"Cultural Heterologies and Democracy II".

The 1980s and 1990s were marked by events around the world that radically changed the political order, people’s beliefs and attitudes, and the entire cultural and intellectual orientation of much of the globe. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War stand out as the most important changes, in the shadow of which the events in Yugoslavia and important changes elsewhere are often overlooked by European commentators. These events, taken as a whole, have been seen as part of broader processes of democratization, even as, at the same time, this period was also marked by outbreaks of extreme nationalism and radical religious ferment.

The planned conference invites participants to reflect on the following questions:
– In what ways does democracy manifest itself in the culture of the transitional period of the 1990s?
– What are the common features and differences of the transition period in different post-socialist countries?
– What different theoretical frameworks can be used to analyze the culture of this period?
– What are the new forms of cultural negotiation between different cultural traditions and elements?
– How might we describe the way cultural imaginaries and experiences of temporality have changed?
– Which transgressive tendencies arose to challenge the narrative of imaginary unity between different cultural spheres?
– How is one to describe the dynamic of the forces at play in the transition between the mentality of social collectivism and the new liberal individualism?
– How, if at all, has the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 altered understandings of the transition period and its narratives?

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Marju Lauristin (professor emeritus, University of Tartu, Estonia)
Dorota Kołodziejczyk (University of Wrocław, Poland)
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (King’s College London, UK)

PROGRAMME

June 26, Wednesday

8.00 Registration, welcoming coffee
9.00-9:30 Opening (Aula)
9:30-11:00 Keynote 1: Dorota Kołodziejczyk, “The Relentless Law of Recurrence: Right Populism Against Postcommunist Anarchic Heterotopias” (Aula)

11:00-11:30 Coffee break (A-500)

Session 1: Spaces in Transition
11:30-12:00 Ingrid Ruudi, “Spaces for Spirituality and Healing in Post-Socialist Estonia” (A-501)
12:00-12:30 Jan Nissen, “Between Velocity and Perplexity. From State Representation to Public Space: On the Urban Changes in East German City Centers” (A-501)
12:30-13:00 Kamilė Steponavičiūtė, “Contours of Ecclesiastical Revival: (Post)Soviet Catholic Churches in Lithuania (1988–2001) and Their Architecture” (A-501)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

Parallel session 2: Democracy and the Political
14:00-14:30 Tora Lane, “Freedom From or Through the Political: Mamardashvili and Podoroga on Totalitarianism and the Political” (A-501)
14:30-15:00 Radka Kunderová, “Redefining the Political in Emerging Democracy: Czech Theatre after 1989” (A-501)

Parallel session 3: Decolonial Perspectives / Colonial Remnants
14:00-14:30 Maija Burima, “Juggling with the Forbidden in Colonial Hybrid Texts: “What is kolkhoz?” and “Regardless” by Imants Ziedonis” (A-403)
14:30-15:00 Irena Peterson, “Identity and Belonging: Decolonial Perspectives on Halyna Pahutiak's “The World's Eye” and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (A-403)
15:00-15:30 Liina-Ly Roos, “The Kaleidoscope of Colonial Memories in Sulev Keedus’s “Georgica”” (A-403)

15:30-16:00 Coffee break (A-500)

Parallel session 4: The Other and its Discontents
16:00-16:30 Yana Hashamova, “Diaspora (Identity) Politics and its Discontents: Views through Digital and Social Media” (A-501)
16:30-17:00 Tiina Ann Kirss, “The Pitch of Change: The Global Estonian Diaspora in the 1990s and 2000s” (A-501)
17:00-17:30 Elena Pavlova, ““Kto my zdes?”: discussion about a future of Estonia in Russian Estonian mass media in 1990” (A-501)

Parallel session 5: Conventions in Transition
16:00-16:30 Piret Viires, “Expansion of the Canon: Literary Turn of the 1990s in Estonian Literature” (A-403)
16:30-17:00 Jurgita Staniskyte, “From Metaphoric Strategies to Postmodern Tactics: Paradoxes of (A)political on Lithuanian Stage” (A-403)
17:00-17:30 Zita Kārkla, “Recovering Feminist Sensibilities: Latvian Women's Writing of the 1980s” (A-403)

17:30-18:00 Coffee break (A-500)

18:00-19:30 Film screening: Eine murul (Luncheon on the Grass, dir. Priit Pärn, 1987) and Hotell E (Hotel E, dir. Priit Pärn, 1992) as metaphorical reflections of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet experience. Commentary by Mari Laaniste and Andreas Trossek (Aula)

June 27, Thursday

Parallel session 6: History and Memory I
10.00-10:30 Sofya Khagi, “Lenin in 1991: Alternative History, Demonology, and Hallucinogens” (A-501)
10:30-11:00 Tanja Petrović, “Ambiguities of (Self)historicizing of the 1980s in Slovenia” (A-501)
11:00-11:30 Indrek Ojam, “Brecht Estranged. Mati Unt’s Last Novel “Brecht at night” (1997) as an Intervention in the Memory Politics in 90’s Estonia” (A-501)

Parallel session 7: Performativity and/as Democracy
10.00-10:30 Lina Michelkevice, “Fluxist Democracy? Reclaiming Fluxus in Early Independent Lithuanian Art” (A-403)
10:30-11:00 Laine Kristberga, “Performance Art as a Form of Dialogue” (A-403)
11:00-11:30 Riina Oruaas, “Contemporary Dance as a Manifestation of a Democratic Society: Yes, but…” (A-403)

11:30-12:00 Coffee break (A-500)

