PROCRUSTEAN BED OF BELARUSIAN ART: 10 CENTURIES?
The exhibition «Ten Centuries of in Belarus Art », which opened at the National Art Museum in March, was immediately named as «unique» by critics, visitors and mass media. Nevertheless, despite all the advantages, the importance of such a project in the country’s culture and its historical role, what can such a form of presentation warn us about? What things already dealing with our present days does it speak about? What is it that we are losing now and in what way are we becoming witnesses of the history formation?
Michail Hulin: A Right not to live in underground
About difficulty to speak out publicly in Belarus, about his personal experience, and that is why he is not engaged in political art, says Belarusian artist Michaił Hulin
Uladzimir Parfianok: Life with Photography
There are more than 20 project series in the portfolio of famous Belarusian photographer Uladzimir Parfianok — there has been a photo a day. Piles of these photos have actually formed a diary of the epoch, or the edge of epochs, the new reality where only author’s lifestyle remains unchanged. This lifestyle is photography.
Moskaleva and Shachlevich. Dialogues – 2
Photo artists Galina Moskoleva and Vladimir Shachlevich are at the origins of the modern Belarusian photography. In the mid-1980s, they got to the studio of Valera Lobko, though each in their own way. Later on, the phenomenon of this studio was marked as Minsk School of Photography. Their lives have come different ways. Galina and Vladimir live and work in Moscow, but occasionally they visit Minsk and remind their colleagues of those recent and at the same time already distant times.
Game Is NOT Over!
‘Afterwards’ (a reality show for the theatre in one act, by Viaćasłau Inaziemcau, InZest Theatre).
The subject of the person and the system is brought up in most of the performances staged by the InZest plastic movement theatre, since it came into being in the early 1980s as a protest against the system. The company have made the game and carnival as a way of reviving dead rituals their guiding principle. Resistance to the system still goes on, but the ‘baby’ now realises that belonging to it is the main rule of the game. Human body is a system, too. It restricts the individual’s freedom, imposing desires and directing one’s will. What am I and why am I, then? Afterwards is woven of infinite political, social, philosophical and religious questions.
About romanticism, gender and democracy
Warsaw Theatre Meetings 2012, took place this spring, has once again confirmed not only the artistic activity of Polish Theatre. But the most important what the audience could see is Polish Theatre is ready to react to events occurring inside of the country and abroad.