Manifesta 14 Prishtina and antiwarcoalition.art

Manifesta 14 Prishtina proposes a 2-day programme conceptualized by the antiwarcoalition.art that will take place at various locations of Manifesta 14 on October 29–30, 2022. 

TITLE: TO APPEAR IS TO MATTER 

2-day programme with the Antiwar Coalition 

As a network of solidarity, the International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine in their 2-day programme developed for Manifesta 14 continues to seek the possible ways of resistance in different colonial contexts and spaces affected by the war or military conflict and political instability. The war destroys regimes of stability, routine and ties. This entails a complex set of problems such as migration, loss of belonging and identity. The war also ruins the stability of narratives which are being continuously reimagined. 

The programme enables us to consider these questions through the prism of public spaces traumatized by the war, oppression, ideology and patriarchal structures proposing to look at the stealing relationships and unobvious networks that appear and fade within fluctuating contexts. 

The programme replicates all existing formats that the Antiwar Coalition implements in its activity, namely presentations, discussions, screenings, and workshops. The programme incorporates two discussions devoted to the question of ‘reclaiming public space’ and ‘unobvious archives’, as well as the workshop by the artists collective METASITU, and a selected film screening of the Antiwar Coalition archive. Every event will occur on a different location of the Manifesta 14 responding to the changing memory of the site chosen as well as to the shifting geographies of the Antiwar Coalition online platform that is continuously expanding. 

Day 1. October 29, Saturday 

Time: 11:00-13:00

Discussion 1 

Title: Affected by War. Reclaiming Public Space

Venue: Brick Factory / plan B indoor space 

Participants: Leyli Gafarova, Uladzimir Hramovich, Fatmir Mustafa, Kateryna Rusetska

Moderated by: Tatiana Kochubinska 

The discussion addresses the question: what does it mean to reclaim public space in the situation of ongoing political oppression and military conflict when space itself is highly affected by war, patriarchy and ideology. What ways and tools of resistance are possible to elaborate under given circumstances? If a public space in such a  situation might still become a transformative force? With this discussion the Antiwar Coalition questions the possibilities of the artistic communities to invent tactics that might bring to confront or to dismantle the existing power forces. 

Bringing together practitioners from post-socialistic countries with a common past in regard to socialist modernism and urban planning, we are trying to think of possibilities of withstanding current oppression that in different ways unfolds in Ukraine, Belarus, Kosovo and Azerbaijan. 

During the discussion Kateryna Rusetska (UA) will share her experience of transforming the co-founded Dnipro Centre for Contemporary Culture into a Volunteer Hub in the situation of the ongoing war in Ukraine which takes place here and now; Uladzimir Hramovich (BY) will talk about his artistic projects critically reflecting  the ideologized and mythologized memory of the past that informs our present society; Leyli Gafarova (AZ) will discuss the capture tactics as a tool for community-building and reclaiming public space in the situation of dominating patriarchy; Fatmir Mustafa will share his experience of creating exhibition in public space (XK). 

BIOGRAPHIES: 

Leyli Gafarova (born in Baku, Azerbaijan, raised in The Netherlands, and is currently based in Baku) is an independent filmmaker and co-creator of Salaam Cinema Baku, a community based cinema and art space. She has shot and directed “Once upon a Time in Shanghai” (2018), a documentary film about the production of a feature film in the eponymous neighborhood, itself located between Baku’s major railway lines. Her practice centers around processes, research and discoveries. Leyli is interested in subjects such as gender, national identity, urbanism and (self)- censorship. When producing works she searches for ways to question what is natural and what is constructed. She has curated film programs, educational programs and exhibitions including Hometown Weather and co-curated Things We Sense About Each other.

