Hidden Life

The main focus of the group’s research is the hidden or private lives of artists whose life is mostly unknown and invisible both to the public and artistic community. What about other social roles of artists – being a son/ a daughter, a wife/ a husband, a mother/ a father etc.? What is the conditions of their everyday life? The aim of the group is to deconstruct the stereotypical overview that the Belarusian society has about being an artist and to present a non-public image of the cultural worker. The poor economical situation in the art field will be reflected through analysis of the work the artist performs that is not related to art but which generates the main income for artists and creates the opportunity to make art in the first place. That activity mostly is hidden and not presented in artistic CVs and bios because the forces of the art market could consider this as a ‘shameful’ part of their biographies that undermines the sparkling figure of ‘real’ artist. The group Hidden Life will also touch on concepts of work and labor in Post-Soviet and  Capitalist societies. The work of the group includes research, text-based, and visual contributions.

Contributors:

Tania Arcimovich, Maksim Sarychau

Heritagization

Heritage making – the creation and recreation of cultural and historical meaning and identity – is done by different actors and at different levels, from institutions, museums, their visitors, to common people. In the collective project Heritagization, the group focuses on different forms of heritagization that emerge parallel and/or in conflict with official and authorized forms of heritage making. In particular, the group is interested in highlighting, enacting and performing alternative processes of heritage-making in individual and collective ways, through art practice and activism in urban public spaces.

The project is composed of different parts that dialogue and build on one another to explore how art and activism can make heritage in Belarus and Sweden. The work of the group is based on academic research, artistic-based research and performative methodologies.

Contributors:

Alina Dzeravianka, Ingrid Falk, Linda Tedsdotter, Chiara Valli, Elina Vidarsson

(non)work

On one hand, treating artistic practice as work is emancipatory as it allows us to take care of our energy, demand decent working conditions and support. On the other hand, in existing precarity, it leads to the situation where we are turned into self-managers, striving for self-sustainability, when everything we do is a work, we are 100% responsible for it. So maybe we should instead demand to be lazy, unproductive, and uncreative, without being stressed and guilty? We suggest to explore the notions of artistic work and non-work.

We want to challenge the traditional values around the ‘work-line’, to question colonisation by economic demands, imagine a less work-centered future and raise new sensibilities for idleness, unproductivity and alternative pleasures. The group (non)work focuses on cultural conditions of (non)work, emotional labor, critique of self-management and self-sustainability, political meanings of laziness and refusal to work, among other issues.

Contributors:

Nils Claesson, Olia Sosnovskaya, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk