of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (2009-2018) and the current first vice president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S.

Care Outside the Comfort Zone: The New Gender Politics of Performance Art in Russia

- Angelina Lucento (Moscow)

*Unfortunately, the following lecture is cancelled due to illness*

The Political Imagination of the Anti-War Resistance
- Alla Mitrofanova

The topic of this lecture is the theory of civil resistance discussed on the basis of two books: “Cyborg Nationalism. Ukrainian nationalism in the era of post-nationalism” by the Ukrainian philosopher Irina Zherebkina (co-authored with Sergey Zherebkin) and “Community after the Holocaust” by the Belarusian philosopher Olga Shparaga (about the ethical-political project after the catastrophe of the Second World War and its civil project of the future).

The current political and military catastrophe can be explained with the help of the theoretical debates and the split in philosophy of the last 30 years. On the one hand, the post-structuralist deconstruction of ideologies caused the effect of individual and multicultural liberation followed by the freedom of imagination with its orientation towards affects and myth-making (used not only by civil communities or artists, but also by dictators). On the other hand, it resulted in politics of care and social and cultural responsibility. The politics of dignity, equality of cultural experience, care and the material significance of bodies became new challenge during the war. It should be analyzed, how the gender difference in approaches to materiality and value is reproduced in this diversity, and why the project of the future falls into the blind spot of traditional approaches.

Alla Mitrofanova is an independent researcher and art critic, she was participant of numerous electronic art conferences of the early 1990s (ISEA, Next5min, DEAF, etc.), co-curator of the Stubnitz-electronic art project (St. Petersburg, 1994), co-founder of the Cyberfemin Club (St. Petersburg, 1994), and member of the Cyberfeminist International (Kassel, Documenta X, 1997). Currently, she studies and teaches contemporary philosophy, drawing on the experience of cultural diversity and technological bias of the new generation with its key concepts of contingency, technology, and corporality. She also teaches feminist theory: feminist epistemology, theory of culture and art. She has published numerous articles, and is currently working on a book on feminist philosophy.

© NH

Department of Slavic Literature, Institute of Slavic Studies of TUD

Professor Klavdia Smola

Dr. Tatiana Vaizer