Participants
Marina Grzinic is a theorist and artist from Ljubljana. She is one of the major contemporary theoretical and critical figures in Central and East European culture. She is professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She publishes extensively, lectures worldwide, and has been involved in video art since 1982.
Michail Ryklin is one of the leading contemporary Russian philosophers. Currently he is a senior fellow at the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata at the University of Cologne, professor emeritus at Humboldt University, and a senior fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. Ryklin is the author of multiple books, most recently, Book about Anna (2014), devoted to his late wife Anna Alchuk. Alchuk was one of the artists, writers and curators charged with “religious intolerance” for being part of an exhibition in Moscow in 2003.
Sreten Ugricic is a philosopher, librarian, and the author of nine books, whose prose has been selected in several anthologies of contemporary Serbian literature. In January 2012, he was dismissed from his position as the director of the National Library of Serbia, which he held for eleven years, after publicly supporting freedom of speech and reading. He was accused of terrorism and forced by a political threat to leave the country and live abroad. He is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
Jasmina Tumbas is assistant professor of performance studies in the Department of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo. Tumbas completed her doctoral degree in art history and visual studies at Duke University in 2013. Her teaching and research fields focus on modern and contemporary art and theory, histories and theories of performance, body and conceptual art, art and activism, politics of contemporary visual culture, and critical theory.
Organizers
Irina Aristarkhova, associate professor of art and design, history of art, and women’s studies, U-M; Tatjana Aleksic, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature, U-M.
This event is part of the series, "Material Culture and Social Change in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia." What is the role of material culture in defining national identity in everyday practices and in solidifying or fostering resistance to the state’s control of that definition? From home décor, housing projects, clothing, broken stones, graffiti, or visual arts, participants in this series highlight the importance of objects and “things” in the making of social life and politics and their transformation.
Sponsors: Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies; Avant-Garde Interest Group; Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design; Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies
