PPV x Vsesvit: Former West and New East (Away, Beyond and Sideways)

Doors 6:30 pm

Talk 7-8 pm

Close 9:30 pm

The event is free and available to everyone.

Join this event with curator Aleksei Borisionok and artist and researcher Olia Sosnovskaya re-examining their essay “The Former West and the New East” (2017) which critically unpacked the notion of “New East” introduced by the UK-based media after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Aleksei and Olia will address the narratives and representations of Eastern Europe and how the underlying power dynamics are underscored and re-actualised in the context of current Russia’s invasion of Ukraine supported by the Belarusian regime.

The talk will focus on (self)exoticization of Eastern Europe and analyse aesthetics and politics within artistic practices in the context of “the Former West” and “the New East”, in particular referring to imperialist and (crypto)fascist tendencies.

What other temporalities could be suggested within and beyond the notion of ‘post-socialism’? What are the ways of constructing networks and solidarities beyond intercolonial communication, to use the notion of Svitlana Matviyenko?

The event is co-organised by PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical) and Vsesvit (Ukraine solidarity collective) and hosted by Anneta House social centre.

Vsesvit will join with a pop-up corner featuring a selection of fundraising projects and will run a makeshift bar during the event.

Speakers:

Aleksei Borisionok is a curator, writer, and organiser, who currently lives and works in Vienna. He is a member of the artistic-research Problem Collective and a working group of Work Hard, Play Hard! He writes about art and politics for various magazines, catalogues and online platforms such as e-flux Journal, L’Internationale Online, Partisan, Springerin, Paletten, among many others. He is currently a fellow at Vera List Center, New York, and, together with Katalin Erdődi, he is co-curating the upcoming edition of the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague (2024).

Olia Sosnovskaya (Minsk / Vienna) is an artist, writer, and organizer. She engages in textual, performative, and visual practices, intertwining the notions of festivity, collective choreography, and the political within the post-socialist contexts and beyond. Member of artistic-research group Problem Collective and Work Hard! Play Hard! working group. Candidate at PhD in Practice, Academy of Fine Art Vienna.

Organisers:

Perverting the Power Vertical (PPV) is an event platform and seminar series based at the UCL SSEES.

Vsesvit is a Ukraine solidarity collective based in London. Vsesvit organises cultural and community events to support the local community in London and raise funds for grassroots collectives and initiatives responding to the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

House of Annetta is a social centre and platform for practicing systems change. Over the past two years the house has been used by hundreds of different groups, individuals and networks for gathering, eating, talking, exhibiting, listening and making. Get in touch if you would like to use the space or connect with the project.

This event is moderated by Daša Anosova, who is a researcher and cultural worker from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a PhD candidate at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and Michał Murawski - an anthropologist of architecture and of cities based at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies

Image credit: Olia Sosnovskaya. Outdoors, gunpowder burns quietly. In a closed space gunpowder explodes, 2016