Fatmir Mustafa – Karllo (1984) is from Prishtina, where he obtained his BA in Painting from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prishtina. From 2009 to 2018 he lived in Finland, where he completed his MA at the University of Arts, Kuvataideakatemia, Department of Sculpture, in Helsinki. He is a founder of the Institute for Art and Culture EPIFANI and currently teaches at UBT. Recent exhibitions and project include: Collaborations with IRWIN at On Top Residency, Prishtina, Kosovo 2022; Bigger than Myself - Heroic Voices from ex-Yugoslavia, Maxxi Museum, Rome, Italy 2021; It’s always someone's birthday, Matsudo, Nemoto, Japan 2021;  Worldwide Apartment Biennale, 6-Chome-30-3 Higashi Ogu, Tokyo, Japan; The map is the Territory , Bregenz Biennale, Bregnez, Austria 2018;  Fog, group exhibition, Kosovo National Gallery, Prishtina, Kosovo 2018;  Kuvan Kevät, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki, Finland 2017; Missä runous pesii, Tampere, Finland 2016; Objekti, Espoo Kunsthalle, Helsinki, Finland 2016; Non Parallel Process, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki, Finland 2016; Kevät, Third Space Gallery, Helsinki, Finland 2014; Informal Mind, Elbasan, Albania 2014; Mikset puhu Suomea, Hippolyte Studio, Helsinki, Finland 2012; Disorder, La Fabbrica del Vapore, Milano, Italy 2012; World Event Young Artist, Primary, Nottingham, England 2012; 120’Muse/um, Ateneum, Helsinki, Finland 2012; 255.804 km2, Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria 2011; Lampedusa - Finalmente L’antibiennale, Museo Archeologico di Lampedusa, Italy 2011; 255.804 km2, Mestna Galerija, City Art Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2010; Dracula and Frankenstein Are the Best Friends, Hiap Project Room, Helsinki, Finland 2009; I Am Not Drunk, Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki, Finland 2009; The Accidents of Roses, Panten Frizer, Prishtina, Kosovo 2008; Paradise Station, Stacion, Prishtina, Kosovo 2008; Rinsing, Gallery 10 m2, Zagreb, Croatia 2008; Brussels biennial 1, Brussels, Belgium 2008; Art is Not a Mirror, It is a Hammer; Rhizoma, Space for Contemporary Art, Prishtina, Kosova, 2007); Artists of Tomorrow, Kosovo National Gallery, Prishtina, Kosovo, 2007; Onufri, GK, Tirana, Albania 2006.

Uladzimir Hramovich — artist, lives and works in Minsk-Berlin. Graduated from the Gymnasium-College of Arts named after i.o. Akhremchik in Minsk (2009) and the Graphics Arts Department of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk (2015). Member of the Problem Collective since 2016. Works with installations, graphics and video. In 2020 during the first days of protest in Belarus organized the action “Art of the Regime”. Explores themes of history, memory and the city. 

Kateryna Rusetska works at Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture. She is the curator of arts programs at Kultura Medialna, a team of arts professionals, technologists and urbanists. Kateryna focuses her work on collective identity, memory and history, and development in post-Soviet and post-industrial public spaces. She investigates the ways social and political realities impact the fragility and resilience of individual stories and collective histories. One of her recent projects Youth – Active – City promotes youth activism and civic engagement in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro – a struggling industrial town where she is currently involved in the development of the only Arts and Culture Center.

Tatiana Kochubinska (born 1985 in Kyiv, Ukraine) is an independent curator, writer, and lecturer. She has worked as a curator on the Research Platform of the PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv) aimed at creating the digital archive of Ukrainian contemporary art. As a curator, Tatiana is particularly interested in the questions of responsibility, Soviet history and its relation to today’s society, the psychological state of the individual time and again flashbacking the personal memories of the cross-border 1990s (“Guilt”, “Anonymous Society”). She co-curated Future Generation Art Prize@Venice as a collateral event within the 58th Venice Biennial in 2019. In recent years, Tatiana has collaborated with various cultural institutions, designed online and offline courses on contemporary art, upon the invitation of the Artsvit Gallery (Dnipro, Ukraine) she co-developed curatorial residencies that resulted in collectively curated exhibitions When a ritual turns into routine and I was approaching the city I had not known yet. In 2020 she co-edited a special issue about Ukrainian art and society after 2014 upon the invitation of Obieg Magazine. Recently, Tatiana also became a member of the curatorial team of The International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine. 

Time: 15:00-17:00

Discussion 2

Title: Unobvious Archives

Venue: Centre for Narrative Practice 

Participants: Ervina Halili, Yulia Kostereva, Aylin Kuryel, Antonina Stebur. 

