Photojournalist and visual artist Maxim Sarychau reflects on financial insecurity and exploitation in the field of art and photojournalism. Are we free fuel? Or did we learn how to say no? “It seems that no state union or existing independent organization can defend our rights today. We all found ourselves in a crystal clear situation: self-organize or die.”
Independent researcher Elisabeth Kovtiak presents the results of the workshop of the STATUS project, Designing the Parallel Society, which was led by two Swedish artists John Huntington and Lars Noväng in Minsk. As a response to the problematic aspects of the Ministry of Culture and the KGB, and a wider problem within Belarusian official discourse, the workshop team invented the Ministry of Uncertainty – a space to train one’s ability to become an active member of society and to enjoy it.
Curator and researcher Tania Arcimovich presents the final version of the essay, based on a collection of personal reflections from the everyday life of cultural workers from Belarus. She questions why non-public and non-visible lives full of anxieties and affects hardly could be found in artistic bios and CVs.
November 23, 2019 in Minsk will host the Congress-performance of cultural workers initiated by the members and participants of the project “STATUS: The role of artists in changing society” (Belarus and Sweden). During the one-day event, there will be discussions and conversations, workshops and performances, as well as presentations of the artworks related to the issues of working conditions and legal status of artists in Belarus and Sweden, defending rights, equality, gender and age. Congress invites professionals from the field of culture and arts, as well as anyone interested in the stated topics.
In early 2019, as a response to a request made by the Belarusian Union of Designers, the Belarusian Ministry of Culture officially proclaimed ‘exhibition activities’ (or, in other words, exhibition-making) neither an intellectual, nor an artistic practice, provoking public outrage and mockery. Using this episode as a case study, researcher Anton Barysenka reflects upon the current status of an artworker in Belarus, and comments on the structural decay and tensions within current Belarusian culture politics.
Researcher and curator Tania Arcimovich presents an essay on the social and economic status of Belarusian artists. In the frame of her mini-research, she compares local experiences within the art field with transformations happening in the global sphere of culture.
Curator and researcher Antonina Stebur reflects on institutional critique in Belarus and studies a case of censorship within the exhibition Nevidivizm by Kirill Diomchev that took place at the Art Museum in Vitebsk.
In “The collective writings”, artists Nils Claesson, Olia Sosnovskaya, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk discuss the notion of ‘work’ and ‘non-work’ in the context of Contemporary Art and Economics. Questioning the work-centered future, they investigate political potentiality of laziness, procrastination and non-productivity, alternative models of pleasures and affective labor.