In conversation with guest artists, actionists, and researchers of Russian actionism’s current wave, Katrin Nenasheva will discuss the very periodization of this type, what forms activism can take in the 2020s, and how it is affected by the pandemic.
Pavel Mitenko and Sylvia Chassaing’s 2017 article “Third-Wave Actionism: The Art of Free Action in the Time of Reaction” introduced the authors’ own look at the periodization of Russian actionism. While attributing the 1990s actions (starting with the action E.T.I. Text by the movement Expropriation of the Territory of Art (E.T.I.)) to the first wave, and actions staged between the second half of 2008 and the beginning of 2010 (including those by the groups Voina (War) and Pussy Riot) to the second, what Mitenko and Chassaing identify as third-wave actionism embraces performances enacted in the mid-2010s by a new generation of artists, from Party of the Dead to the art activist Darya Serenko.
The speakers will discuss the influence of early actions on the artists of subsequent generations and the way activism in Russia will evolve (if it will at all) after the pandemic.
Moderator – Katrin Nenasheva
Participants: Pavel Mitenko, Tatyana Volkova, Maria Alyokhina, Roman Osminkin, Party of the Dead
Please note that this event is 18+