Madina Tlostanova: Asking the other question‘: interimperial, anti/post/decolonial, post-state-socialist, semi/peripheral artistic entanglements as paths to refuturing

Introduction by author and theoretician Mariia Vorotilina from Ukraine.


Feminist intersectional principle of ”asking the other question” (Matsuda) is an important approach in the interpretation of artistic entanglements weaving together colonial-imperial and ideological forms of “duress” (Stoler) and struggling to come up with viable forms of “re-existence” (Alban) and worlding otherwise. These artistic endeavors are important in any effort to imagine possible ways to refuturing. The talk will focus on some of the conceptual difficulties of such a specific intersectional approach and touch upon several art works and projects addressing this problematic in generative and refuturing ways.

Madina Tlostanova is a feminist thinker and fiction writer, professor of postcolonial feminisms at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests include decolonial thought, particularly in its aesthetic, existential and epistemic manifestations, feminisms of the Global South, postsocialist human condition, fiction and art, critical future inquiries and critical interventions into complexity, crisis, and change. Her most recent books include What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), A new Political Imagination, Making the Case (co-authored with Tony Fry, Routledge, 2020), Decoloniality of Knowledge, Being and Sensing (Centre of Contemporary Culture Tselinny, Kazakhstan, 2020, Kazakhian translation published in 2023), the co-edited volume Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues. Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice (co-edited with Redi Koobak and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, Routledge, 2021) and the most recent experimental monograph Narratives of Unsettlement. Being Out-of-joint as a Generative Human Condition (Routledge, 2023).


Lecture was held at the following symposium in Prague:

MAKE VOICES BE HEARD
Decolonial reflections on power and racism
in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia

December 15. and 16. 2023
Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague


Symposium program:

Introduction by Noemi Smolik and Adam Vackar
Madina Tlostanova, keynote
Joanna Warsza, keynote
Alexander Etkind, keynote
FATA Collective (Jeanna Kolesova, Keto Gorgadze)
DAVRA research group (M. Joldybek, Z. Mirzalieva, S. Ismailova)
Furqat Palvan-Zade
David Tišer
Alexandra Garmazhapova
Peter Kašpar/Denis Kozerawski
Roundtable moderated by Jörg Heiser

For some years now, questions of colonialism, its legacy and the way how to address this legacy have been central themes of contemporary art. It is noticeable that while artists and theoreticians from North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Arab countries are represented in exhibitions, symposia and debates on this topic, representatives from countries that were subject to the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union are simply not present.

The war in Ukraine has not only exposed Moscow's colonial claims but also revealed an ambivalent relationship between Western countries and those in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. While Western countries sought to address the security concerns arising from Moscow's colonial claims, insufficient attention was paid to the security, respect, and self-determination needs of these countries.

Therefore, it is necessary to ask: Why is it that in the West, hardly any attention is paid to the experiences of these countries? Why a supposedly binding global knowledge about colonialism and racism is produced without the inclusion of the experiences of the people from these regions, as witnessed by the absence of representatives from these countries in the current postcolonial debate? It is time for the people of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia to raise their voices.

The symposium in Prague, initiated by Hope Recycling Station and the working group it has launched at CCA Berlin in spring 2023, has set itself the task of making these voices heard.

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