Marija Nemčenko
“In the search for allies: post-colonial links between SWANA and CEE”
“In the search for allies: post-colonial links between SWANA and CEE” Ph.D. project’s aim is to conceptualize different forms of imperialist subjugations that continue to influence the SWANA and CEE regions and to constellate shared decolonial futures across these peripheries, through my artistic research practice. My research centers on how modes of being and survival practiced in, for example, the alternative economies of street markets and permaculture in the collective gardens or communal land constitute shared standpoints between these regions. I see these standpoints as shared modes of survival and tools for resistance and worlding. Through deep listening, compassion, and camaraderie my artistic and socially engaged projects seek to support connections between regional paths of autonomy.
The proposed Ph.D. project is split into three subthemes: Interwoven Pasts, Present Absences, and Imaginative Futures. Interwoven Pasts will center on archival material, asking what past historical, political, and cultural links between CEES and SWANA constituted a shared history. Present Absences concern how and why these shared histories have been erased from popular memory and how intersectional cultural standpoints could serve as strategies for mending present divisions. Seeing these erasures as the outcomes of political and ideological conflicts, my research will uncover what influences, historical shape-shifting, and mythologies led to these disconnections. Following this inquiry, Imaginative Futures will sketch a proposal of what could be done to establish these relations anew. Adapting the principles of the original non-aligned movement ethos, such as the joint struggle against anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, occupation, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of aggression, and blending the ideas of Arab and Eastern European futurisms, a new vision of deliberately peripheral constellations will emerge.
Image: Žaliojo Kalno market // From Jonas Palius archive
Accessed at: https://www.delfi.lt/verslas/verslas/senieji-kauno-turgus-nuo-saziningos-prekybos-iki-rusiskos-tvarkos-tradiciju-77677067
