Utopian Unemployment Union /London 23
Drawing in Social Space Project 2
I was invited to be the Project Artist for ‘Drawing in Social Space Project 2’, a knowledge exchange project with Camberwell College of Arts Fine Art and Drawing Room in London exploring drawing beyond the gallery walls.
Always feel more friend than a teacher and this workshop fully served this intention, which was exciting!
The outcome of the process was a performative drawing session in St. Michaels Church with the art students and local mothers from PACT, which is a sort of a caring club for local migrant community who are gathering regularly at the church to support their wellbeing. It was the most organic place for the workshop which was planned with and supported by curators Renee Odjidja (Camberwell) and Misty Ingham (Drawing Room).
I proposed to extend the idea of drawing to the scale of the body and came up with the preposition for the original design of the “VESTS WITH ATTACHED PENCILS ” allowing to draw and dance at the same time. The workshop starts with short breathing and movement exercises, which Renee kindly shared with the group, and then we talk using the spiral conversation technique (round talk with the care control over the time) about well-being, and what it means for each of the participants.
I proposed to think about Wellbeing as something which embraced also the dark side of each of us and asked Misty to read part of my proposal for this encounter which was on the abstract notion of wellbeing, spontaneousness and movement.
“We are all migrants and defending the idea of the rights of migration, we are interested in moving matters. A combination of moving and drawing might bring us to the de conventionalisation of the idea of drawing as just seating in one place and focusing on the particular subject in the classical way.
When we are lost the time is our friend.”
After that, with the help of Irish music, everybody starts to draw on the carefully prepared paper over the windows. Wonderfully, Misty took the initiative to announce the start of this process.
Migrant mothers came with kids and there was a special place for them that was organized so that they can draw as well.
After the drawing session was accomplished and the mothers left us, we talked with students and staff from PACT about the process.
Club of Unpredictable Drawing
Performative encounter with PACT + Students
Spontaneous drawing session is dedicated to Well Being.
Wellbeing is an abstract notion and because of the nature of its abstract universality it is open for our interpretations. I propose to think about the wellbeing through the lenses of imagination and unpredictability. Unpredictability can be resolved through the spontaneousness, which in turn can be understood as a result of the freedom to do the action which is coinciding with our entire feeling of truth, which in other turn can be understood as a creation of the entire free space which might lead to the act of the creativity.
The other notion I propose to explore during our encounter is the movement. We are all migrants and defending the idea of the rights of migration we are interested in moving matters. A combination of moving and drawing might bring us to the de-conventionalization of the idea of a drawing as just sitting in one place and focusing on the particularity.
When we are lost the time is our friend.
Practical realization :
The group of 4 students, 2 observers ( Misty and Renee ), several parents ( some of them might be with kids ) and artist Gluklya are gathering in the circle . Gluklya invite everybody to share a thought about well-being. What it might mean for each of us. Gluklya also explain the rule of this session: everybody has to speak not more than 3 min. We will do one or two rounds of speaking like this. One of the Observers is controlling the time and after every 3 min is saying: Clock!
After that, when all the ideas about the well-being is collected, the wests with the drawing tools will be introduced to people and everybody is welcomed to dress them on.
Gluklya will explain the rules: Everybody are invited to move freely in the room, trying to mark the surface of paper by the attached drawing tool.
We might do two sessions: one with closed eyes and other with open eyes
Students are invited to listen carefully one by one each of the parents and write down or record the impressions of different outcome: with open eyes and close eyes.
After the session Gluklya and students and all participants are connecting stains made by unpredictable drawing session together by the red color.
Session finished.
The graphic outcomes might be used by Pact in their future campaigns.
Matras Platform
At the start of this year Khalid Jone ,one of leaders of We Are Here movement visited Gluklya studio. I was very happy to meet him as after Carnival of the Opressed Feeling from 2017 we have not sustain the diologue.I have explain him the idea of dealing with Matrasses outside ,as i saw a lot of them in the streets of Amsterdam. Since Pandemc started people are througing a lot of stuff out , more then ever and especially matrasses. What a perfect place to write messages , imagine !
Clinic of Multiplicities
The idea behind the project is the decolonization of the subject of Heath.
The notion of Radical Empathy includes the Critical and Educational approach. The latest observations pointed on the lack of compassion and solidarity among our cultural community. The competitiveness, which is typical for the capitalist society with the ruling power of the free-market is blocking the resources of empathy and politically/socially framed creativity. I would like to oppose it by proposing the practice of Radical Empathy and Meaningful Care * referring to the notion of Global Solidarity.
The slogan Global Solidarity came from the article “The world after Coronavirus” by Yuval Noah Harari. It was one of the first articles that appeared at the very start of a global pandemic. Global Solidarity is used in the article along with Empowering the citizens as opposed to New Surveillance – a new form of control that the government is developing for its citizens. The new type of surveillance and control, scarier, and more sophisticated than ever, allows “them” to look under our skin. We have to be prepared for that and develop new types of protection and resistance, to stay healthy, keep our freedom ,to have enough air around ourselves and to be not totally controlled.
The Notion of Care is a multilayered subject.
On one hand, I would like to stay not ignorant of people’s needs, and my statement from 2002 when the Manifest “The place of the Artist is on the Side of the Weak” was written hasn’t changed since that time. On the other hand, to be able to help anybody, you should be very aware of the context of “other”, the one you want to give the helping hand to, with good intentions.
