bal conference 2024
repeated words lose their meaning
October 4-5, 2024
Screenings, presentations, discussions and afterparty
bal is a transdisciplinary comparative collaboration project delving into the realms of art and culture in the Baltics and the Balkans. This project serves as an active interspace, fostering diversity tension, and opening avenues for cultural mutation and transformation. The project's framework encompasses residencies, exhibitions, conferences, and publications while its research extends across all Baltic States and the post-Jugoslav space.
The project aspires to engage artists, curators, and researchers across diverse disciplines. It aims to provide an accessible exploration of two European regions, examining them through the lenses of queer*feminist perspectives, endeavors related to humanity's survival and environmental restoration, collective care practices, and identity politics. With the focus on language as the central theme of 2024.
Central to bal is the geographical positioning of the northern and southern peripheries of Eastern Europe, challenging the conventional categorization of the region as homogeneous from a global perspective. A dynamic remixing of shifting political, cultural, ecological and aesthetic stances is necessary to overcome Europe's asymmetry, as opposed to suppressing or assimilating diversity within Western narratives.
October 4, 6-9 PM
Screenings
Videos/films:
Maria Kapajeva, the enforced memory (2022), 13 min
Maria Kapajeva, 10 Ways Not To Become the Invisible Woman After 40 (2020), 8 min
Natasha Nedelkova, Identity Tissues (2020), 12min 26s
Teja Miholič, Nuclear Force is the Most Powerful Force in the World (2021), 3 min
Teja Miholič, So That Humanity Can Survive (2019), 7 min
Location: Improper Walls, Reindorfgasse 42, 1150 Vienna
October 5, 11 AM-4:30 PM
Presentations, discussions
Participants: Augustas Čičelis, Viktorija Kolbešnikova, Sveta Grigorjeva, Nina Dragičević, Hana Ćurak
Moderators: Hana Čeferin, Luīze Nežberte
Location: Seminar Raum 2 at Angewandte (University of Applied Arts Vienna), 1010 Wien, Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2 & ONLINE
Program:
11 - 11:30 AM
Arriving, coffee, tea
11:30 - 11:55 AM
Introduction, welcoming speech, presenting the new issue of the bal publication
12:00 - 12:30 PM
Augustas Čičelis, Viktorija Kolbešnikova
Queer archiving as (self)empowerment
“išgirsti” queer archive
The stories of people condemned to the margins remain on the margins. These stories are contradictory, inconsistent, and their existence is bound by silence and secrecy. Queer people’s stories are trapped between absence and presence. In this way, stories become queer not only because they are about queer people. They become queer because they resist being generalized, condensed into a single narrative, straightened out.
Augustas Čičelis and Viktorija Kolbešnikova will talk about the story of išgirsti queer archive in the background of other existing queer archiving practices in the region, share theoretical and practical knowledge and personal experiences about queer history and its presentation in the field of culture and art.
Augustas Čičelis and Viktorija Kolbešnikova are curators of the išgirsti queer archive and organisers of the Vilnius Queer Festival Kreivės as well as the queer project space in Vilnius. Both are active participants in the queer and feminist movements, have a background in gender studies, and base their practice in the broader fields of social justice, support, self-education and self-organising.
12:30 - 1:00 PM
Hana Ćurak
Language and idealogy in Sve su to vještice memes
"Neither the original nor the translation, neither the language of the original nor the language of the translation are fixed and persisting categories. They don’t have essential quality and are constantly transformed in space and time." - Boris Buden.
In this talk, we will try to understand the process of cultural translation on the example of collages produced by the Sve su to vještice platform.
Hana Ćurak (b. 1994) is a researcher, writer and producer. Her eclectic experience involves work in strategic communication, visual arts production, project management and advocacy in Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is a founder of “Sve su to vještice” (It's all Witches), an independent communication platform for the promotion of a feminist approach to security and radical democracy through digital tools and humour. Since its creation in 2015, this platform has established a new visual form of feminist communication that has been adopted by many activists across the region.
1:00 - 1:30 PM
First discussion
BREAK
3 - 3:30 PM
Nina Dragičević
Auditory Poverty and its Discontents
A sonic event enters, hoping to add to the audible sphere, perhaps disrupting it somehow. A sonic event is a relational event, and its source relies very much on the reaction of its listeners. Such an event is no longer merely a matter of sense, e.g., hearing; it has infused a sphere of power relations, perhaps even the political economy. That being said, can one’s use of voice affect their ability to pay the utility bills?
Dr Nina Dragičević is a poet, writer, and a composer, the author of the books Kdo ima druge skrbi (Škuc, 2014), Slavne neznane (Škuc, 2016), Med njima je glasba (Parada ponosa, 2017), Ljubav reče greva (Škuc, 2019), To telo, pokončno (Škuc, 2021), Kako zveni oblast (Založba /*cf, 2022), Ampak, kdo? (Škuc, 2023), and Auditory Poverty and Its Discontents (Errant Bodies Press, 2024). Dragičević is the recipient of the 2023 Werner Düttmann Fellowship (Akademie der Künste, Berlin), the 2023 Dr Ana Mayer Kansky Award, the 2021 Jenko Award, the 2020 Župančič Award, two 2018 Knight of Poetry Awards, and was a 2018 Palma Ars Acustica finalist.
3:30 - 4:00 PM
Sveta Grigorjeva
On being a „female poet“ and an „Estonian-Russian identity-poet“ in 21. century Estonia
Sveta Grigorjeva reflects on the reception and controversy that surrounded her debut in the Estonian literary scene, questioning the implications around women in poetry and discussing the experience of a multi-layered identity.
Sveta Grigorjeva (1988) is an Estonian choreographer, dancer, and poet. Her performances include "Rebel Body Orchestra" (2017), "TEKHNE" (2020) and "FAKERZ" (2021), "Dances to Dream, Res(is)t and Sleep to" (2022), which won the Best Dance Performance at the yearly Estonian Theater Awards. Grigorjava has published three poem collections: "Who is Afraid of Sveta Grigorjeva?" (2013), "American beauty" (2018) and "Frankenstein" (2023). Counted among Estonia’s “young angry women” of poetry, her writing is characteristically brash and wears no kid gloves. Grigorjeva prefers the temporal over the timeless, lavishly dealing sharp critique to the social issues we face today. In 2022, she received her second master's degree from the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, and in the autumn of 2023 she started her doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater as a junior researcher.
4:00 - 4:30 PM
Second discussion
October 5, 10 PM
Afterparty
In collaboration with the Queer Yugo Pop Party
On decks: luize b2b kirils, Marie Cherie , Le Catt
Location: celeste, Hamburgerstraße 18, 1050 Wien
Supported by
MA7, BMKÖS, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Lithuanian Embassy in Vienna, SKICA, Art & Science department at University of Applied Arts Vienna
Team
Hana Čeferin, Merete Väin, Urtė Špeirokaitė, Julija Karimžanova, Miloš Vučićević, Ajda Ana Kocutar, Justina Špeirokaitė
Graphic design
René Vogelmann