 Okay, I guess we'll start. Welcome to day two of the Art Prospect Festival and the Arts Link Assembly. I'm Susan Katz, Program Director of CC Arts Link and I'm based in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Art Prospect Festival has taken place for the first time this year on site and online in 23 cities in 13 countries with projects by over 50 artists. We hope that you'll take a look at the projects both online and in person over the next three days. You can find the full festival program at ArtProspect.org. Today's discussion focuses on social practice art in 10 post-Soviet countries. Last year we commissioned and published a major survey of the work of social practice artists in the Art Prospect Network countries, which you can download in English or Russian from the CC Arts Link website. We're delighted the curator and theorist, Viktor Miziano, will facilitate this conversation, looking at social practice in these countries in the light of the pandemic, political chaos, and the disturbing outbreak of regional complex. If you have any questions during the conversation, please type your questions into the question and answer box at the bottom of the screen. Also, the conversation will be taking place in English and Russian and you can choose which language you would like to listen to at the bottom of the screen. So I'll turn it over now to Viktor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank you for delivering me such an honorary remission to moderate this discussion. And before to write an introduction to the wonderful book you build up, and thank you for inviting such a wonderful bouquet of people with whom we have to discuss today. Welcome to everybody. We'll switch into Russian then, since the majority of the participants of today's discussion would feel probably more natural. That will react in English, but as far as I understand, he'll be listening to us in Russian and participate in the discussion in Russian. So he's comfortable with the language as well. Fine. We've been discussing with Susan for quite a while. How do we build up today's discussion? The publication is amazing. I mean, it's the first book, the first publication that has put together this post-Soviet experience from a non-made stream angle. I'm talking about social involvement art, socially engaged art, socially engaged practices, and this is how we're going to call it today. And while talking about it, Susan and I decided that the book has really happened. It describes events of the period until 2018. So while the book was being prepared, while the texts were written, of course they couldn't cover the last two years, because I mean, two years for our region, especially the last couple of months, is a long period of time. A lot has happened over this time, both in our societies and in art and a lot of turning points. We could see a lot of turning points in the lives of the people who are representing the scene of this post-Soviet environment. It used to be called post-Soviet environment, but I guess now we don't really have the grounds to use this term, but we all understand what areas, what territories are we talking about. So we realized that we should probably discuss, in our discussion, probably use our latest days experience. Of course, I mean, the focus of our attention should be connected to the book and would keep this experience of socially engaged art in mind. In the letter that I wrote to you a couple of days ago, I sent you a letter and my first question, the first question I suggested we should discuss today, was inspired by a talk I had with Antonina Stepur. Anna knows her very well and Anna has mentioned her in her text. And some of you might also know her. She's a wonderful young poet and critic. And this talk was motivated by her text that is going to be published in a magazine where I'm an editor. And this text describes an experience of socially engaged art. And she mentioned that the situation in Minsk among Minsk artists who are now really engaged in this social and political process in the country. There's somehow at a loss. And I mean their art, they feel their art powerless facing those events. And these events, the element of these events is larger, the inventive powers, the strategies that members of this protest create to make their protest gestures and their protest actions more efficient. And the measures, the tools they use are very artistic, very artistically expressive. And the artists are the artists are lagging behind political activists. And there are hundreds of thousands of political activists there. I guess Jevo has probably gone through a similar experience when Yerevan was facing similar protests. And maybe the events that are happening now in Armenia with artists confronted by a war. A war that includes, that penetrates your everyday world might be a very interesting experience. I'm also familiar with a similar experience. Those of you who remember 1990s, the first decade after the Soviet Union collapsed when everything was happening so fast. And the reality after a very long static stagnation period, the reality became so performative, so fast changing that the artistic world felt helpless, confronted by a very artistic reality. I remember that I was editing a book that is being published in English and I realized I was writing about exactly the same thing in the 1990s. The art was feeling powerless, was feeling weak facing this powerful reality. The reality was more expressive than the art that was created, is created during such periods. So I'm referring to social and political experience, but I also refer to socially engaged art experience. What does this experience mean? Does it mean that socially engaged art has its own limits? Maybe there are limits that exceed its capabilities? Because an artist who is not socially engaged, who is autonomous, an artist that exists, who works in autonomous art, despite all historical obstacles, this artist is able to manifest something politically, is able to go to the frontline, but as a citizen. As a person, and the art that this person is creating, it will be different, and there won't be any conflict. And hence the question, what are we dealing here with? Are we talking about the limits, limitations of socially engaged art, or am I wrong? This is something I want to hear from you, maybe something you've noticed, something you've experienced. Since Minsk made me think about it, maybe Anna could start. Good evening. Thank you very much for this wonderful introduction. To be honest, it is very complex, and all of us, and now I'm not only talking about the art