WEDNESDAY 19th NOVEMBER   |    7pm 

||| RADICANT NETWORKS & APARTMENT PROJECT invite you to

||| CROSS TALKS 4 |  (VISUAL) REVOLUTION OF THE MAIDAN: between Russian colonialism and Ukrainian nationalism

a lecture with Liza Babenko | screenings and further public discussion   (in English language)

The lecture and screening of Liza Babenko?s documentary learning films will be dedicated to the ideological, polity-economical and visual analysis of the Ukrainian Maidan revolution from the internal perspective. We will touch upon post-colonial and national reasons of the initial non-acceptance of this revolution by the South and Eastern parts of the country. Position of the Ukrainian ?Other?, which historically belonged to the Crimea and Donbass, will be problematised as an post-colonial evidence of broken into several national identities country. Besides, based on the researches of Ukrainian journal of social criticism Commons, Liza Babenko will discuss the necessity of actualization in nowadays post-Madian Ukraine such philosophical categories as nationalism, patriotism, fascism, national identity politics, post-colonial ressantiment and politics of memory concerning the Second World War. With the help of all this discursive instruments, but not only, we will try to understand the roots of the current war in Eastern Ukraine, except of the obvious Russian invasion and media propaganda. Also, we will look through such results of Maidan revolution, as activation of  Ukrainian right-wing forces and regular change of the local oligarchic elites. All that will made us to raise the final question : whether the whole Ukraine, together with all its variety of national identity types, was needed in social revolution, but not in national one? And what is the political future of East European region in general?  

||| Liza Babenko is an emerging  researcher, author, artist, curator. Born in 1988, Ukraine, Babenko took her MA program in Philosophy of Culture at the Russian Anthropological School of the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) and BA program in Cultural Studies at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy (Kiev). Among her recent activities there are graduation of the Victor Misiano?s  Moscow Curatorial School ?Doing Exhibitions Politically? (The V-A-C Foundation and What, How and For Whom curatorial collective), co-curating of the Feminist Workshop in collaboration with Boryana Rossa in the fridge & Haspel (Sofia), residence at the Centre of contemporary art  Uyazdovsky Castle and participation in ?Commentators? exhibition within the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation (Warsaw).  Her last research and directing work is learning play "Energy of Cosmos Is Indestructible!!!" in collaboration with Anton Vidokle, Research Congress ?Former West: Documents, Constellations, Prospects? at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin)  www.formerwest.org/DocumentsConstellationsProspects/Contributions/EnergyofKosmosisIndestructible and co-working with the Russian experimental film director Svetlana Baskova (?There Is One Decision: To Fight). She is publishing in numerous magazines, among which there are ArtUkraine, Korydor, Springerin, Colta.ru, etc and constant contributor to the Ukrainian journal of social criticism Commons. Currently she is holding a fellowship from the Goethe Institute Ukraine and shooting her first feature-length learning film about the Ukrainian revolution and state war. She lives and works in Kiev.     

||  ?Maidan: The Lost Revolution?  video, HD, 28'39, Kiev, 2014 This short video is a documentary chronicl? of one of the many days lived by the author on heroic Maidan in 2014.Frozen panoramic plans alternate with the scenes from the everyday and already recognizable political as well as aesthetic reality of this one Ukrainian protest. But today, re-looking at all of these massively replicable visual images and ideological rhetorics of Maidan, we can try to imagine what was this revolution for residents of the East and South Ukraine, who did not accept neither the form nor the content of Maidan from the very beginning. In the midst of the war on Donbass we can also try to put for ourselves on the following questions: why this form of Maidan was so unacceptable for the other part of the country? Moreover, which type of revolution would unite Ukraine, but not split it up?  

||  ?Banderovite?,  video, 12?18, Kiev, 2013 This short documentary video was filmed in a working-class neighborhood of the Lukyanovska area in a time of winter Maidan in Kiev. At that time everything in the country was focused on the preparing for preterm elections to the parliament. The main character is representative of the Western Ukraine nationalist organization UNA-UNSO, which is close to the right-radical views Ukrainian party "Freedom and ?Right sector?. Such people are called by the Russian chauvinists and Russian-speaking residents of the Eastern regions of Ukraine ?banderovites?.  However, our hero is not a typical Ukrainian nationalist, but rather marginal, trickster of this revolution, agitating against all the corrupted parties and oligarchic candidates. At his campaign tent taking pace a dialogue with the passers-by. During the dialogue it become clear, that Maidan protesters are also quite different in their ideological positions, and that if fact they do not have uniting all of them political program, except of the will to expel the president V.Yanukovych. At the same time, for some Maidaners V. Yanukovych is "lesser evil" of Ukrainian politics, than ?all the rest?. In conclusion, ?banderovite??, who is critical towards Yanukovich as well as to his opposition, is blamed in the breaking the opposition and collaborating with the president. But in fact, is it right?

|| LOCATION: Apartment Project | Hertzbergstrasse 13 Berlin | 12055 Berlin S-Ring Sonnenalle Bus M41/Hertzbergplatz ||  U-Herrmannplatz Bus M41/Hertzbergplatz

CROSS TALK sessions are initiated & organized by Tatjana Fell

CROSS TALK 4 is friendly supported by

APARTMENT PROJECT art space Berlin for interdisciplinary art projects & partnerships

||| www.apartmentproject.org

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

WEDNESDAY 6th NOVEMBER   |   2pm  - 6pm 

||| RADICANT NETWORKS & APARTMENT PROJECT invite you for a

||| ROUND TABLE & WORKSHOP  |  on the challenges of cultural organizations artists in Arab countries and Germany (in English language)

Deena Abdelwahed: Tunis/Tunesia
Dina Kafafy: Townhouse Gallery, Cairo/Egypt
Marwa Helmy: Al Mawred Al Thaqafy, Cairo/Egypt
Mirna Bamieh: Al Hoash Gallery, Jerusalem/Palestine
Mohamed Hussein: Freelance artist, designer and curator, Baghdad/Iraq

The round table is proposing a debate around the actual situation of the cultural independent institutions in the Arab countries and in Germany: 

• the role, the challenges, the future, especially in light of the political and economic changes and the impact on the work of cultural institutions,
• their role, their sources of funding,
• their management and funding models and its relationship with the society

Together with you we would like to discuss  the challenges of the cultural institutions and artists in the Arab countries and Germany. The aim of the round table is to exchange and share the ideas and practical experiences among the Arab and German participants, in an attempt to compare the situation or to find common ideas and cases, and this will be through comparing different and varied models of management and financing mechanisms, also the relationship with the community and with the state.  

The round table raises the following questions: 

• What are the challenges of the cultural work in the current stage ? And how they can be met?  
  
• How the mechanisms of funding of arts and culture can be developed? 
• Is there a change in the role of artists and cultural institutions in the light of the political changes?
• What is the ideal model of the relationship between the independent cultural institutions and the community (society) ? 
• What is the ideal model of the relationship between the independent cultural institutions and the state?  
  
  

Marwa Helmy, born in 1979, completed a Bachelor?s degree in French literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo, received a diploma in journalism at the Centre de Perfectionnement des Journalistes (Paris) in 2007 and then received her Master?s degree in cultural and media management at Senghor University in Alexandria in 2009. She presently lives and works in Cairo. She is the deputy manager of the not-for-profit organization Al Mawred Al Thaqafy, which supports the work and networking of artists in the Arabic world. She is also the manager of the cultural policy program in the organization. She also gained professional experience for example as a program coordinator in the Jesuites Association in Cairo and as an editor and translator for French and Arabic for the Egyptian Ministry of Media and Communication. She is working currently on her PHD in cultural policies in the Arab region.

Deena Abdelwahed, was born in 1989 and lives in Tunis. She studied interior design at the Superior Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis. She designed furniture for the firm Woodstore and worked as an administrator for the Semia Achour gallery in La Soukra. She was a coordinator and cultural advisor for the second Festival des Esprits Libres Tunisiens for photography, music, cinema, dance and sculptural art in Gabès 2012. Deena Abdewahed worked as an artist herself, singing with the jazz funk band So Soulful. She is interested in the influence of art and culture on social processes.Our guests are currently participating in the cultural management training organized by Goethe institute in Berlin and Hamburg

Dina Kafafy was born in 1985 and lives in Cairo where she received her Bachelor?s degree in integrated and communication management and art. She completed her Master?s degree in Fine Arts at Wimbledon College of Art in London. She taught at the Department of Performing and Visual Art at the American University in Cairo and is presently working as programme coordinator and responsible for the residency programmes of the Townhouse Gallery.

Mohamed Hussein, born in 1975, lives in Bagdad where he studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts. He received his Master?s degree in curating in 2009 from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Mohamed Hussein describes himself as a freelance artist, designer, curator and researcher.
He has exhibited his work at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Baladna Gallery in Amman (Jordan) and during the Ten Iraqi Artists exhibition in Frankfurt. He is interested in the boundaries between architecture, design and visual arts.

Mirna Bamieh was born in 1983, studied Applied Arts in Egypt and received a Bachelor?s degree in psychology and sociology in Ramallah. This year, she completed her Master?s degree in Fine Arts at the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design in Tel Aviv. She works as programme coordinator and curator for the Al Hoash Gallery in Jerusalem, which promotes and exhibits visual art by Palestinian artists. When Jerusalem was named the Arabic Capital of Culture in 2009, Mirna Bamieh was responsible for coordination of events.

||| LOCATION: Apartment Project Hertzbergstrasse 13 Berlin | 12055 Berlin             S-Ring Sonnenalle Bus M41/Hertzbergplatz || U-Herrmannplatz Bus M41/Hertzbergplatz

The round-table is organized by Tatjana Fell & Selda Asal

with the friendly support of Apartment Project

APARTMENT PROJECT art space Berlin for interdisciplinary art projects & partnerships

||| www.apartmentproject.org

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||