If Disrupted, It Becomes Tangible: Anti-imperial notes on contemporary art in Belarus and beyond
Lecture by Aleksei Borisionok
Deriving from the speculative topography of the Museum of Stones in Minsk, Belarus, that brings together deep time temporality and post-socialist immediacy – prehistoric landscapes, IT-labour and counter-cultural communities, curator and writer Aleksei Borisionok will share observations on the state of contemporary art in Belarus. Since the massive social uprising against rigged presidential elections of 2020, (post)industrial labour unrest and various forms of anti-war resistance against the russian full-scale invasion to Ukraine, multiple artistic practices delved into questioning existing infrastructures of power, logistics, extractivism and warfare. Departing from his and Antonina’s Stebur curatorial research for If Disrupted, It Becomes Tangible. Infrastructures and Solidarities beyond the post-Soviet Condition exhibition (National Gallery of Art in Vilnius), Aleksei proposes to read them through the notion of anti-imperialist disruption, comradely aesthetics and infrastructural theory.
Aleksei Borisionok is a curator, writer and organiser, who currently lives and works in Vienna. He is a member of artistic-research Problem Collective and working group of Work Hard, Play Hard! He writes about art and politics for various magazines, catalogues and online platforms such as e-flux Journal, L’Internationale Online, Partisan, Springerin, Paletten, among many others. He is currently a fellow at Vera List Center, New York, and, together with Katalin Erdődi, he is co-curating the upcoming edition of the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague (2024).