community, I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people. We are now facing a situation we were never prepared for. We understand that for the last 26 years in my country, we were enduring very tough conditions, but what's been going on over the past two and a half months in our country is on one hand something that makes us very happy, because it's been for the first time we can be talking about a nation being formed, a civil society being formed, and this grassroots movement, and a peaceful protest. If we're talking about the art community and what's happening in art community, we're facing this global challenge on one hand. In mid-August, it became obvious that we need to make statements, we need to reflect on what's going on together with our colleagues and artists. On the other hand, we had a very clear understanding that people are not... The place where people should be is not a white cube, it's not a gallery, people should go outside into public spaces, and we've been discussing it with artists, with curators, how creative community, how artists could be useful, not only in terms of helping each other, but also we shouldn't forget about the pandemic, which also affects what has complicated our life. So we decided, while discussing it, we decided, realized we cannot influence artists' activities. A lot of artists, apart from being citizens, they also did various action practices in the streets. Well, the limit we saw, our limitations, they have to do with gallery space. We gave our galleries, our galleries became a space of communal creative process. We together with our artists, we put up a number of paintings, a number of spaces to make drafts. We had a lot of people joining us, and the space of joint experience, of joint creative experience, experiencing new reality in Belarus, a space where people could exchange opinions, and it could have become a place of collective joint meditation, but we had to wrap up for other reasons. We are now talking, and one of the main partners of the gallery is now in prison, and he's been in prison for a month and a half. So we have entered a totally different reality, and none of us have been prepared for it. We never knew it. Speaking of limitations and remembering the book, everything has really changed since the time I've been writing for the book. I remember writing how difficult it is to bring people in, to engage people, to solve some social problems, some social challenges, or to create something together or create local communities. And we faced a lot of challenges, how to make those projects open and accessible and understood by people. Now we are facing a unique situation when we have district chats, we have districts and groups creating their own symbols, holding concerts and meetings. And I'm very happy to see a situation where people are the leaders, there are no co-ordinates, there are no artists who would suggest an agenda, or the ideas are generated in a joint discussion. And speaking of limitations, it's not easy to speak about limits. Over the past two months we are living in a country with no limits, whatever you make of it. And we don't know if there is a bottom to it, I mean if we are falling down and speaking of limits as a gallery owner and a manager and a citizen, I have to face these challenges every day. So I don't know if there are any limits. Well, thank you Anna. Listening to you I remembered the Moscow protests of 2011-2012. And I remember how some socially engaged artists act during those huge rallies in Moscow. These artists decided not to conduct their own projects, but being surrounded by those thousands of people, they started to have workshops, teaching people how do you make, how do you work with words, how do you work with slogans, how do you put up a slogan. So they somehow decided to hand over their creative force, make it serve the people, make it serve the masses. Those thousands and thousands of people, they taught people how to make propaganda stuff. And I think it's a good illustration to the issue we're talking about. I've mentioned Yeva as well in my first question. Maybe Yeva could share her own experiences. I'm sorry, I forgot to unmute myself. I'm very happy to see everyone, to see and hear everyone. And it's a pity that we're meeting under such circumstances. But on the other hand, we can exchange opinions and thoughts. And that could be useful. Victor mentioned 1990s. I probably want to address that period and maybe compare. In 1990s we also had a war. Before we had an earthquake and we had earthquake, perestroika and a war that lasted four years. And when I'm comparing, an artist used to be very active. They were very active. And the first big exhibitions, we had them then. And this 90s generation emerged. And I'm trying to understand and to compare. And the reason why some artists started to loss is this enormous information flow we are receiving through the internet. During the previous war, we knew there was a war going on, but it was, you know, abstract in a way. Now we know all the details. We keep watching everything. We know everything that's going on. So getting this information flow every day, you cannot abstract yourself from this flow and focus on art. It's not easy during this pandemic, which also, you know, came suddenly. This pandemic gave us a choice to create some kind of space and we could focus on what we're doing. We didn't have to rush around. We didn't have to, you know, have meetings every day, conferences, exhibitions. You suddenly had this time and it's a plus. It's a positive side of this pandemic. You can do something useful. You can read. You can research. So you can, you know, do your creative work. But during a war, this is impossible because you're all focused. You're all concentrated on the events that are happening. I would also like to draw an example of Yerevan being biennial. We launched it in May and this biennial was created during this break, this short break, when artists got this short term opportunity and initiate biennial. Well, Victor, you know that this idea has been discussed for years and we've tried to organize it and some institutions were also part of it, but it never came to life. It was never actually launched. But all of a sudden, during the pandemic, the artists finally decided to put it together with no institutions, with no financial support. We put together this biennial and it's a collective action. It's still going on. And regardless of the fact we had this online regime, this online setting, we decided to launch this biennial in a studio, in a gallery. And of course, I