AFTERMATHS and TRANSFORMATIONS: October Revolution 1917 Revisited

Lectures and Performances
Lina Ben Mhenni (Tunisia)
Ilya Budraitskis (Russia)
Aglaya K. Glebova (USA)
Jeremy M. Glick (USA)
Njideka Stephanie Iroh (Vienna)
The New Barbizon Collective (Israel)/[Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi and Natalia Zourabova]
Piro Rexhepi (Macedonia)

Exhibition
Jamika Ajalon (USA)
Bojan Djordjev and Siniša Ilić (Belgrade)
Muzaffer Hasaltay (Vienna)
Linda Porn Davis (Barcelona)
Onur Serdar (Vienna)

Intro

The Russian Revolution of 1917, which began with the February Revolution and culminated in October with “ten days that shook the world” established the first workers’ socialist state in history and is therefore the preeminent event of the 20th century.  Moreover, the two other “events” of the 20th century, namely the two world wars, were connected to carnage and death with no emancipatory impulse.

When thinking of freedom and change, the October Revolution palpably echoes with two other historically momentous revolutions: the Haitian Revolution, the anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection of 1791-1804, and the French Revolution of 1789, the ideological, political and social upheaval in the political history of France and Europe by those who were not recognized as the new labor force or as agents of change.

One hundred years later, this interdisciplinary international project engages with the contradictory and turbulent moment of the October Revolution from the perspective of the present. As we revisit the aftermaths and transformations of this historical event, we ask:

• How did the mythologies, ideologies, and realities of the October Revolution shape disparate aesthetic, cultural and activist practices?
• What kind of radically transformative subjectivities might be envisioned in moments of revolution?

Noit Banai and Marina Gržinić

Program
Public events, free admission

Monday, 23 October 2017
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor)

15.30
Inaugural opening of the project, exhibition opening, and conference commencement

Greetings:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andrea B. Braidt, Vice Rector for Art and Research

Presentation of the project:
Noit Banai, Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Vienna
Marina Gržinić, Professor of Conceptual Art, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Exhibition:
Jamika Ajalon (USA): Umbuzi: why freedom, video, 2011
Bojan Djordjev and Siniša Ilić (Belgrade): Orientation in 100 revolutions – pictorial, textual and video report, installation, 2017
Muzaffer Hasaltay (Vienna): The choice / Decision, video, 2017
Linda Porn Davis (Barcelona): Violence in Mass Media/ Feminist Days: Alliances and Sex Work, video, 2015
Onur Serdar (Vienna): Liquid Machine, video, 2017

CONFERENCE (1.)
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor), Film and TV Studio

17.00
Poetic performance: Spoken Word and Reflections by Njideka

Is the Night for Poets and Dreamers? Sisters of Utopia Seize the Day
The performance will consider art’s potential to change the world, while asking where this “stage” for change might appear. How are the dreamers dismissed? Is poetry for the lovers? Can the lovers change the world?
CV: Njideka Stephanie Iroh (Vienna) is a London-born Black Austrian writer, artist and activist based in Vienna. In a combination of spoken word, performances and lectures, she deals with topics such as language, power relations, decolonization, Afrofuturism and the embodiment of knowledge.

18.30
Lecture: Ilya Budraitskis (Russia)

Heritage without heirs? The anniversary of 1917, the Kremlin’s historical policy, and commitment to the Event
This lecture will focus on the anniversary of the Russian revolution in the framework of contemporary Russian historical policy. The latter is based on the idea of a struggle to preserve a heritage that is under constant attack by external competitors and internal enemies. This is an artificially created version of national history as mythological time in which everything is repeated and people’s actions are deprived of all autonomy.
CV: Ilya Budraitskis is a historian, political writer and curator, member of the editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine, platforms Openleft and LeftEast. He is the author of Dissidents among dissidents, 2017.

Tuesday, 24 October 2017
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor)

10.00–19.00
Exhibition on view

10.00–14.30
Film seminar proposed by Marina Gržinić and Tjaša Kancler
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor), Film and TV Studio

Lumumba (2000), 1h 55min, dir. Raoul Peck
Godhead (2016), 3.49 min, dir. Jamika Ajalon
¡Cuba Sí! [Cuba Yes!] (1961), 53min, dir. Chris Marker
The Last Angel of History (1996) , 45min, dir. John Akomfrah

CONFERENCE (2.)
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor), Film and TV Studio

15.30
Lecture: Lina Ben Mhenni (Tunisia)
The Tunisian Revolution, a success?

In December 2010, Tunisians stood against the dictatorship in their country. In less than one month, they succeeded in ousting the dictator who had oppressed them for more than two decades. They thus announced the beginning of a series of revolt movements that shook the whole Arab region. Lina Ben Mhenni asks if these movements ‒ known as the “Arab Spring” ‒ are still an issue.
CV: Lina Ben Mhenni is an activist, the author of the popular blog “A Tunisian Girl,” a human rights defender, former teaching assistant of linguistics at Tunis University (Faculty of Human and Social Sciences), freelance translator and writer.

17.00
Lecture: The New Barbizon Collective (Israel) [Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi and Natalia Zourabova]
The Influence of Socialist Realism on the work of the New Barbizon Group

In this lecture, we will consider Soviet art, which for political reasons turned out to be outside Western artistic discourses. Post-Soviet artists considered it irrelevant. Today, artists and collectives such as the New Barbizon are increasingly turning to their Soviet heritage and rethinking its influence.
CV: Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi (1976, Kiev, Ukraine), immigrated to Israel in 1991. She lives and works in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Her works have been shown in Israeli art museums and galleries throughout Europe and in the US.
CV: Natalia Zourabova (1975, Moscow) graduated with an MFA from The Russian Theatre Academy in 2000, and from The University of Fine Arts, Berlin, in 2003. In 2011, together with four others, she founded The New Barbizon Group. Zourabova’s paintings  have been exhibited internationally.

18.30
Lecture: Jeremy M. Glick (USA)
Haitian Revolutionary Repetitions: Thought, Praxis, Performance

C.L.R. James’s classic 1938 study The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution is organized by way of a triangulated narrative structure. James consistently and dialectically triangulates the Haitian Revolution with the coeval French Revolution and the Twentieth Century Russian Revolution.  My talk will examine three sites: questions of self-determination in the Russian Revolution and Pan African legacies, insights from C.L.R. James narrative structure of The Black Jacobins, and Sergei Eisenstein’s engagement with the Haitian Revolution in his curriculum choices as professor at the film school in Moscow.
CV: Jeremy Matthew Glick is Associate Professor of African Diaspora literature
and modern drama at Hunter College. He is also the Hunter College Chapter Chair of the PSC-CUNY Union. Professor Glick has recently received the Nicolas Guillen Philosophical Literature Prize for his 2016 book, The Black Radical Tragic from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Wednesday, 25 October 2017
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Studio Building, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna, MZS, Multipurpose-Space, 2. OG (Second Floor)

11.00–19.00
Exhibition on view

14.00–16.00
Workshop with students and the speakers from the conference
University of Vienna, Department of Art History, Garnisongasse 13, Universitätscampus Hof 9, 1090 Vienna, Building 9.2, Seminar Room 1 (Ground Floor)

CONFERENCE (3.)
University of Vienna, Department of Art History, Garnisongasse 13, Universitätscampus Hof 9, 1090 Vienna, Building 9.2, Seminar Room 1 (Ground Floor)

16.20
Closing remarks
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Claude Theune-Vogt, Dean, Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna

16.30
Lecture: Piro Rexhepi (Macedonia)
On Islam and the Left: Overlapping Legacies of Muslim Decoloniality and Marxist Praxis

This lecture considers the intertwined histories of Muslim and Marxist decolonial politics by examining the archive of joint political practices and the relations between decolonial Muslim and socialist struggles. Rexhepi treats the legacies that have shaped the contemporary world so that the two histories are (problematically) regarded as mutually exclusive.
CV: Piro Rexhepi holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde and is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. He has teaching positions at the State University of New York, City University of New York and New York University.

18.15
Lecture: Aglaya K. Glebova (USA)
Propaganda in Question. Photographing the Gulag under Stalin

Co-sponsored by the Kunsthistorische Gesellschaft
Although often described as invisible, the Soviet Gulags were extensively documented by the state. While these images are sanitized ‒ almost no images of the Gulag as atrocity have survived ‒ thousands of photographs of the camps are preserved in archives all over Russia. Few have been published or studied. This talk examines a range of works, from Aleksandr  Rodchenko’s infamous photo-essay of the White Sea-Baltic Canal to virtually unknown photographic albums.
CV: Aglaya K. Glebova is Assistant Professor in the departments of Art History and Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently the Axel Springer Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She completed her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014.

Conceived and organized by: Noit Banai and Marina Gržinić
Assistant project organization: Betül Seyma Küpeli
Technical Support: Muzaffer Hasaltay and guillotine.cc

Special thanks for support and cooperation to Eva Blimlinger (Rector, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Andrea B. Braidt (Vice Rector for Art and Research,  Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Claudia Theune-Vogt (Dean, Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna), Jeremy F. Walton (Max Planck Research Group Leader, “Empires of Memory: The Cultural Politics of Historicity in Former Habsburg and Ottoman Cities,” the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), Göttingen, Germany), Dorit Margreiter, Claudia Kaiser, Sabine Dortschy, Linda Klösel, Sabine Rigler, Michael K. Schwarz, Sibylle Schwarzkogler, Richard Reisenberger, Bettina Henkel, Walter Seidl, Gregor Pirgie, Elisabeth Hajek, Bojan Radovič, Valerija Zabret, Urša Bonelli Potokar, and the many others who have supported this project.