“Your Past Is Our Future?”

On 13 January, we presented a pilot of our programme “‘Я выхожу!’ – Berlin meets Minsk” with an online discussion on the current situation in Belarus. A big part of the further planned programme had to be postponed due to lockdown.

As part of the event, a new issue of the magazine pARTisanka, edited by Tania Arcimovich, will be published in cooperation with HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Tania Arcimovich is an author, director and curator from Minsk. She studied theatre at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk and completed her master's degree in cultural studies at the European Humanities University in Vilnius. Since 2014, she has been curating exhibitions and realising cultural and educational projects together with the likes of the Gallery for contemporary art, Lohvinau Publishing House and international theatre forum TEART. From 2016 to 2019,  Arcimovich taught at the European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus. She is also the co-founder of the ziErne Performative Practices Platform and publisher of the magazine pARTisan / pARTisanka. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at the Justus Liebig University Giessen.

Olga Shparaga is a philosopher currently living in exile in Vilnius, where she works closely with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. She studied philosophy in Belarus and Germany, taught philosophy at the European Humanities University in Vilnius from 2001 to 2014, and was editor of the journal Novaja Eŭropa (“New Europe”) from 2006 to 2014. Since then, she has been a professor at the European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus. Shparaga has been a member of the feminist group of the Coordinating Council of the Opposition since its inception. Among her works are the pamphlet “Belarus! The Female Face of the Revolution”, published by edition.fotoTAPETA, and in 2021, Suhrkamp will publish her new book “Die Revolution hat ein weibliches Gesicht – Der Fall Belarus” (“The Revolution Has a Female Face – The Case of Belarus”).

Katja Artsiomenka is a journalist and freelance writer for radio. She studied journalism in Belarus and Germany and in 2016 received her PhD from the Dortmund Institute of Journalism. Since the winter semester of 2019-20, she has been a professor of journalism at the University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management (HMKW) in Cologne. Her journalistic work has won awards such as the European Civis Media Prize for Integration and Cultural Diversity.