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Tag: Art

Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest

Ukraine’s recent Eurovision victory has shown the world its vibrant music industry. This is especially true given the ongoing Russian invasion, with the contest providing a platform for the country to promote its own unique identity.

May 19, 2022 - Arkadiusz Zając

Art during war — a voice from Ukraine

On the morning of February 24th, Kate woke up to the sound of explosions and air-raid sirens. She nudged her boyfriend to wake up and start packing: "The war had started". It felt like she had never been more afraid of anything in her life.

May 18, 2022 - Anastasia Starchenko

A female voice from Sarajevo

In post-war Sarajevo a war is waged to win the future which had been taken away by the living ghosts of the past. The frontlines are nonetheless changing and now different people are pushed underground, stigmatised and treated as if they do not belong to the community. The ethnic and religious war has been replaced by a new culture war.

Some time ago, when the bloody Balkan war was still raging in Sarajevo, poet Izet Sarajlić, editor Čedo Kisić and professor Zdravko Grebo were explaining their world to me. None of them is alive anymore. Neither is Isak Samokovlija, a prominent Bosnian Jewish writer, whose stories took me to the most hidden corners of Sarajevo’s historical centre, Baščaršija, as well as the Grbavica and Bentbaša districts. I was listening to the stories of the writers and artists who had left Sarajevo, but who were still under its influence. They included Dževad Karahazan in Graz, Josip Osti in Ljubljana, Miljenko Jergović in Zagreb, and Nino Žalica in Amsterdam…

September 12, 2021 - Krzysztof Czyżewski

The living and the dead

A conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, a Polish poet, and Trupa Trupa, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist. Interviewer: Jacek Hajduk

JACEK HAJDUK: During the 2019 SXSW Music Festival you dedicated the performance of your group, Trupa Trupa, to the memory of the late Gdańsk mayor, Paweł Adamowicz. Let us then start with Gdańsk. How much of this city is with you today? And how was it before? Which faces of this multi-layered urban centre are close to your heart?

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI: Today, Gdańsk is a big part of me, unlike in the past. Back then I was more interested in self-isolating myself and creating a kind of enclave in one of its districts – Gdańsk Wrzeszcz. This actually is still my ideal, but now I also understand the impact that this city has on me and my poetry. This is mainly because of my family stories.

September 12, 2021 - Grzegorz Kwiatkowski Jacek Hajduk

COVID-19 is changing our lives, but not the old masters

An interview with Prof. Dr. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, the long serving director of the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Interviewers: Bartosz Panek and Jarosław Kociszewski.

July 19, 2021 - Bartosz Panek Jarosław Kociszewski Klaus Albrecht Schröder

Soviet mosaics of Tbilisi. What they reflect and why they vanish

Soviet mosaics as artwork can tell a lot about Georgia’s recent history and its socio-cultural transformation. Reducing them to communist propaganda to erase their artistic value is a destructive attempt to wipe out the legacy of the Soviet past from cultural memory.

April 30, 2021 - Natalia Mosashvili

Remembering Mark Verlan. The artist who bridged poetry and apocalyptic jest

The style of the late Moldovan artist Mark Verlan is not easy to classify. According to his nephew, the artist created a style that cannot be found in any other movement. He coined the term “ultra-stiobanism” to describe his uncle’s artistic approach.

Talk to anyone who met Mark Verlan and they will have a story to tell. Like that time when the famous Swiss curator, Harald Szeemann, travelled to Chișinău just to meet him and offer him the opportunity to exhibit his work in BLUT & HONIG (Blood and Honey), a retrospective hosted by the Vienna Essl Collection. During the time that Szeemann spent in Chișinău, Verlan was nowhere to be found, but 25 of his paintings (more than any artist’s present at the exhibition) made it to the retrospective. His friend and fellow artist Pavel Brăila recalls that, at the same exhibition, someone asked Verlan why he did not speak English and the artist sarcastically replied: “It was already difficult for me to learn Russian.”

April 11, 2021 - Giovanna Di Mauro

Preserving Soviet-era mosaics in Georgia

A conversation with Nini Palavandishvili, a curator and researcher involved in the process of documenting and mapping Soviet-era Mosaics in Georgia. Interviewer: Natalia Mosashvili

NATALIA MOSASHVILI: Can you say a few words about the meaning of Soviet-era mosaics and why they are often reduced to propaganda of the Soviet system?

NINI PALAVANDISHVILI: I would like to start by saying that my position is the following: of course, these mosaics were created during the Soviet times, but they are not necessarily “Soviet” mosaics. During this period mosaics were created in Mexico, America, France, Spain, Portugal, and many other places. Emphasising them as "Soviet mosaics" is not right.

April 11, 2021 - Natalia Mosashvili Nini Palavandishvili

The case of Tallinn’s Telliskivi Loomelinnak and the ‘Belarus. Protest. Art.’ exhibition

How the former Kalinin factory became a creative space to raise awareness for Belarus’s internal crisis and its artists who were forced to flee.

March 29, 2021 - Antonio Scancariello

Andrzej Zaręba political cartoons

Gallery of political cartoons drawn by New Eastern Europe's illustrator Andrzej Zaręba.

January 20, 2021 - Andrzej Zaręba

The power of Ukrainian youth

Young Ukrainians tend to put the values that are related to their lives first. These include family, health, well-being and love. They also value clear conscious, service to the homeland and having open debates on social issues. Over half declare that they feel responsible for the future of their state and want to contribute to it.

The first 25 years of independent Ukraine is already behind us. In attempts to help understand the changes that have occurred over this time, there are countless political, economic and social analyses, commentaries, recommendations and prognoses. The vast majority of them have referred to this period as one of wasted opportunities. In our research, which we have been carrying out in this regards, we focus on the role the youth has played in the democratic transformation and its future potential.

November 16, 2020 - Natalia Dolgopolova, Anna Surkova, Kinga Anna Gajda, Alina Meheda

The COVID-19 crisis is generating far-reaching outcomes for culture

An interview with Jakub Kornhauser, a Kraków-based poet, literary critic and researcher of avant-garde. Interviewer: Grzegorz Nurek

GRZEGORZ NUREK: You are one of the co-founders of the Centre for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University’s Department of Polish Studies. The work of the centre concentrates on avant-garde research, but is it limited to literature?

JAKUB KORNHAUSER: We established our centre a few years ago convinced that there is a need to get the story of avant-garde out of schoolbook charts and definitions. We are all victims of different clichés which are sold to us by school materials, which tend to repeat the same names and works and which are further spiced up by some remote anecdotes, as if avant-garde was a Sumerian phenomenon. Avant-garde is not only a shared name for numerous artistic searches which took place 100 years ago, but also a state of mind, an experimental potential, which can get activated regardless of the historical context.

July 7, 2020 - Grzegorz Nurek Jakub Kornhauser

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