12:00-13:30 Keynote 2: Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Post-Soviet Cultural Mélange: Looking for the Missing Ingredient in Russia and Beyond” (Aula)

13:30-14:30 Lunch

Parallel session 8: The Adventures in Avant-Garde
14:30-15:00 Aare Pilv, “Past Poetics as Catalyst of Future. Replay of Decadence and Avant-Garde in Estonian Poetry 1985-1995” (A-501)
15:00-15:30 Zane Kreicberga, “Ignoring the History as a Strategy: The Aesthetic Avant-Garde of Latvian Theatre in the 1990s” (A-501)
15:30-16:00 Nicola Foster, “Art and Democracy Post 1989: Szeemann’s “Beware of Exiting Your Dreams” (2001) and “Blood & Honey” (2003)” (A-501)

Parallel session 9: Shifting Identities
14:30-15:00 Lauma Mellena-Bartkevica, “Rock-opera “The Bearslayer” (1988): Socio-Historical Perspective and Research Challenges” (A-403)
15:00-15:30 Mari Laaniste, “Hotel E: an uncomfortable journey into post-Soviet subjectivity” (A-403)
15:30-16:00 Ingrida Kelpšienė ja Costis Dallas, “Shifting Lithuanian identity: contemporary perceptions of the 1990s on social network sites” (A-403)

16:00-16:30 Coffee break (A-500)

16:30-18:00 Session 10: Round-table: How to study the transition period? Particularities and generalizations (A-501)

18:45-20:00 A guided tour at KUMU
20:00-22:00 Conference dinner

June 28, Friday

Session 11: Transforming Relations
10.00-10:30 Krista Kodres, “Making it Public: New Contact Zones for the Visual Arts in Transition Period Estonia” (A-501)
10:30-11:00 Evita Badina, “Turbulent Transitions: Exploring Anglophone Literature in Latvia’s Translation Scene During the Turn of the 1980s and 1990s” (A-501)
11:00-11:30 Maarja Merivoo-Parro ja Brigitta Davidjants, “Design or Default: Exploring Agency in Estonian Music Lovers’ International Relations in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s” (A-501)

Session 12
10.00-10:30 Jaak Tomberg, “The End of History at the Beginning of History: Paradoxes of the Postmodern in Post-Soviet Estonia” (A-403)
10:30-11:00 Merily Salura, “Temporal Liminality: Boredom and Waiting in Viivi Luik's 'The Beauty of History' and Peeter Sauter's 'Indigo'” (A-403)

11:30-12:00 Coffee break A-500

12.00-13.30 Keynote 3: Marju Lauristin, “Analyzing Culture in Transforming Society: A Morphogenetic View”

13:30 – 14:30 Lunch

Parallel session 13: History and Memory II
14:30-15:00 Nataliya Zlydneva, “Forward to the Past: The "Soviet Discourse" in Soviet/Russian Art from Non-Official to the “Actual” (1980–2010) Art” (A-501)
15:00-15:30 Stella Pelše, “Dismantling the Wall: Resistance and Change in Latvian Art” (A-501)
15:30-16:00 Hanna Maria Aunin, “Transformations of the Memory of Soviet Mass Deportations in Estonia: From “Awakening” (1989) to “In the Crosswind” (2014)” (A-501)

Parallel session 14: Institutions in Transition
14:30-15:00 Ineta Šuopytė, “The Vanishing Remains of Administrative-Culture Centres and Communities of Former Collective Farms in Lithuania” (A-403)
15:00-15:30 Juliusz Huth, “The Transformation of the Institutional System of Fine Arts and Debates Around Salon-Type Exhibitions in Post-Socialist Hungary” (A-403)
15:30-16:00 Viktorija Jonkutė, “The Years 1918 and 1990 in the Lithuanian and Latvian Cultural Press: Comparative Perspectives” (A-403)

16:00-16:30 Coffee break (A-500)

Session 15: New Imaginaries
16:30-17:00 Alexandra Yatsyk, “The Body of the Nation: Polish Bionationalism in Art and Films After 1989” (A-501)
17:00-17:30 Sándor Földvári, “Democratic and Autocratic Regimes as Reflected in the Interpretation of the Ukrainian Culture by Hungarians, as Reactions to "The Other", in Different Times and Different Socio-Political Structures” (A-501)
17:30-18:00 Katherina Yeremieieva, “Statues could not imagine that turning points would come”: Monuments and Temporality in Soviet Caricatures of the Late 1980s and Early 1990s” (A-501)

June 29, Saturday

A tour in Tallinn: “From kiosks to high-rises: a tour of built and imagined architecture of the 1990s”. Tour guide: Ingrid Ruudi
10:00-12:00

The conference will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja puiestee 7, Tallinn, Estonia).

Conference fee is 100 € for waged academics and 50€ for students and the unwaged. Participation is free for Ukrainians.

The conference will be held in English. Registration deadline is June 10, 2024.
For further information, please visit the conference web page: https://nyydiskultuur.artun.ee/en/events/international-conferences/cultural-heterologies-and-democracy-ii/

Organizing Committee:
Virve Sarapik, Estonian Academy of Arts
Epp Annus, Tallinn University
Luule Epner, Tallinn University
Regina-Nino Mion, Estonian Academy of Arts
Jaak Tomberg, University of Tartu
Piret Viires, Tallinn University

The conference is being organized by the Research Group of Contemporary Estonian Culture, which unites scholars from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn University and the University of Tartu. The research is funded by the project PRG636 “Patterns of Development in Estonian Culture of the Transition Period (1986–1998).”