Politicization of dance and movement practices in the post-socialist contexts.

Abstract

The research addresses collective movement (bodily and political) in post-socialisms, its affects, in particular — exhaustion, and the temporality of revolutionary event, through the methodology of a movement score. It examines choreographies of protest during the 2020-21 anti-governmental uprising in Belarus: strikes, protest marches and neighborhood assemblies. Deriving from crisis of public space as site of politics both in authoritarian states and contemporary democracies, it questions, how do new forms of collective choreographies enact political agency? Approaching exhaustion as a quality of political movement, connecting vulnerability and political agency, it highlights how protest choreographies of the 2020–21 uprising provided a different perspective on political action and change, shifting focus from the protest as a singular heroic act, towards the emergence of new horizontal, often invisible social relations, that establish non-linear revolutionary temporality.

Short biography

Volha Sasnouskaya is an artist, writer and cultural organiser born in Minsk, Belarus, based in Vienna, Austria. Her artistic and research practice intertwines performance, visual arts, text- and workshop-based activities, addressing forms of political organizing, protest choreographies, movement scores and intersections of festivity and the political. Member of WHPH / Decentric Circles self-organised platform https://workhardplay.pw/ and the artistic-research group Problem Collective, focused on strikes, archives, reading practices and tools for engagement with overseen histories and social struggles https://problemcollective.org/. Her individual and collective works were presented in Kunsthalle Wien, e-flux, Tanzquartier Wien, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Kyiv Biennial, Biennale Matter of Art (Prague), HKW (Berlin), HAU (Berlin), Manifesta Biennial (Kosovo), documenta fifteen, among others.