(formerly Post Eastern Soviet Europe reading group)
What does it mean to be Eastern European (in the Netherlands)? What is our position in knowledge and art production? How can we research our own (art) histories, while they are not included in the Academy’s discourse? How do we live together and define ourselves without sticking to outdated geopolitical terms?
This is a social setting, an informal kitchen conversation, a reading club, support group, a political cafe, an art collective. We are here to be lost and found, to learn from and with each other. We want to stand out and our voices to be heard, our art history and artists to be seen and included, to be here not to prove anything but because it is important. We want to learn about our hidden histories, similarities and differences, to make unrepresented identities visible and expose the complexity of understanding the ‘Second World’.
Talk by Ksenia Robbe, 17:00 @ the library
Workshop/reading/get together, 17:00 @ the library
12:00-18:00 @ W139
Organised by Tasha Arlova, Eva Mahhov, Maja Chiara Faber
We are happy to invite you to join us this coming Friday, 4th of June 17:00-19:00, once again to Westerdok 782, kindly hosted by the project space 'when site lost the plot'.
Kindly hosted by when site lost the plot, we warmly invite you to Mark The Site and be our reader in residence.The Second Thoughts collective are opening the project space on Westerdok, Amsterdam, for people to stay the night, and participate in the exhibit. The participant-resident can stay there free of charge, 24hours, and we invite you to engage with the content placed in the space- the participant will encounter a curated domestic space with research materials and objects of significance.
We are happy to invite everyone for a small and cozy event of our group + tea and informal conversations, this time taking place in person at a small project space called When Site Lost The Plot, Wednesday May 19 @ 17:00-19:00.
We would like to thank all of you who joined our evening chat last Friday with Stefan Ambrosie, it was intriguing for us also to see some new faces. If you couldn't join, no worries! We definitely plan to have more meetups in the future, among other things. We'll keep you updated!
We are glad to invite you to the Second thoughts evening talk on Wednesday, December 2 at 17.30-19.30 at Rietveld Academie Gym.
We continue our events dedicated to a collective exploration on Eastern Europeaness. Our next meeting is scheduled on Friday, October, 23 at 17.00. It will take place at Fabulous Future at Gaasterlandstraat 3, 1079 RH Amsterdam. This time we will read a text by Julia Sushytska “What is Eastern Europe? A philosophical approach”
After the summer break, we warmly invite you to join our first event this autumn.
The library talks will take place on Tuesday, October, 6th at 17.30-18.15 at Rietveld and Sandberg Library (Fred. Roeskestraat 96, 1076 ED Amsterdam).
We will open a new library corner related to Eastern European discourse and have a group discussion with Eva Mahhov, Patrycja Rozwora, Tasha Arlova and Yuliia Elyas.
At 17:00 we are going to discuss the work of Tasha Orlova. You can watch the rough cut of her short film here:
Dear All,
We are going to meet 4th of May on Monday at 17:00
You can join by using the link:
We meet (virtually) 27 of April on Monday at 17:00
You can join by using the link:
We are going to meet 29 of November (Friday) at 17:00 at Sandberg (BC building 3d floor)
We are going to meet 15 of November (Friday) at 17:00 at Sandberg (BC building 3d floor)
Hello everyone,
Thank you, who joined our very first meeting of the reading group PostEasternSovietEurope. It was very pleasant to meet in person, the discussion was very fruitful.
Tasha Orlova
Yuliia Elyas
Eeva Juuti
weekly reading group + artists talks
Rietveld Academie, Sandberg Instituut, various locations in Amsterdam & on Jitsi/Zoom
anyone from or interested in the contemporary Eastern European diaspora
2019
eastern europe, post-soviet, decolonisation, politics
Talk by Ksenia Robbe, 17:00 @ the library
Today, we find ourselves in a world, in which the worst dystopias have come true. But the sense that the future – in light of the pressing economic, environmental, and political crises – is characterized by dystopian scenarios is not new; it has been with us for at least two decades, since the beginning of rapid globalization in the wake of the 1980-90s political ‘transitions.’ Looking back at this moment, we are compelled to ask: what has gone wrong – what has been overlooked by both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on globalization, and how have insidious imperial and colonial attitudes survived and expanded in the wake of decolonization? Most importantly for our conversation, what role do art practices have to play in this context? Ksenia Robbe's talk will approach these questions by considering what artists and intellectuals from Eastern Europe and the Global South learn from each other, looking at the sites of experience where new languages of resistance can develop.
Ksenia Robbe is a Senior lecturer in European Culture and Literature (Russian) at the University of Groningen. She works at the interfaces of postcolonial and postsocialist, memory and time, and gender and feminist studies. Her current research engages with memories of the 1980-90s ