New First Unexpected

SOUND OF SILENCE: ART DURING CENSORSHIP

Oleg Yushko, from the series "Implications," 2002-07

Panel Discussion

Sunday, January 29, 2012, 4:00 PM

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd Street, New York, NY
Admission: Free with RSVP through
http://www.acfny.org/event/art-during-dictatorship/

A panel of artists, curators, critics and activists will discuss the recent developments in contemporary Belarusian art that have emerged in response to political and economic turmoil, state-initiated mass repression and abuse of human rights. The discussion will focus on artists' courageous positions and contributions to the popular protest movements in Belarus against the dictatorial regime of President Lukashenko, and on the possibilities for individual artists and for communities of artists to act under state repression.

Moderator:
Marek Bartelik (MIT), art historian, art critic, President of AICA International

Participants:
Nelly Bekus (University of Warsaw), philosopher, sociologist
Olga Kopenkina (NYU-Steinhardt), curator, art critic
Tatsiana Kulakevich, journalist, member of Belarusian-American Youth Association
Sergey Shabohin, artist

Panel discussion in conjunction with the exhibition Sound of Silence: Art during the Dictatorship at EFA Project Space.

TOUGH BOOMERANGING FOR THE KREMLIN

From my piece for Bomb Magazine's Web site on the 40th birthday of Octobriana and the Russian Underground:

In 1970, Petr Sadecký slipped across the border of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia with a cache of illegal comic books and the fantastic story of the dissident Russian artists who risked everything to create them. A year later, the publication of Octobriana and the Russian Underground, with its lurid illustrations and the suggestion of secret organizations staging drug-fueled orgies behind the Iron Curtain, was just the thing to send the anxious Western imagination over the edge.