with Christine Fischer, Olga Shparaga and Claudia Neubert, moderated by Jakob Racek
Germany has become a refuge for cultural workers from Belarus, and not just since the rigged 2020 elections. Maria Kalesnikava, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison in 2021 for "attempted seizure of power" in Belarus, previously worked as a musician and cultural manager with the Stuttgart-based ECLAT Festival / Music of the Centuries. Since her arrest, the festival has been committed to supporting Belarusian artists in exile in Germany and has become an important agent of Belarusian culture.
What role did culture play in the 2020/21 protests? How does exile influence our own cultural practices and how will it change Belarusian culture in the long term? What new forms of civil society networking and solidarity have emerged?
Christine Fischer, director of the ECLAT Festival / Music of the Centuries, and philosopher and author Olga Shparaga will take part in the discussion. Moderated by Jakob Racek, former director of the Goethe-Institut in Minsk.
Gäste
© Violetta Savchits
Olga Shparaga is a Belarusian philosopher and political activist and is considered a pioneer voice behind the mass protests in Belarus in late summer 2020. Until 2021, she taught philosophy at the European College of Liberal Arts in Minsk (ECLAB), which she co-founded in 2014. During the mass protests in Belarus in August 2020, Olga Shparaga co-founded the Fem group in the Coordination Council around the Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. As a member of the feminist group, she was imprisoned in October 2020. She fled to Vilnius to avoid the threat of a criminal trial. In 2021, her book The Face of the Revolution is Female. The Case of Belarus was published at Suhrkamp Verlag. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Her work was honoured by the Voltaire Prize 2024 for Tolerance, International Understanding and Respect for Difference of the University of Potsdam.
© Manu Theobald
Christine Fischer is the artistic director of Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart, manager of the Neue Vocalsolisten and artistic director of the New Music Festival ECLAT. She has started numerous initiatives and networks for the promotion of contemporary music and its mediation and regularly participates in committees and juries of new music.
© Dzmitry Chartkou
Claudia Neubert is an Eastern European historian and doctor of social sciences. She works as volunteer and full-time project manager at the Belarusian Community RAZAM e.V., which was founded at the height of the 2020 protests and has been advocating for Belarusian civil society and promoting the visibility of the country ever since. Claudia Neubert coordinates the project PerspAKTIV, which is aimed at repressed Belarusian artists, organises residencies at renowned cultural institutions in Poland and Germany and thus works to make contemporary Belarusian art accessible to a Polish and German audience.
Moderation
© Loredana La Rocca
Jakob Racek is head of the information department at the Goethe-Institut's head office in Munich. He was previously director of the Goethe-Institut Minsk, which had to cease its activities due to repression by the Belarusian regime. He has worked as a curator and cultural manager for German and international galleries and institutions, including the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
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