Ural Odyssey
'Ural Odyssey' was a series of 10 events in partnership with Yekaterinburg History Museum over Zoom where invited creative practioners could discuss their practices, lead workshops or create participatory work. The project allowed for connections and digital collaborations, fostering meaningful community from a distance between artists in the UK and Russia. The programme was devised by Kasia Sobucka, Irina Leifer and Anastasia Terminova.
Schedule, February-March 2021
2.02 Kasia Sobucka
4.02 Marysia Lewandowska
9.02 Ilya Polyanskikh
11.02 Anastasia Martynova
16.02 Nahum
18.02 Harun Morrison
23.02 Beata Wilczek
25.02 Natalia Janula
2.03 Katarzyna Krakowiak (rescheduled to 8.03)
4.03 Polina Ivanova
All presentations at 14:00 GMT / 19:00 YEKT
Kasia Sobucka
Curator and cultural producer, and founder of Arts Territory, Kasia Sobucka will talk about her experience of working with the themes of diaspora and exile, and will also raise the question of similarities and differences between the concepts of home, belonging and place. The lecture delved into a number of =activities of the Arts Territory project, which stimulates dialogue between artists, curators and different communities in Europe and beyond.
Marysia Lewandowska
This presentation, titled ’Institutional Healing’, asks: what would an institutional model of culture that dares to confront the material enormity of the world’s art production look like today? What is the responsibility of artists, curators, critics and commissioners to address their own roles? There is already so much in need of careful examination resulting from unresolved histories, unequal treatment of indigenous cultures, gender bias and market de-regulation. Our collective task is to identify the spaces, methods and relationships that led to where we find ourselves, while discussing possible remedies and cures for existing and emerging institutions, particularly in the moment of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Marysia Lewandowska is a Polish-born artist based in London since 1985. She has been exploring the public functions of archives, museums and exhibitions often resulting in conceptually driven projects reflecting on the social and immaterial public realm. In 2009 she has established the Women’s Audio Archive followed by a publication ‘Undoing Property?’ co-edited with Laurel Ptak in 2013. Her work has been presented by Tate Modern, Moderna Museet, Muzeum Sztuki and Whitechapel Gallery. The latest installation It’s About Time occupies the Pavilion of Applied Arts at the 58th Art Biennale in Venice. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has recently included the Enthusiasts Archive project in their collection.
Ilya Polyanskikh
The co-founder of the architectural bureau Plotinka and the architect of the ‘City Can’ Foundation, Ilya will share his knowledge in the field of tactical urbanism and speak about how to create a comfortable urban environment together with people in both Yekaterinburg and London.
Can creative industries replace industrial monsters? Are local creators the future stars of Russia's creative economy? How strong is the role of design in the process and experience of identifying and supporting local places of power and future creative leaders?
Anastasia Martynova
This presentation from Anastasia Martynova, head of the Yekaterinburg photography museum Metenkov's House, is dedicated to the experience of the art-residence series ‘New stories of Yekaterinburg’. The program was conceived to make fresh visual images of urban life visible, to introduce the local community to the possibilities of photography as a tool for exploring space, to draw attention to the need to find new ways to talk about a place and to show pictures, and to involve different groups of residents in the creation of works of visual art.
Nahum
Humans evolve attuned to the cosmic spectacles at dawn and dusk. Our eyes have always been in subtle interaction with the stars at night. We have made sense of our earthly existence by connecting dots in the heavens. We have measured time by watching the sun dance, and we have explored every corner of the Earth by following the celestial bodies.
This talk, ‘First Skies’, is about how other cultures have created meaning and a deep understanding of humanity's place in conviviality with the cosmos through cultural expressions. In this presentation Nahum remixes his artistic work with his current research and inspirations. This talk features video works, stories and illusionism to share his views on art and space.
Harun Morrison
Harun Morrison is a member of The They Are Here collaborative, each project of which has its own unique structure of collaboration and development. The effect is achieved through the contribution to artistic projects of the experience of professionals and non-professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds. In this session, Harun will share a text-in-progress, titled ‘A Thousand Years of Zoom: Rough Notes & Anecdotes on Exhibition-Making on Lockdown’.
Beata Wilczek
Beata Wilczek presents ’Fashion, Death and Dreams’, speaking about her ongoing research into the currently shape-shifting notion of fashion as an ecosystem and site of knowledge production. Infinite garments flow in front of us on social media channels, as we acknowledge their toxicity and environmental impact. Fashion is embedded and entangled at the same time in the climate crisis and the digital revolution. During the talk, Wilczek will address these new emerging fashions: digital, virtual, critical, mindful, regenerative and conscious. What is fashion becoming? What knowledges does it produce? What future fashions do we dream of?
Beata Wilczek (b.1986, Poland) is a critical fashion practitioner, educator and researcher based in Berlin. In 2020 she founded a digital consultancy Unfolding Strategies and is currently doing a PhD in Fashion Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.
Natalia Janula
This mixed reality video-lecture, called ’Physiologies of Artefacts’, will look into work methodologies, repurposing, modern anthropologies, material thinking, the embodied mind and reciprocity. During the lecture, the artist will share the history of the creation of her works of various forms: sculptures, short films, and performances based on man and nature, inspired by research in the fields of anatomy, physiology, interspecies relationships and folklore.
Natalia Janula is a London-based, Polish multidisciplinary artist whose practice consists of mixed media assemblages, sound, sculpture, video, kinetics, photography, speculative wearables, CGI and performance. Rooted in an interest in speculative narratives, her practice examines natural environment, the concept of functionality and the exploration of the body’s positioning within synthetic surroundings, often with an element of levity. Her work looks at anatomy, intimacy and rituals around female, medicine, water and hybrid protagonists.
Katarzyna Krakowiak
Katarzyna Krakowiak presents her work in sound and architecture, including ’Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers’ from the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, where she installed hidden speakers in the walls and floor of the Polish Pavilion.
The aim of this artist's work is to create an acoustic environment that allows viewers-listeners to become part of a work of art and get acquainted with architecture at the sound level. Katarzyna Krakowiak explains how she creates sculptures, performances, objects, compositions and sound installations that explore the languages used to describe architecture
Polina Ivanova
This special lecture comes upon request from Arts Territory, in the interest in learning more about Constructivist architecture in Yekaterinburg. The presentation will be conducted by Polina Ivanova: architect, director of the Podelniki architectural group and participant in the project to restore the White Tower as a monument of Constructivism within the city.
'Ural Odyssey' was held as part of the UK-Russia Creative Bridge 2020-21 program, organised by the Culture and Education Department of the British Embassy in Moscow with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development and the British Council.
