Participants: Aet Annist, Brigit Arop, Lība Bērziņa, Edvinas Grinkevičius, Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė, Airi Triisberg. Moderator: Andra Silapētere
Activism today is an essential form of political participation that seeks changes to the numerous wicked problems of today - from environmental issues, pollution, climate change, and the depletion of natural resources, to the equal right to health, safety, and education for everyone. Activists use a variety of engagement strategies, not only protests, but also a wide range of contemporary forms of participation and solidarity, including cultural, artistic, and broader creative expressions that call on society to become aware of and influence ecological, economic, social, and political change at both individual and systemic levels.
In the Baltic States, the most prominent manifestation of political and environmental activism occurred in the 1980s – intertwining ecological ideas with political activities, mainly criticism of the Soviet regime and its extractivist politics. Clean-ups, rallies, and symbolic actions drew attention to both environmental problems and the wrongs of Soviet colonialism and played an important role in regaining independence. This socio-political memory of forms of participation and solidarity, and the capacity to engage the wider community in bringing about ecological, economic, and political change, is essential in reaching out to today's generation of activists.
The participants will discuss the commonalities and differences between activism in the Baltic States today and in the recent past. How much continuity is there between the 1980s and today? What strategies can we learn from the past? Can the success of activism in the past also become a challenge in contemporary situations? How can advocacy for the environment and environmental justice be combined with political demands for system change? What is the role of performativity in such movements? What is the relationship between activism and contemporary art then and now?
Aet Annist is Associate Professor at UNESCO Chair and Department of Ethnology, University of Tartu and Senior Researcher at Tallinn University Estonian Environmentalism Research Group. She has researched and published on the topics of social dispossession in post-socialist collapse, migration of young people, and heritage management and contributes into both media and art scenes of Estonia as an anthropologist. She is also a climate activist, primarily in the UK.
Environmentalism in Estonia was rooted in the quiet small-scale dissidence present across the society, and had a vital role in the 80s Singing Revolution. However, such a base for activism dissipated considerably after the collapse of the Soviet system, with the population seemingly having run out of the ability to protest. In her talk Annist will look at the situation this has created for the new environmental movements, such as the forest and climate protests in the 21st century.
Brigit Arop (she/her) is a freelance art worker based in Tallinn with a background in semiotics, who mainly curates and writes. She is interested in queer-feminist artistic practices that use material-sensitive approaches, text, autotheory and humor to shift stale values. Arop has a bachelor’s degree in Semiotics and Cultural Theory from the University of Tartu and a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her last curatorial projects were the duo exhibition of Sarah Nõmm and Maria Izabella Lehtsaar entitled "Beauty in the Belly of the Beast" in Draakoni Gallery, Tallinn (2023, co-curated with Anita Kodanik), and the group exhibition "Greetings, and Whatever Customarily Restores a Bond About to Break" in Kogo Gallery, Tartu (2023). Since 2022 she is a visiting lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She co-runs the artist-run space Infinite Life Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia and performs with the dumpster-diving group Üle Prahi Collective.
Arop’s presentation will focus on feminist curatorial practices through her experience working as a freelance curator. She will briefly introduce how she has researched the topic of female friendship and worked with this within the formats of a reading group and an exhibition. Asking why female friendships must be visible in contemporary visual culture and how this can be considered radical, the presentation will conclude with reference to the ongoing projects on the same topic.
Lība Berziņa is art therapist, designer and project manager. Lība has more than 15 years experience in non-formal education working in several non-governmental organisations mainly on topic of art and inclusion. In 2014 she started to practise as an art therapist and to work with different age people (kids, teens, adults, seniors) in different environments - camps, museums, nursery homes and others. Since 2018 Lība started to work in Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, where her serious passion for contemporary art begun. Now Lība works for Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), where she leads several social projects. Lība cooperates with several other contemporary art institutions too to enhance accessible and inclusive art and culture environment in Latvia.
Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė is an artist, curator and researcher. She bases her practice and research on the methodologies of people's history, feminist and queer ethnography and theory. She has carried out several studies on the labor history of Lithuania, focusing mainly on women's work stories from the Soviet time and the nineties. In Kaunas Artists' House together with friend and curator Edvinas Grinkevičius, Agnė has been working on the project "Obscene West", the interdisciplinary multifaceted program of presentations, exhibitions and performances exploring changes in the cultural context related to sexualities during a period of social, political and cultural turmoil in Lithuania in the 90s.
In addition to working as a cultural worker, Agnė has relevant experience in activist organisations especially in Kaunas. From 2016 until today together with the collective she runs social centre EMMA, she also took an active part in forming the labor union G1PS (May 1st Labour union) which mainly is organised around the precarious labor conditions. During the discussion Bagdžiūnaitė will present the landscape of Lithuanian left and the influences of organisations she is currently taking part in.
Edvinas Grinkevičius is a curator, cultural worker and drag/performance artist, currently based in Kaunas. The broad spectre of his practice consists of curatorial and artistic activities, all connected through an active interest in leftist and queer-feminist politics and practices, which aim to provide artistic practices with a transformative potential especially within institutionalised structures. Grinkevičius has been working as a curator at the Kaunas Artists’ House since 2017. In 2019, he started to curate a programme “Unlearning Eastern Europe”. In 2021 he, with art historian and curator Rebeka Poldsam started the Baltic queer art and politics network “Black Rose. Black Carnation”. Since 2016 Grinkevičius has been one of the initiators and co-curators of WE ARE PROPAGANDA, the counter-culture queer movement. The same year marked the beginning of performing terrorist drag dj performances under the artist’s alter ego – drag persona Querelle.
Airi Triisberg is an independent curator, writer, and educator based in Tallinn. Their practice is often located at the intersection of political education, self-organisation, and knowledge production. They work on issues such as gender and sexualities, illness/health and dis/abilities, social movement politics, self-organisation, and collective care practices, struggles against precarious working conditions in the art field and beyond.
This is final discussion in the research project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Post-Colonialism in the Baltics” analyses the imprints of postsocialism and postcolonialism in the Baltic region. The project is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn.
Photos from the performance "All the Birds Sing Beautifully", directed by Krista Burāne