The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW Program: Week 1
The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW will open at the Red Hall of the Kyiv’s House of Cinema with the lecture “Repoliticizing the French 68” by the philosopher Jacques Rancière on Friday, 11 May at 19:00.
The project will take place on May 11–25 in the Kyiv’s House of Cinema in the format of an international forum for art and knowledge with participation of such outstanding contemporary philosophers and historians as Jacques Rancière (France), Chantal Mouffe (Belgium), Aleida Assmann (Germany), Agnes Heller (Hungary) and Alexei Yurchak (USA). The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW explores the political and cultural heritage of the revolt and struggle of 1968, considering the antinomies of this moment for the West and East of Europe fifty years onward.
In his lecture “Repoliticizing the French 68” on Friday, May 11 at 19:00 Jacques Rancière will explore the motivations and practices of the French May 68 movement, which involved the University system in the context of capitalist domination, revealing what politics consists of in terms of the power of collective invention: the invention of names to deconstruct social identities; the invention of actions to split apart the mediations which define the consensual order; the transformation of the material and symbolic uses of space; and the autonomous unfolding of accelerated time. Such inventions are usually thought of as the manifestation of spontaneous and ephemeral revolt. Yet it can easily be ascertained that it is those momentary disruptions of the normal state of things that bring into existence the temporality of politics.
The lecture will be held in English with simultaneous translation into Ukrainian.
Jacques Rancière is emeritus professor at the department of philosophy of the University of Paris 8 where he taught from 1969 to 2000. He has written extensively on social emancipation, literature, cinema and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. He is notably the author of Proletarian Nights (1981), The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (1994), The Politics of Aesthetics (2000), Films Fables (2001), The Emancipated Spectator (2007), Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art (2011) and The Lost Thread: Essays on Modern Fiction (2014).
Saturday, May 12 at 16:00 the presentation “Superstructure,” by the Amsterdam-based design studio Experimental Jetset will take place in the Blue Hall. Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen will present their ongoing research into the notion of the city as a platform for (graphic) language. They will focus on four main themes: Constructivism, the Situationist International, Provo, and Post-Punk. The presentation will take the form of a slideshow and incorporate examples from the collective’s own work.
The event will be held in English.
Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam-based graphic design studio founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. Focusing mainly on printed matter and site-specific installations, they have worked on projects for a wide variety of institutes, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou, Dutch Post Group, and Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2007, a substantial selection of work by Experimental Jetset was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (New York). In 2015, Roma Publications (Amsterdam) released a monograph entitled “Statement and Counter-Statement: Notes on Experimental Jetset.” Between 2000 and 2013, Experimental Jetset have been teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam). They are currently teaching at ARTEZ Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem). In 2017 EJ developed the design for The Kyiv International – Kyiv Biennial 2017 and in 2018 for The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW.
The event will be held in English.
Sunday, May 13 at 16:00 artist talk by Igor Grubić will take place in the Blue Hall. The artist will present the project “366 Liberation Rituals,” which consists of different micro-political interventions into the public space that he was doing on an everyday basis throughout 2008, and part of 2009. The point of departure for the project was the 40th anniversary of 1968: Igor Grubić refers to the heritage of conceptual art practices of the former territories of Yugoslavia, the films of Jean-Luc Godard, and the cultural strategies of the late 60s and early 70s.
The event will be held in English.
Igor Grubić has been active as a multimedia artist since the early 1990s. His work includes site-specific interventions into public spaces, photography, and film. He is known for his activism and his consideration of public space as a means of expression. In 2000 he started to work as a producer and author of documentaries, TV reportage, and socially-engaged commercials. His work has been exhibited at various international institutes and at different artistic and cultural events. He has been awarded several times.
The full program of events can be found here: http://vcrc.org.ua/68-now/.
Admission to all events will be free of charge.
Organized by Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Emblem by Experimental Jetset, Amsterdam 2018
Institutional Partners: De Balie (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), European University Viadrina (Frankfurt (Oder), Germany), KrytykaPolityczna (Warsaw, Poland), Medusa Books (Kyiv, Ukraine), tranzit.cz (Prague, Czech Republic).
With the Support of Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Goethe-Institut Ukraine, Prince Claus Fund.