mean, people came. They would be careful about their behavior and, you know, have masks and everything. Socially engaged art in our region has always been relevant. We can talk about, I don't know whether we can talk about limits or not, but it always manifests itself this way or another. We're living in a very unstable area and this instability, on the other hand, always brings in new opportunities, introduces new opportunities. And I don't think limitations is something we should be talking about here or whether they start. And in your introduction, you're also talking about these things coming into our lives. Today we now experience that life and art are one and the same. And I don't think it would be easy to separate one from another. Thank you very much. Thank you, Eva. This ideal of life being inseparable from art, I think it penetrates the avant-garde period and it has always been seen as an ideal that cannot be reached. But now in the 21st century we see this ideal being realized in life and we don't even know whether we should be happy about it or whether we should be mourning it. Any other ideas or maybe you would like to contradict something that has been said. Maybe I'll try. Can you hear me? Oh, cool. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us. And I would like to say something short, because as you can see, I've always had this problem that I feel that artistic activity is too weak. And in general, it's not pleasant. There is such a common criticism from other activists that they say, what are you doing with your nonsense? There are real things. And therefore, I always felt my weakness and art in my position. And it seemed to me that in some paradoxical way, even despite the fact that our activity may not be noticeable and have no social resonance, although our activity is not, might not be, we know. We construct new worlds, we start to work with the working of new worlds. It may sound funny, but in some paradoxical way, it may at some point become important. And this might become very important at a certain moment in time. And today, we are not always able to assess or to evaluate how it is that they work in. Yes, there was a meeting, I just asked this question. And you know, they said that they don't feel useless in this situation. Among the answers, there were such points, for example, as the inclusion of some international networks. Because this is an art, but very international. And through a national network, you can achieve a lot of resonance and a lot of support from the international community, including from international communities and institutions. Well, besides, they talked a little bit about the fact that there are different levels of temporality. There is what you need to do here and now, and the fact that it has happened here and there. It's not artistic. Well, some kind of art that didn't have this activity, it still has the horizon of today's events. And what is happening now comes from the current moment. While there is also temporality, more distant and less obvious opinions in which artists can think and draw new horizons, which may not be today, but tomorrow will be demanded. And besides that, there is a question that we think that social-related artists make some social projects, but when the whole society suddenly mobilizes for the creation of a super-collective project, a revolution or something, it seems that artists took away from it this prerogative of being a leader or an author or an initiator of this project. But in my opinion, it's great if this initiative leaves the artist and goes to, for example, a collective, a yard or a street. And you don't need to think that, well, now I don't need to be, I need to think that no, I will also join. And my competencies, because in this situation, in general mobilization, different competencies are required. And at some point they can also be required on the street. In this, for example, in this wonderful example that you, Victor, translated our operatives. So it seems to me that it's, in general, well, that's it. I'm very curious to this wonderful example of slogans. That you have mentioned. Thank you, my dear. I think it was, it was very, very to the point and it takes me further on. Maybe Data wants to add something. Go ahead. I think I'm just going to continue this previous point and just add something that I think is very important when we talk about socially engaged art or community-based art or whichever terms we use. It's not a place to discuss it right now, but, and I'm not talking, of course, about like, in context where you, what Eva was referring to, where, you know, like it's other things become actual. But what I think is a lot of times, and it's in a way a paradox too, since we're talking about a lot of paradoxes and the publication too, is that a lot of times people, the question itself, like it's formulated, even like this, or the question, we're asked, so what does this change? Like the change from the artwork, from the project is expected right away, which is not a fair thing to ask. Which all the things that, you know, we are addressing that we are working on are of course those that bother us and we want them to change and to become better. But I don't think that it is, yeah, we can't really look at what it changes right away. We need a little bit of time and we need a little bit of distance and this is what connects to the previous point, I think, is that then, you know, like we consider art and artists and curators and people engaged in this kind of practice is to be part of the society of doing things together. And then, you know, like we play and we play a little role in this big mosaic of things that are happening, but this is kind of like expectation that the artwork is dealing with certain topic, which most of the time is very problematical and complex and rooted in a lot of things, to think that, you know, what change we will see right after the project ends is just, yeah, I think this is not the right perspective to look at these things. Thank you very much. Thank you very much that I think it was a very important point you made. Well, as I have written to you in my letter, I wanted to discuss another issue. An issue of a work of art, what and how could we define a work, or as we now call it a practice, like social science experts do, how do we define it today? Does it recognize itself as a work of art? To what extent can we call a person that is performing this practice? To what extent can we call him or her an artist with this traditional view of an artist that we used to have for the image of an artist we had