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Colonialism in camouflage

The Radio Disaster Series

Mudam announces The Radio Disaster Series: Colonialism in camouflage, a public programme co-curated by the collective Beyond the post-soviet and Mudam. This second edition of The Radio Disaster Series will be devoted to decolonial thinking and how it can be used to critically reflect on and resist the insidiousness of imperialist and colonial rhetoric and practices across Europe and in post-colonial territories.

Chapter I

Imperial violence and occupation in (post-)Soviet territories and beyond

Commissioned by Mudam and curated by Beyond the post-soviet, the first chapter is a response to the urge of acknowledging continued imperial violence in Central Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, Central Asia and beyond, as well as their long-term repercussions on societies and their expression in visual arts. Beginning in November 2022, Colonialism in camouflage will unfold in a series of offline and online events: a lecture by Epp Annus, a listening session, a close reading of an artwork from the Mudam Collection and workshops for adults and children.

The programme borrows its title from Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands (2018), a book by literary scholar and writer Epp Annus, who uses the expression ‘colonialism in camouflage’ to highlight diverse strategies of Soviet domination that she considers to be disguised forms of colonialism. Deployed in multiple regions, these strategies entailed territorial occupations, deportations, genocides, man-made famines, repression of local cultures and imaginaries and a conscious eroding of cultural memory. The title also refers to a long history of military violence in these regions, wherein the recent Russian military offensive in Ukraine is not an isolated event but the result of ongoing imperial-colonial strategies and mindset.

The second chapter, starting in January 2023, will expand on these themes and focus on the long-lasting consequences of Western European colonialism. Conceived by Mudam, this part will be curated by Line Ajan, Clémentine Proby and Joel Valabrega.

In response to these issues, the programme seeks to build a safe space with the participants, where theoretical and artistic input, discussions and debates will include individual and collective stories and memories as valuable sources of knowledge. These moments of learning also intend to lead to a collective unlearning of the ideas and perspectives rooted in imperialism and pervading Western societies.

Workshop

Follow the plants with Alevtina Kakhidze | 24.09.2023 | 10h00–12h00 | EN

With the workshop Follow the Plants, Alevtina Kakhidze invites us to look into the plant world and to see our surroundings through their perspective. The artist investigates the relationship between plants and humans, and centers her research on stable systems of plants, like steppe or prairie, as well as in the so-called ‘invasive’ and ‘tender’ plants in relation to ecosystems, and in perennial species that promise to be a step forward in agriculture in the face of the climate change. Follow the Plants is an indoor-outdoor event, which looks at the role of humans in shifting ecosystems. Having developed strategies of their rebalancing, for example through cooking and eating ‘invasive’ plants, Kakhidze invites to reconsider the local ecosystem of Luxembourg, during a walk around the Park Dräi Eechelen situated next to Mudam.

The workshop is a part of the program Colonialism in Camouflage curated by the collective Beyond the post-soviet in Mudam Luxembourg

Biographical Notes

Alevtina Kakhidze (born in 1973) is a Ukrainian artist. She works predominantly with performance and drawing. Based in Muzychi, 26 kilometers away from Kyiv and having grown up in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Kakhidze has experienced Ukraine’s abrupt and chaotic changes from the days of the USSR to the imbalanced environment after, including undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine in 2014 and the recent brutal attack that started on the 24th of February 2022.

Beyond the post-soviet emerged in 2021 as a non-hierarchic collective that produces and disseminates knowledge on geographic and cultural regions, previously referred to as ‘post-soviet space’ and ‘post-socialist countries’. The group approaches research affectively and relies on multiple types of knowledge such as: theoretical knowledge, works of art and fiction, individual and collective stories, memories and emotions. It gathers artists, researchers, thinkers, and curators based in and working across different contexts.

No experience required | No material required | Limited places | Adults: 10€ | Kulturpass , Students: 1.50€ | Subject to modification and cancellation | Booking required: mudam.com/rsvp-follow-the-plants, t +352 453785–531

Lecture-performance by Slavs and Tatars

I Utter Other by Slavs and Tatars | 11.06.2023 | 15h00 | FR

What does it mean for one East to look to another East? Can the romanticised romanticise? This lecture-performance, I Utter Other, will look at the curious case of Slavic Orientalism in the Russian Empire and early USSR, from Polish people in the service of the Tsar to Persian Presbyterians. This study of the East in the East complicates notions of identity politics and knowledge in the service of power, offering a crucial counterpoint, if not antecedent, to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) – a postcolonial critique some sixty years avant la lettre. Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Since its inception in 2006, the collective has shown a keen grasp of polemical issues within society, clearing new paths for contemporary discourse via a wholly idiosyncratic form of knowledge production: including popular culture, spiritual and esoteric traditions, oral histories, modern myths, as well as scholarly research. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institution across the globe, including the Vienna Secession; MoMA, New York; Salt, Istanbul; Albertinum Dresden, amongst others. The collective’s practice revolves around three core activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances.

Listening session

How to be anti-colonial? | 04.12.2022 | 14h00

Colonialism and coloniality are not the relics of the past: both phenomena continue to influence and shape every aspect of life on the planet until today. If we assume that colonialism often operates under camouflage, how can it be identified and what are the anti-colonial strategies that one can adopt? How do we reverse the logic of camouflage by making the effects and traces of colonialism visible? How can one be anti-colonial, and what is the responsibility of cultural actors and institutions in this struggle? And finally, how do we imagine our common futures: what comes after the Empire, and after the ‘post-soviet’? To reflect on these topics, Beyond the post-soviet invites curator and thinker Vasyl Cherepanyn (Kyiv), artist Lia Dostlieva (Maastricht), artist and curator Tatiana Fiodorova (Chișinău), and philosopher Renata Salecl (Ljubljana), as well as the team and audience at Mudam to form a spontaneous collective. Conveying multiple perspectives, the participants' input will be followed by a group discussion and a Q&A session. In parallel, the presentation of the artwork This Here and That There (Berlin video) (2009) by Vlatka Horvat from Mudam’s collection will offer an artistic insight on the subject of power dynamics that spaces produce, as well as on the ways to destabilise the established hierarchies and narratives by means of deconstructing the spatial order.

Play

How to be anti-colonial? | Listening session

Opening Lecture

Colonialism in camouflage and the subaltern who speaks: politics and resistance under Russian rule by Dr. Epp Annus | 06.11.2022 | 15h00

Colonialism in all its forms is a global phenomenon that shaped – and continues to shape – policies and practices not only in Asia, Africa and the Americas, but also on the Eurasian continent. Colonial legacies and deep-rooted injustice still determine both human and nonhuman ways of living on our planet. This talk will address the history and legacy of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union from a postcolonial perspective, relying on case studies from the Baltic region and Ukraine. It will be followed by a discussion between Epp Annus, Beyond the post-soviet and the audience.

Play

Colonialism in camouflage and the subaltern who speaks: politics and resistance under Russian rule | Lecture by Dr. Epp Annus

Beyond the post-soviet
Beyond the post-soviet emerged in 2021 as a non-hierarchical collective, which aims at producing and disseminating knowledge around geographic and cultural regions, previously referred to as ‘post-soviet space’ and ‘post-socialist’ countries. The group approaches research affectively and relies on multiple types of knowledge such as: theoretical knowledge, works of art and fiction, individual and collective stories, memories and emotions. It gathers artists, researchers, thinkers, and curators based in and working across different contexts.

Credits

Commissioned by Mudam and curated by Beyond the post-soviet