Moderated by Donjeta Murati

The collapse of big ideological narratives which was occurring throughout Europe since 1989 and continuing in the 1990s, brought the changing paradigm to the model of relationships between artist and the artwork as well as within the artistic communities. The artists did not intend anymore to radically change the world, but they would rather suggest to change our attitudes, or put it differently, our relationships to the world which is changing. 

Today with the current war in Ukraine the discussion around the cold war and rearrangement of the world, the very notion of nation and Europe, reactualization of the notions of East and West, which seemed to be in the past, are coming to the spotlight again. Considering complex circumstances of transformation which is realized today in a violent and capturing way of the conquest war, the discussion aims to re-establish the relations and ties that form the unobvious archives of our daily life shaped by personal memories and experiences. 

Basing upon the continuously growing online archive of the Antiwar coalition that beyond sharing knowledge, also formulates and reveals the interconnections between the collected artworks and thus represents the networks of solidarity grounded on the unobvious archives of interrelations. 

The discussion addresses the ephemeral nature and the question of the unobvious archives that substitutes the essential part of our life affecting the contemporary policy and state of society. 

BIOGRAPHIES

Ervina Halili is a writer and researcher from Prishtina. Her work as a poet has found great reviews in Germany for her book “The Slumber of Octopus” published in Vienna, estimated as “wrongful world seeming normal, far from pamphlets and flag bearers, views, that creates a new possible homeland, not from earth but from skies”. With her book “Amuletë” she was awarded the annual prize for poetry in Kosovo, and she has been a residential writer in Vienna, Sarajevo, Switzerland, Graz, Belgrade etc. While some of her literary concepts include the state of metaphysics and dreams, her focus as a researcher relies on collective behavior and myths. She is a collector of lost archival materials of the Rilindja publishing house in Kosovo, while she has also founded the private fund of press Kosovo’s materials of the post-World War II.

Yulia Kostereva (born in 1973 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, currently based in Warsaw) is a Ukrainian artist and curator. From 1989 to 1992 she studied at the theatre stage design department of the Kharkiv State Art School, from 1992 to 1998 – at the graphics department of the Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute, from 1998 to 2001 – at the graphics department of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. Since 1999, together with the artist Yurii Kruchak, she co-created the art platform called Open Place where she has been working until today. Within the Open Place platform they are developing a sequence of nomadic residencies and have a huge experience of building communities, linking communities and exploring sites and creating methodologies.

Aylin Kuryel is an assistant professor at the Literary and Cultural Analysis department at the University of Amsterdam and an independent filmmaker. She is affiliated with BAK (bak basis voor kunst) and Sandberg Institute in The Netherlands. Her research areas are nationalism, image politics, aesthetics/resistance, and politics of emotions. She is the (co)editor of Sıkıntı Var (Essays on Boredom, 2020), Türkiye’de Yahudi Olmak: Bir Deneyim Sözlüğü (Being Jewish in Turkey: A Dictionary of Experiences, 2017), Küresel Direnişler Çağında Direniş ve Estetik (Resistance and Aesthetics in the Age of Global Uprisings, 2015), Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities (2010). Among her documentaries are The Thing That Goes Through Everything (2022), A Defense (2021), The Balcony and Our Dreams (2020), CemileSezgin (2020), Heads and Tails (2018), Dreams of Military Service (2018), Welcome Lenin (2016).

Antonina Stebur (born 1984 in Mogilev, Belarus) is a curator, art historian, art critic. She holds an MA in Visual and Cultural Studies from the European Humanities University. She lectures on activist practices in contemporary arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the European College of Liberal Art (Minsk, Belarus). Antonina is a co-founder of the #damaudobnayavbytu (convenient woman in everyday life) project on gender discrimination in Belarus and other ex-Soviet countries, a co-founder Spaika.media, a research platform about activist political art and performance, co-initiator of The International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine. Co-authored with Hanna Samarskaya The History of Belarusian Photography book. She is a co-curator of the exhibitions Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance (Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine), Names (Brest, Minsk, Vitebsk, Belarus), I was approaching the city I had not known yet, Dnipro, Ukraine, and others. Her research interests include feminism, post-Soviet studies, political art, performance studies, grassroots activism, access to public space, tactics of resistance and solidarity, creating infrastructures.