when we were trained or educated? And I also wanted to emphasize that the Minsk protests today, they don't have leaders, and it's a leaderless protest. We know certain circumstances that created this situation, but it's not only about those circumstances, art without an author. This is something we in our artistic world have talked about a lot, and this socially engaged activist art has always been manifestly promoting this art without an artist. This is something that artists have witnessed in their professional experience. It was a symptom to a large extent. We are probably shifting towards a new world, a new social-political situation, where leadership that used to be a habitual thing, and this leadership has been deconstructed and is reduced. I'll be cautious in saying that it is being reduced to a minimum, and hence my question, and this is something that Ruth has already mentioned, and that has also prompted me to turn our discussion into this direction. What is a work of socially engaged and activist art? What kind of authorship can we talk about? What kind of authorship has emerged as a result of this practice? How could we describe this artistic subjectivity that realizes itself in this practice? How does it refer to the traditional or even modern or contemporary circumstances? How does it relate to the definitive categories, categories definitive for the artistic process? Temporality has been mentioned. I'm going slightly further and maybe would like to introduce this argument that brings us closer to the answer to this question. I'm often asked for a comment. They often ask me for a comment. I'm in media. When public opinion sees or witnesses some very colorful actions and they ask me to comment whether it is a work of art or not. However, these gestures are often performed by someone who is not yet established in this artistic scene, in this artistic world. I'm talking about Pussy Riot. I'm talking about Pavlensky. These people have gained huge media support and in such cases I always feel too temporality. I cannot tell you right now because this is a single event that has not yet become a part of an artistic biography of this artistic or creative subject. I cannot tell you right now whether it is political activism, which is very artistic or is it something done by an artist. We have to wait and see what this person does next and we need to understand how this action becomes part of an artist's biography. Only then this system of actions that organizes this person's creative being gains temporality, biographical temporality. And us critics, art theorists, the artist's contemporaries or followers might talk or might say whether we are dealing with an author, with an artist, whether we are dealing with a work of art. As part of the artist's biography and to what extent these very actions or a number of actions can be viewed as works of art. I'm giving the word to you, my dear panelists, who wants to say something. Maria, we haven't heard from you. Maybe you could say something. Yes, I can say something a little bit ahead. This might be an answer to your fourth question, which you have written to me. How do you sense that we are now thinking about how do we see today whether it has been written. And this question about authorship is very interesting, because in Kazakhstan there are also a few cases in which we have a couple of cases that are far out as artists and artists, and just as citizens of their country. After we had the Prime Minister, we also had a few powerful protests, and there was a famous slogan that said, if you don't run away from truth, and it seemed to me, well, this slogan was written during the marathon, and it had a very big resonance, because it became a symbol of the Kazakh spring, the Kazakh spring. And this slogan was invented as we know by artists and activists, but the authorship was not announced, because some of the people who turned this slogan were arrested. And I think, on the one hand, the artist has his own identity, and he can decide for himself how much of his work he wants to do, and he wants to postulate and be proud of his work, and on the other hand, there is a question of security, and how much security he has from the fact that his work has an author. In our realities, in Kazakhstan, I think in Minsk, in Armenia, everything is a little different, but in Kazakh realities, this authorship is a kind of tension with some kind of danger, which threatens the artist as an author, as some kind of danger, some kind of manifestation, some kind of manifest statement. But as far as I know, in Minsk, now, artists are organizing different workshops and lectures which somehow attract people and unite them. So, well, that's my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I get it. Maybe somebody could tune in and speak about authorship. Yeah, I think, like, what is important and interesting for me here is that, I mean, no matter what we're talking as much, you know, the author is not present and this kind of things, it's a certain framework or initiative of this kind of project, it always comes from an author, you know, an artist, curator, a collective, a group of people, et cetera, et cetera, right? And today we see even more connection of, you know, people from the arts in and from other spheres that want to collaborate on this. But what I think is important and there's been a lot of discussion already for decades, maybe, for the character of this kind of project. And a lot of times, you know, this, the problem that has been mentioned a few times, I think, is the openness or the process-based character of this kind of works. And I think, like, maybe like I come from the background of anthropology, so I look at it maybe also a little bit differently. But what is vital in this case is that when you start this, of course, we don't know exactly what is going to be, how it's going to continue. If we knew it would have been a very different type of work and probably we wouldn't even start in the first place. But it's, and I understand it might be connected with a lot of things such as funding or, you know, certain timeframes that we need to follow, et cetera. But I think this openness and the possibility of, you know, things changing over process is very important to consider, at least in, broadly speaking, socially engaged art practices that we're talking about. Because then, you know, like, we're able, then we're able to maybe step down a little bit. But like, and maybe that's when we disappear, so to say, as authors or like artists disappear or, you know, whoever's initiating it, let's say like