nGBK, Berlin Өмә Exhibition Public Program
April, 2023
Epistemic inequality: By centring the bodily experience of russian nuclear colonialism, Keto Gorgadze and Ptuška reveal a structural inequality that enables the gradual destruction of bodies. According to geographer Thom Davies, “epistemic inequality” invalidates the experiences of colonialism and decolonial resistance, thus paving the way for long-term violence. In the soviet context, the images of fake unity produced epistemic inequality. An examination of the visual culture of the “friendship of the people” will expose how russification tried to rob these people, many of whom resisted russian colonialism, of their future.
Clashing temporalities: The extended temporalities of disease and contamination revealed by “Thyroxia” are in direct conflict with the temporalities of progress produced by the Soviet visual culture of the “peaceful atom.” Interrogating this temporal clash, this lecture looks at how the Soviet visual culture developed the infrastructural visions of progress that sustained the deathworlds of colonial violence.
Resistance: Introducing Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Georgian resistance to the deadly effects of Soviet nuclear colonialism, “Thyroxia” demonstrates the possibility of a future not occupied by russia. Expanding on that, this lecture discusses other resistances to russian nuclear colonialism and their versions of the future