How should we think about Normality and Health now, within the Pandemic? How do we stay within a healthy spirit that is “a bit dirty” in a sense that nothing we can imagine now except the hybrid way of uniting with each other ??
What are the methods we, as artists and thinkers, have to invent to stay “healthy” (free and fearless) within the power structures which aggressively surveil the notion of “Health”?
The Plan of the project :
A series of research-oriented performative seminars which will result in an exhibition and performance or seria of the performances.
For organizing it I am deriving from my previous experiences of the projects Utopian Unemployment Union and Carnival of the Oppressed Feelings.
Seminars will be structured :
-Investigation of the NAZI conception of body and Heathy society, referencing it with the concept of Art of Germany 30-40 s )
– Conceptualizing the idea of the society as a body
-Examine the notion of Care, study the different concepts of Radical and Social Care.
The topic of Care is complex and has to be explored according to the current de-colonial debates and re-tinking the principles of modernity.
-Research about different approaches toward relationships between body and mind including the revisiting the notion of the Witchcraft ( by reflecting upon it ) and the healing rituals of Indonesian Indigenous tribes.
-Reading groups on the topic
I would like to construct a situation where participants can share their knowledge and experiences with a cross-pollinating result.
The idea is to encourage a cohort of Amsterdam based Artists and Thinkers mixed with the refugees and expats, spanning different generations and dialogical identities to rethink the notion of care drawing on indigenous, matriarchal, and, queer pieces of knowledge. The result of these encounters will be an exhibition assembling expertise, artefacts, storytelling, and new tools activated in the space by durational performance. Additionally, all the sublime efforts will be accumulated into the major performance under the working title: Clinic of the Sun Care.
Debates on Division 2019
Debates on Division in BOZAR Brussels 2019
Utopian Unemployment Union (UUU)
Performative Laboratory )
The Utopian Union of the Unemployed is a project that brings together poets, refugees, academiks,migrants, artists and institutions in the united aim of developing a pilot model for a new type of a perforative laboratory that exists at the junction of art, economics, progressive pedagogy and the social sciences. The goals and objectives of the project are to research new methods to integrate newly-arrived refugees united them with local creative thinkers into the European Community.
UUU constituted as composition of meetings, collective walking, talks, reading groups, performative encounters. UUU can be resulted as art project or as a new relationships which can lead to long lasting collaboration based on friendship and trust .
These project starts on 2010 in St-Petersburg from the process of making video of the coinciding behaviour of the Ballerinas and Migrants from the Uzbekistan who are coming to Russia to work at the low payed and most unpleasant jobs. The idea to work with binary oppositions came from the study of the dialectical approach of the state of things .
Here is the piece of the text from these project: Our basic concept is to explore cultural encounter through the interaction between two different groups, one elite and another precarious and marginalised. For example, in Russia we are planning to bring together ballerinas and construction workers. Russian classical ballet by many is perceived as the quintessence of Russian cultural tradition, and a major cultural ‘export’. As an art form, it is characterised by the desire for order, beauty and harmony. As a cultural phenomenon, however, ballet incorporates the idea of empire, power and discipline. As an institution, it continue to be dominated by ethnic Russians. Construction work, to the opposite, is perceived as polluted, disorderly, and undesirable activity. Like in many other countries, construction workers come from undocumented migrant background, and are received with disrespect and exclusion.
In the case of Russia, we would like to make these groups to collaborate: ballerinas will come to construction sites and to observe and participate in the work done there. They will be trained and supervised by construction workers. The migrant workers from construction sites will visit Vaganov School where they, in turn, will learn the language of ballet. Each set of participants will produce an item – a dance which might lead to the installation – expressive of the difference in professions and life styles of the groups. The process will be filmed and participants interviewed after each session.
VALENKI-BALLET /2011
The sketch to the performance of the Utopian Unemployment Union N4 . Relating with the chto delat song spiel “The Nederland’s 20XX “
UTOPIAN UNEMPLOYMENT UNION. Genk, Belgium, 2010
SKETCHES TO THE UPCOMING VIDEO INSTALLATION UTOPIAN UNEMPLOYMENT UNION N 3 GYNAIKA INSTITUTION /Antwerpen
Debates on Division in Oslo /Teens struggle 2017
Carnival of the Oppressed Feelings 2017
Carnival of Opressed Feelings
Michail Bachtin [From Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics]
Carnival is a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act… The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, that is noncarnival, life are suspended during carnival: what is suspended first is hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it… or any other form of inequality among people
Carnival of Opressed Feelings happened in Amsterdam in October 2017 .The hybrid of the performance and political demonstration -it is the event summarizing the seria of the workshops and encounters with refuges living at formal prison Baijlmer Bajes. It connected different people together : students ,artists ,activists, academics, people of different ages ,believes and statuses.
COF started from Bijlmer Bajes and finished at Dam square with several stops on the way.The stops where selected conceptually ,with the idea to tell refugees some alternative story about society or make a small performance. The storys was told by : Sari Akminas( (Journalist from Alepo),Khalid Jone (Activist,We are here),Ehsan Fardjadniya (artist ),Dilyara Valeeva, (Sociologist ,Uva) Erick Hagoort(curator, writer) and others and in the end Gluklya with Theo Tagelaers read the UUU Manifesto.
The structure of the performative body of Carnival is referring to the political demonstration and consists of different parties.
1) Potato Eaters party
2) Monsters party
3) Language of Fragility party
4) Recycling prison party
5) Spirits of history party
Carnival last 4 hours and brought together around 150 people.