this. But, you know, then I think I see this possibility of, you know, things changing if we follow the process. And it's not an easy process. It's very hard. And I've struggled with it myself. And but I think this is important to consider that, like, there is an author. I mean, there is a certain initiative, you know, where it's all coming from. And to say that there is no author at all. It's just, I think, like, we should acknowledge where it comes from. But like, we should be able to see where it goes and integrate as much as possible from the way and listen to others and change our, you know, perception in mind. And I know, again, this sounds very utopian and very broad and general. But I think, like, as an approach, this is more fair to do in this kind of things. And then if we apply this to other things, such as, you know, like protests and artists' involvement in it, maybe then there is more possibilities of collaboration between if we divide activists and artists, which often has been the case. And then, but again, I'm speaking about when this is possible and what kind of protest we're talking about. There could be very different contexts. A lot of times, there's been like, and this was also mentioned before, that, you know, like, oh, your artistic thing, or like, you are activists, and then we see division even within sometimes that, you know, people working on a certain topic, and there's like always this argument that this topic is more important than this topic, but it all of course depends on, you know, like, who is speaking about this, and I don't think, you know, like, I think there's more possibilities of merging if we have this open interpretative or, you know, process-based approach from the beginning. That's what I wanted to add about the authorship note that we were discussing. Yes, I totally agree, and I do agree. Both the authorship and the work of art cannot be reduced to a zero. They do not disappear. In the process, certain subjects, certain persons are able to let it go through them. We know that a subject is relational. We know that every subjectivity exists where various subjectiveness meets. And on the crossroads of the actions coming from other subjects, we know it from the experience of cultural theory of the last several decades. But of course, we have figures, we have subjects, we have events that possess certain specific referent meaning. And another point I wanted to make, that to a large extent, when we're trying to distance ourselves from the idea of an over of a work of art, and we use the word work instead of over, I mean, we see it both in English and in other languages, I think that it is to a large extent an attempt to distance ourselves from an official market representative institutional system of art that need mega figures created and constructed or mega works of art. That circulate on a media market, functioning this system of art, this art system. But in this new dimension, both authorship and the work of art does remain. And this is something we exist for in this artistic world. Anna, Eva, anything Anna or Eva would like to say, it would be great to hear you. Anna, I think you've been ready to say something. One of the arguments that was mentioned in the text is a process of how we work and my colleagues have mentioned about collaboration between activists and artists and representatives of NGOs. There's this demand and necessity coming from the civil society. I mean, activist groups, or people who pre represent various movements like people who represent fundamental movements or human rights movements. Addressing the address art artists community for a piece of advice, how to make the message more targeted. Over the past few months, we have, we had meetings with our colleagues from NGOs. And I, we've been discussing, you know, the place of an artist, whether an artist is excluded from life and whether maybe these, these works of art are not that important now. And I can tell you that in our Belarus situation, they become even more important, I guess. And I'm glad that the authorship formats are now not the main issue we're discussing. I wanted to tell you about, tell you about a cultural protest or cult protest project that unites artists from Belarus and from abroad. It's a platform and everybody wants, can download a piece of protest art. And eventually become an author of this work, make it into a poster and place it in some public space. And even the author's name on this website, it somehow goes into a shade. I mean, the shadow, it disappears. And it's very important in terms of safety. It is a challenge. And like my, my every day, my workday or my, my weekend begins with a piece of news. Somebody has been detained, you know, for a day or for a week. The best people in our country are now being detained. And they're spending their 10 or 15 days in prison. And it's an endless flow. It's, it keeps going on. And authorship, I don't think it's a burning issue now. Many of us have seen this story of the three women leaders of this protest movement. They were heads of three of the election headquarters. And they were showing symbols and they were showing three symbols, victory, heart and fight. So visualizing comes from a Belarusian artist who became a symbol of resistance in today's Belarus. And we have many similar examples. So I think that in global political and social turmoil, authorship is the last thing an artist would remind everybody of. We have different values at stake. Yevha, would you like to add something? Our friends have mentioned the things I could have mentioned as well. The way you asked the question, it is as if you're asking whether these works of art can be part of an anthology or, you know, annals of art. But a lot of artists today are not really eager to have their works. Of course we have this neoliberal reality where we have career artists and curators. I'm not trying to offend anyone. Well, this is their way of life. This is something they want. They want to be part of this anthology. But there's a different reality. And there are people who are not after it. And in this case it becomes less important. Authorship becomes less important. You start thinking of creating things in a collective. You become part of the society, of a community. You forget that you're an artist. You're a citizen of your country and you're doing whatever you can together with other people, simultaneously with other people. And I think this anthology issue is not relevant in the situations we find ourselves in today. Yes, I understand you very well. And I understand that you feel it very