Events | PPV

Ten years after russia began its war on Ukraine, and three years after it launched its full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian war effort remains heavily dependent on localised grassroots volunteer efforts. From the provision of food and shelter to internally displaced people, to the purchasing of cars and ammunition for the military, there is next to no aspect of Ukrainian society which is not now dependent on these networks.

Kseniia Kalmus is one of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who now dedicate their lives to volunteering. Like many others, she splits her efforts between civilian support, repairing damaged homes in deoccupied and formerly-frontline territories, whilst also organising a drone-making workshop in Kyiv, where ordinary Kyiv residents come to handcraft drones for the frontlines.

This interview with Kseniia will explore the links between the civilian and military sides of volunteering. As western governments and NGOs mark off aid as being reserved for one or the other, there is a clear understanding within Ukrainian society that both must exist together. Without drones to hold russian troops back, there would be no homes under Ukrainian control left to repair. Simultaneously, without these repairs in heavily damaged areas, civilians would have no homes to come back to. Furthermore, in a war where the majority of the army were civilians three years ago, these distinctions become increasingly futile. Kseniia will speak about the processes surrounding her volunteering, both in relation to drones and homes, and the movement from civilian to military aid, interrogating the blurred lines between them.

The discussion will be led by Ada Wordsworth, founder and director of KHARPP (the Kharkiv and Przemyśl Project) and a PhD student at UCL SSEES.

Drone emoji on poster by Vecteezy

Oct 1

PPV #43: QUEER ART AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIOPOLITICAL CHANGE IN GEORGIA

15 October 2024

5-7pm, SSEES. Online only. Register here.

On 17 September 2024, Georgia’s parliament approved the ruling party’s legislative proposal that seeks to curtail the rights of queer people in the country. The package of anti-queer bills seeks to erase “LGBT propaganda” from public spaces, educational settings, and broadcasting. It also prohibits gender-affirming medical treatments and legal transitioning for trans people or adoptions of children by LGBTQI+ people. The timing is not insignificant: the next general election is scheduled for 26 October of this year, and the move is thus widely seen as Georgian Dream’s attempt to stoke up and exploit queerphobic sentiments to score political points.

The legislative assault marks a new chapter in the struggle for queer rights in the country. While the country’s elites have never been strangers to queerphobic rhetoric and tolerated or condoned violence against queers, this flagrant exploitation of the legislative power to erase queers and make the conditions in which they live even more inhospitable presents a new reality.

This roundtable will invite three Georgian queer artists, Giorgi Kikonishvili, Marika Kochiashvili, and Uta Bekaia, to reflect on whether and how art can be used to enact sociopolitical change in the current conditions. They represent different approaches and disciplines, but their work reflects two key points. First is the primacy of the context: solutions cannot be imported from the West without regard to the local history, culture, and politics. Since societies do not follow the same trajectory, any theory of change must be based on an understanding of the situation on the ground. Second, and consequently, the liberal framework of LGBTQI+ rights is poorly equipped to address the most urgent issues many queer people in the country face: violence, poverty, homelessness, or hindered access to health services, to name a few. It also fails to appreciate how institutions such as tradition or religion – exploited in anti-queer campaigns – can be repurposed to serve as a source of empowerment and perhaps even to establish a common ground with the national collectivity.

This roundtable is part of PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics & Aesthetics) a seminar and events platform running under the auspices of the UCL SSEES FRINGE Centre.

About the speakers:

Marika Kochiashvili is a London-based Georgian queer photographer and sculptor whose work explores sexuality and intimacy through close attention to bodies.

Giorgi Kikonishvili is a Georgian queer activist, publicist, music promoter, and co-founder of the Creative Collective Spectrum, a union of artists, researchers and publicists which studies the currents of Queer sexuality, emotions, politics and social life.

Uta Bekaia is a Georgian multi-media artist based in New York and Tbilisi, whose work is a speculative recreation of ancestral rituals restaged for a Queer utopian future.

The roundtable will be introduced and moderated by David Rypel, PhD candidate at UCL SSEES. David’s ethnographic research explored what is involved in living a “secure life” as a queer person in Georgia.

May 21

PPV #42 (PPV x COURTAULD): KIAER on THE COLLECTIVE BODY

29 May 2024

6-8pm, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square Campus, WC1X 9EW

Collective Body: Book launch and panel discussion on the limits of socialist realism

Join us for a panel discussion to mark the launch of Christina Kiaer’s new book Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism (University of Chicago Press, 2024), which offers a new account of Socialist Realism not as a totalitarian style but as a fiercely collective art system. Christina Kiaer is joined by Maria Mileeva, Michał Murawski, Alex Potts and Sarah Wilson.

Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body presents painter Aleksandr Deineka’s corporeal version of Socialist Realism as an alternate experimental aesthetic that activates affective forces for collective ends.

Christina Kiaer traces Deineka’s path from his avant-garde origins as the inventor of the proletarian body in illustrations for mass magazines after the revolution through his success as a state-sponsored painter of monumental, lyrical canvases during the Terror and beyond. Deineka figures in this study not as a singular master, in the spirit of a traditional monograph, but as a limit case of the system he inhabited and helped to create.

Collective Body shows how the art of the October Revolution continues to capture viewers’ imaginations by evoking the elation of collectivity, retaining the potential to inform the art-into-life experiments of contemporary art.

The event is organised by Maria Mileeva, Lecturer at The Courtauld, in collaboration with the FRINGE Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity (UCL) and PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics and Aesthetics).

Admission free, pre-booking essential