“Geographies of Collectivity. Artistic Infrastructures in times of crises: Berlin-Vienna-Graz-Minsk-Kharkiv-Pristina” is a gathering and networking project organised by alpha nova & galerie futura in collaboration with curator Zofia nierodzinska.

For this purpose, alpha nova & galerie futura (Katharina Koch and Sylvia Sadzinski), as Berlin based host organization, invites various groups and individuals working in the field of visual and performative arts in Germany, Austria, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Kosovo to an artistic and discursive exchange. Some of them are in exile due to the precarious political situations in their countries.

The aim of the coming-together in Berlin project is to map and connect the groups working within the emancipatory and/or queer-feminist framework. Our aim as organisers is to strengthen the relations between the grassroot art scene in Berlin and the self-organised spaces in post-socialist localities (Kosovo, Belarus, Ukraine, East Germany, Poland). We base our undertaking on the notion of feminist infrastructures that reach beyond national borders, yet are based on translocal exchange and practices of solidarity among vulnerable subjects and groups. We want to create a space of encounters, resistances, and pluralities. We seek to build sustainable bonds between these communities by providing a platform for exchange.

Through these collaborations and gatherings, we want to set up our own, collective and grassroots geographies of solidarity, in parallel or sometimes in conflict with the top-down political and national ones. Our map of emancipatory entanglements is based on the practice of collectivity on the ruins of socialism, against the logic of accumulation and forced atomisation, too often branded as a choice.

Against the background of the politically unstable, precarious, crisis-like, partly repressive circumstances in the countries mentioned up to the war situation in Ukraine, by which women and FLINTA* are particularly affected, we build on long-term feminist solidarity with the goal of emancipation and radical change of these patriarchal/hegemonic and oppressive systems and structures.

"Geographies of Collectivity. Artistic Infrastructures in times of crises: Berlin-Vienna-Graz-Minsk-Kharkiv-Pristina" is a way to practice translocal solidarity using the framework and tools of art and the critical, post-socialist methodology of collectivity.

PARTICIPANTS:

HAVEIT (Alketa Sylaj, Hana Qena, Vesa Qena, Lola Sylaj)

garage 127 (Anton Tkachenko and Nastia Khlestova);

Work Hard! Play Hard! working group and collaborators (Olia Sosnovskaya, Aleksei Borisionok, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk; Uladzimir Hramovich);

"Long-distance Relationships"
Research group: Zofia nierodzińska, Marija Petrovic, Gabi Skrzypczak, Stephan Koal

KVOST, Berlin: 20.11.2024 - 18.01.2025
Gallery Lectwo, Poznan: 31.01 - 09.03.2025

The exhibition "Long-distance Relationships", a collaboration between KVOST in Berlin and Gallery Lectwo in Poznan, explores the theme of migration, especially labour migration, which always takes place from less privileged countries and regions to more industrialised and prosperous ones. Its direction is therefore specific: from east to west and from south to north. Throughout Germany and in Berlin, the largest minorities are from Turkey and Poland. How does the situation of the so-called 'Gastarbeiters' of the mid-twentieth century affect the self-esteem and life opportunities of the ancestors of labour migrants, how does the migration associated with the transformation period and then with the expansion of the EU into post-socialist countries affect the status of migrating people from these parts of the world?

With artists Aykan Safoğlu, Zofia nierodzińska, Alicja Rogalska, Lesia Pcholka and Uladzimir Hramovich, Özlem Sarıyıldız, Monika Winczyk and Grupa Analog, Marta Romankiv, the exhibition aims to explore how the experience of migration shapes one's identity and relationships with others. Among them are those who left their country of origin, those who choose to stay, and those who have been left behind. With its focus on human bonds and connections, the exhibition does not aim to simply compare the often very different and personal migration stories that have inspired the artists' works. Rather, it seeks to relate the different ways in which the experience of migration structures not only the material but also the emotional foundations of life.