acutely. Maybe you don't always realize it, but this is what I have noticed. That when we change temporality, when we both the work of art and an artist become conceptualized or become part of an anthology, as you have said, this is at least how I see it. Well, another story that I find very important in terms of this current historical period and what has become important over the past few years. Maria and Ruth are now in Vienna. And from what Maria has said, I have understood, I think, why they're in Vienna now. I know that if I have to give an example, giving a Belarusian example, Barysyonok Olga Sosnovskaya, an amazing, amazing defendants of the Minsk artistic charges and hearings. There's somewhere next to Maria and Ruth. I'm not talking from Moscow with you either. So migration moving around is a normal thing, is a regular thing. It is one of the most obvious features of our today's neoliberal era, this enhanced migration. And sometimes it has some reasons behind it that make people oof despite their own wish. So the circumstances make people leave their habitat, they make them move to other places and we know a lot of examples. Hence the question, how does it influence a situation in our countries, in our contexts, how does it influence our local situation? If we're focusing on socially engaged art, it is per definition rooted in context. It lives from context, it feeds from context. It is a situational reaction to context. If you don't feel the context, you can't make a precise move or a gesture, because this gesture is always contextual. We know a lot of examples when people were uprooted, found themselves in the new context. And again, we might be talking about very talented, very experienced authors, experienced activists of an art scene, but finding themselves in a new context, not feeling it and acting too fast. And we know a number of artists who came to a new context and wanted to perform some gestures, repeating their habitual gestures and they realized that their gestures, their moves were not as precise as they were. This new context gives a different reading. They expect a different intonation, a different formula, a different gesture from an artist. And this is where my question comes. How do we act in this situation? How do we keep this socially engaged art effective? How do we keep in touch with the context when no longer in, when you're forced to keep a spatial distance from your context? And how do you find yourself in a new context and whether it is needed at all? Data is a cultural anthropologist and he might give us a very competent comment. I think it is a very cultural anthropology story, a case, and Maria and Ruth have their personal experience to share. You've met artists from Belarus and you know Olga Alekseenko and others, activists from art scenes of our countries. What do you see? What are you experiencing? How do you see? How do you view your career? How people from our countries behave? What do they do? What actions do they take? Well, it's a huge question. Well, it's an actual, it's a question, it's a question to you. Well, subjectively I see it as a question, you know, a life question, life defining question. I could go on hours, but to be brief, the first thing I think of is in Almata we've built uprooted and isolated from what is going on in Kazakhstan. Masha doesn't agree, but I often felt being distanced. And this is why we started to talk about Creole Center and about, you know, cosmopolitan perspective, something I always had in my head. I didn't have a feeling that I'm part of a nation or some local context. But my imagination or, well, always had something to do with, well, I always imagined being, you know, a citizen of a world, of the world. And this is why we've always said that our Creole Center is a translocal institution. And we were always interested in this, in this translocality idea, how you can be a part of many places, many locations. When we, when we moved, when we moved to a different country, you face a lot of difficulties and you've numbered them. It's not easy. The number of performances we did here, they proved, they did prove that we often missed the point. And it might be seen as an advantage as well, because the artists that are more international that move around, they have more options to experiment with various contexts. And even if they fail, that it gives you a unique experience you can never get in your own country. And in the feminist circles, in the artistic circles, there's a discussion about what does it mean to be an international artist. What does it mean to talk about cosmopolitanism and cosmopolicy? How do we see borders between national states? How do we see local communities? How can we internationalize local communities? I see it as a utopian, but as a very topical goal. How can we bring together local communities and networks? How can we unite them over continents and countries and people who can move around? They have a privilege and they are meant to experiment. I will also mention Alex and Oga, now in Minsk, by the way, you mentioned them, but they're now in Minsk. And it's a privilege that despite the pandemic, they felt it important to be in their own country and to help. I don't feel I'm uprooted or I don't feel, maybe we have a different view of it, we have different understanding. And last summer, when, it doesn't mean we never go back. We arranged a big exhibition that was dedicated to art as text and art of text, and we were working with young artists, artists that deny authorship. The artists are working on this paradigm shift in a hybrid situation. When an artist does not call him or herself an artist, they are activists. They don't make, they don't see difference between socially engaged art and activism. I think we're managing to exist between these two contexts and in both contexts. I mean, we take part in both. If I'm getting you right, we have the following picture. There's always an opportunity to exist between contexts. You can recreate yourself in a new context and go back and keep contact, close contact, and learn this new context through mistakes and failures. And through failures, start to understand this context better and understand yourself better through your failures, getting used to things you thought strange about yourself, but you're understood better. And then you can create new trans-territorial network context, context where you find yourselves, where you find people who in turn are themselves parts of various geographical and local contexts. This is something I figured out from what you've been saying. Maybe first three