Who are we?

We are three young left-feminist experts on Eastern Europe with a focus on sociology who want to bring the region of Eastern Europe and the struggles of the people there closer to the people in Berlin.

What do we want to achieve?

Our aim is to interest people from different social and cultural backgrounds for Eastern Europe and to achieve a deeper engagement with the topic of protest art in Eastern Europe as well as with the societies in Eastern Europe. To realize this, we are using the following approach: on the one hand, artists from Eastern Europe will give an input about their work and society. On the other hand, participants will work artistically themselves and produce, with a self-chosen medium, their own artworks.

What exactly are we going to do?

In four workshop days and one or two voluntary evening sessions, we will approach the topic of protest art in Eastern Europe and the social background through short inputs (with a following discussion) by protest artists from different regions in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the participants will have time to create their own art and to use the art making process as a way of engaging with the new knowledge they got from the inputs. We will provide a room as the main location for all activities, which will also be available to the participants as a place to work on their own artworks during the times of the workshops. The artworks will be presented within the group and optionally also in a public space.

With whom do we want to achieve this?

The participants are English-speaking, creative people (minimum 18 years old) who are interested in learning more about protest art in Eastern Europe as well as the social context; are willing to question their own previous perspectives and who have a desire to experiment artistically with the themes of protest art and Eastern Europe. In addition, protest artists from Eastern Europe will be invited to present their protest art and tell us more about the social context.

Why is this important?

Eastern Europe is a region that is geographically close to us, they are societies that are historically, sociologically, and economically closely interwoven with the German society. Nevertheless, we usually only deal with their history, culture and way of life in a superficial way. Often, interest is only aroused when a negative event takes place in the respective countries, such as the mass arrests and violent crackdowns of the protests in Belarus after the 2020 presidential election, the shootings on the Maidan in Kiev in 2014 or Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine this year. The attention often only happens in a flash and is purely focused on the respective event, the social background is rarely analysed and understood. For a deeper understanding its therefore important to initiate discussion and exchange between people from different regions and social as well as cultural backgrounds.