Donjeta Murati (b. 1990, Prishtina) works as a researcher, assistant curator and program assistant at Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina. She graduated from the Department of Sociology at the University of Prishtina. Her work at Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina involves various research activities, curatorial work and assistance in developing the annual program of the institution. Currently Donjeta is carrying out research activities for a policy report on Cultural Policies in Kosovo. Previously she has worked as a researcher on the report which analyzed the relations between society and state at the local level “Clientelism: The alternative dimension to Kosovo’s governance” as well as on the book 1325 Facts and Fables: A collection of stories about the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security in Kosovo. Her research interests are mainly around social structures, and how collective memory, discourse and gender construct it.

Film Screening 

Title: It is a not a collection of artifacts, but knowledge 

Venue: Kino Rinia 

20:30-22:30 

Screening program

IAROSLAV POBEZHAN,KSENIA YURKOVA, MARINA NAPRUSHKINA, OLIA SOSNOVSKAYA & A.Z.H., HITO STEYERL, PIOTR ARMIANOVSKI, THETA TSYBULNYK, ELIAS PARVULESCO, FANTASTIC LITTLE SPLASH, KATARZYNA WOJTCZAK, MARIA STOIANOVA

The screening presents a selection of videoworks collected by the Antiwar Coalition platform dealing with the subjects and problems raised and debated during the discussions within the “To Appear Is To Matter” discursive programme conceived and realized together with the Antiwar Coalition and Manifesta 14. 

Day 2. October 30, Sunday

Title: Degrowth Institute in Prishtina, Manifesta 14

Workshop by METASITU (Liva Dudareva & Eduardo Cassina)

Venue: Palace of Youth 

Meeting  at 10:00 

10:00–10:30 welcoming coffee 

Duration of the workshop: 10:30-15:30 

Degrowth Institute in Prishtina, Manifesta 14

Rooted in the practice of the Degrowth Institute workshops, METASITU proposes to develop a new degrowth exercise taking place in the Palace of Youth in Prishtina.

The exercise will use cards as a way of creating a collective cartography. It will explore the practices and rituals for community storytelling. How does the community see itself? What does it dream of? What does it remember?

A series of question cards will aim to tease out the reflections and answers to these questions. The questions will be framed in a way that would allow for tapping in the local knowledge but also would leave room for imagination and speculation. The results will be expressed through drawings that would be added into a collectively created tapestry. 

BIOGRAPHY

Established in 2014 by Liva Dudareva & Eduardo Cassina, METASITU is a collectivity that explores the way we relate to territory across time and disciplines, for a queerer tomorrow. Our practice is centred around non-hierarchical symbiotic pedagogies that take the form of urbanism residencies, architectural interventions, intentional communities, self-publishing, real estate experiments, and videos.

Our work has largely focused on shrinking cities in Eastern Ukraine; mainly through our ongoing project 'The Degrowth Institute', where we explore ways of incorporating notions of degrowth to urban masterplanning. The Degroth Institute also researched vacancy, and reunification processes in Dubai’s office towers.

The Degrowth Institute is an initiative founded in 2015 by METASITU, with the aim of establishing emancipatory narratives in ‘shrinking’ (post)industrial cities, and has since evolved through multiple iterations of exhibitions, workshops and publications. Its mission is to challenge the notion that suggests that growth —population in particular— determines the success of a city. 

Traditionally, the planning of cities implies expansion from an originary tabula rasa - many post-Soviet towns, however, are becoming paradigms of urban shrinkage, a supposedly tragic reversal of that accelerationist planning logic. The Degrowth Institute suggests looking for strategies of urban degrowth, incorporating notions of reunification, preservation, and rewilding.

During a series of workshops with locals, Degrowth Institute has explored possible ways to embrace the inevitability of degrowth, using a manual designed by the Degrowth Institute—with cartographic protocols, tarot deck exercises, and instructions on how to make a ‘city’ time capsule.