conclusions. And I recognize myself in the conclusions. It has to do with my own experience as well. Maybe our cultural anthropologist would somehow sum up scientifically as a researcher, sum up our discussion. I agree, obviously, that the importance of context is significant. And the points that Marie Andrew made earlier were very important, and especially the idea of translocality when we're talking about the artist today, because there's a lot of cases when there are artists that are based in two different places that work between two different places. What I'd like to highlight here is that distancing yourself from the context for a little while at least might actually be helpful in terms of, you know, seeing it also a little bit from outside, and then, you know, returning back to it. Because I think we've all experienced this, that when you are in the process, in it, and you're boiling basically inside, you know, and there's a lot of hardships accompanying this, and there's a lot of issues that it's sometimes hard to, you know, like distance yourself a bit and think about it. So I think this is also a helpful strategy in this sense, and then also, you know, like you're based into different contexts and depending on the topics that you are dealing with as an artist or a creative person, it's, yeah, it depends on, you know, like what you are involved in and then, you know, like you also become part of maybe two contexts at the same time and work in both. And what again comes as an important thing and I'll go back to what I said a little bit earlier and what some of you also discussed is that we should not forget that, you know, big part of art is experimentation. And so, and being part of life itself so you know we live in the world where there still are possibilities of moving in a certain way and a lot of people do this and, you know, like it's part of life so it's also part of artistic practice that how do we like how can we you know like work in this context and in this situation where I might be coming from one context originally but I might be based in another one temporarily for some time or just moving between those two so I think like this kind of things shift on it and then it brings us back to the topic of, you know, time and a little bit like distance physically in the first place and you don't think of going away from it but also in terms of time that then we are able to actually evaluate and think about and, you know, like, yeah, analyze what the work did in the context of being in two different contexts and it was a lot of word context but I think it's an important one here. Thank you, I think you're very right, but I would like to emphasize the fact that I was not asking about an artist and a context, any artist or any context, because we do see a lot of types of artistic practice that it is free from context. My good friend and an outstanding artist Koko Ramesh Filie lives in a very strange place in Geneva and it's okay. The art he's making and he creates amazing art, it's free from context. His works are metaphysical works and even in Geneva you can create those, you can create them anywhere, while socially engaged artist is totally immersed in the context, is dissolved in the context. This is where this paradoxical situation come from and this is why I thought it would be interesting to hear Maria and Ruth experience and discuss this issue because it gets a very dramatic edge to it. Eva, Anna, as far as I can see we don't have many questions coming, we still have time for you to share your experiences, maybe your ideas. Thank you. Anna will be the first to speak, as for the ability to travel and to move around in the context of Belarus art. It's been only the last five years that the artists could move around and of course it benefits the system and it gives an opportunity to get a different quality of education, get to know people abroad, get connections, Olga and Alexey are in Minsk now, I hope they're meeting Liosha tomorrow, or the project that you've mentioned work more, rest more. It's an international network, they bring their colleagues to Belarus from the post-Soviet regions. On the other hand we have a lot of artists who left the country in 1990, late 1990s and it had to do with the drawbacks of the educational system. I'm talking of people who've been living in Germany, in the US and they haven't lost their contextual connection with the country and they're doing the job. We don't have neither time nor funds for. Andrei Dureyko and Sergei Shabohin are creating a global archive of the history of Belarusian art and they're working as volunteers. They're creating archives, Olga, Liosha and I know some other artists who are now residing abroad. Maybe you've heard of the highlights Belarus project, which is in fact collecting and presenting relevant news and things from Belarus using contemporary media. Nikolai Hallezin, leader of the Belarus Free Theatre, who's been living, who's been forced to leave to the UK, is now doing an amazing job supporting Belarus from outside. Maybe you've heard about the festival two years ago, the festival that happened two years ago, about censorship in art field and supporting all artists that are being persecuted or that are being persecuted by the authorities, by the governments. And if someone is forced to leave the country, it does not always mean they lose their connection to the local context and connection to their friends and colleagues. I think it often enhances, it makes it stronger. We've been discussing with our colleagues and curators of how we could arrange a big exhibition gallery project that will describe what we are living through now in Minsk. And we all agreed that some of the curators should come from outside, not from the country, because it's a high risk for the project to have it run by local artists. We are talking with you today. I don't know what happens tomorrow. And in our situation of transition and transformation, thanks to people like Andrey Doreik, Sergei Shabohin, Lyosha, Olya, people who are not isolated from the context but who know how to work with it. And it will be important that the information and the works of art that are created could be shown not only within the country but also abroad. I think it's rather a plus, it's an advantage. All the artists that are now not staying in Belarus, not residing in Belarus, they've found an opportunity to come to Belarus and it was a very serious move on their behalf, especially in view of pandemic. And the last person I wanted to mention, maybe you know Marina Naprushkina, Belarus artist. And she's an