29.11.2011 | Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin

KRYTYKA POLITYCZNA IN BERLIN

1.12.2011, 8 pm

Forms of Engagement: Art/Knowledge/Politics

Debate with Vasyl Cherepanyn, Kinga Dunin, Oleksiy Radynski, and Artur Żmijewski

Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin

In recent years, the debate on new forms of interaction between art, knowledge and politics has intensified. In the context of Eastern Europe, this resulted in the simultaneous emergence of several independent initiatives that aim at merging the fields of art, scientific discourse and political activism. In the context of highly atomized and anti-solidary post-Socialist societies these fields are regarded as distinct but related forms of engagement and collective action. In Poland, Artur Żmijewski’s text Applied Social Arts manifested the need for politically engaged art in the context marked by a negative legacy of Socialist Realism. In Russia and Ukraine, activities of numerous artistic and political initiatives aim at introducing a new order into a public sphere marked by a lack of democratic procedures. The discussion will focus on the activities of those initiatives in the context of the withering away of the democratic public sphere in both Eastern and Western Europe.

Debate in English

Free admission

Vasyl Cherepanyn, PhD, Cultural Studies Department. He is the director of the Visual Culture Research Center at the National University of Kiev – Mohyla Academy and an editor of the Ukrainian edition of the Krytyka Polityczna magazine.

Kinga Dunin is a journalist, writer, literary critic, sociologist of culture and feminist. She is one of the main figures in the group associated with Krytyka Polityczna and a long-time columnist for Wysokie Obcasy. She is author of various publications and for many years has been lecturing in sociology of medicine at the Warsaw Medical University.

Oleksiy Radynski is an editor of the Ukrainian edition of the Krytyka Polityczna magazine as well as an activist of the Visual Culture Research Center at the National University of Kiev – Mohyla Academy.