amazing example of how you can, I mean she went to Germany. I think she left maybe more than 10 years ago and she's creating socially engaged art, socially engaged projects and she's very successful and this is probably successful because she's leaving. And this forced change of context of voluntary change of context can bring more new things to the place where the artist comes from. Well Anna was talking, we had a question, we had a question and I've been sent this question and the question is more or less the following. What makes a protest experience of protest not only artistic experience, not only art protest but social protest, what is there about this protest that makes it unique, what makes it different from other protests in other countries? While listening to Anna and your references to Marina Naprushkina and other artists and other Belarus artists that live outside the country. I drew a conclusion that the fact, the context of a global scene, Eva would remember, we discussed it in the 90s. And in the 90s, we thought that they were totally juxtaposed, local and the local and the global. This is at least how I see it. The 90s were the first decade of globalization and it was structured in the market way. We had this huge western supermarket that displayed local identities or national identities. And representatives of our countries were representatives of our ethnicity, of our locality. On one hand it gave us an opportunity to manifest ourselves. Like we would say, you're lacking this locality. Look at us. On the other hand, we felt humiliated. We felt reduced to being representatives of locality. We were not seen as intellectuals, as artists, after this period, activist political age that was added to art in the beginning of the 21st century. It has changed the way the intellectual, the artistic world is structured today, Naprushkina and other artists and intellectuals with their experience of confronting social injustice, their experience of reaction, philosophical reaction, the imperfection of the world, when they come to a new place they find the same imperfection. And overcoming this imperfection helps an artist or give an artist an opportunity to find a place for themselves in a different geographical and social context. And justify the interest towards this artist in this new context, an interest towards them being people who had to confront injustice, had to confront some new experience. So you have this new environment and the experience of a productive contact between people coming from very different contexts, people who come from the socially engaged art experiences. And in my opinion, what makes the context of our experience post-Soviet context unique, and I keep saying that I don't know whether we can still use this post-Soviet term. I think this issue, this problem, somehow disappears. So this market-like approach is no longer there. We are looking at the experiences of fighting injustice, fighting the powers to be. And this is what I deduct from what you're saying, or it's a kind of a summary. Maybe you have your own answers. What makes our protest experiences unique? I mean, protests in our countries. What makes it unique? Maybe I'll give a brief answer. What makes my experience, my own experience unique here and now. It's a peaceful character, a peaceful way of manifesting your civil standpoint of manifesting your civil. And on one hand, the authorities are trying to marginalize the protesters and this inexplicable violence that can be compared to genocide. But at the same time, Belarusian people are unique people. You've seen those images of protesters that would take off their shoes to stand on the benches. And they would bring plastic bags and collect rubbish after their protests. I'm not a radical at all. Six, seven years ago, I was in Kiev during the Ukrainian events. Well, before it got really violent, but I can tell you that this is what makes it unique for me. That despite all the threats, all the repressions, it's been two and a half months, a long time for any protest. But the protest is not becoming radical. People protest in a peaceful manner. People go out into the street to express their opinion, to defend their civil rights. And what also makes it unique is that one of the slogans is a line from a song by a Russian group Splin. We haven't known each other before this summer. Everything that is happening in our country is amazing. Thanks to the latest elections, we've come to know our neighbors. We started to help each other. We began to get to know each other. It's a unique story. Six months ago, in April, there was an interview about the national idea and about the future of Belarus. I kept saying that our society is so isolated, is so fragmented. It's a huge contrast to what I'm seeing today in the streets. And we all know that this Soviet experience or experience of our Soviet past, it's not about collective action. But today the situation is changing. We're not alienated anymore. I would add there is another feature of Minsk protest that makes it unique. I don't know whether it has to do with the Soviet heritage or inheritance rather. It's a separate case whether it has to do with what we've inherited from the Soviet Union. But it has to do with the transformation of the global world as such. And the feature of the new world has never been so vividly manifested in this global world, even in the leading spots of this world. Minsk protest has a female face. It's a female protest. We're living in a totally different world. And this is where I would like to wrap up and say that this is something that makes our future very promising, very optimistic. And this is where I think we should end our today's discussion. And I think it could be a case for our second volume of publications, our second second volume. Don't you think so? I completely agree. This has been really interesting conversation and I want to thank Victor for moderating the conversation and Anna Dada, Eva Marie and Ruthie for sharing what's going on in your lives right now. This is a fascinating conversation and I hope we will be able to continue it and we definitely will continue working with all of you. I hope everyone will also continue to attend these meetings. We're having a number of very interesting conversations over the next month as part of the ArtSync assembly. So please take a look and right now I'm going to share a screen which has information about the publication, a miracle or misunderstanding so that if you're interested in downloading it you can. Thank you everyone very much for attending this and I hope for a better 2021.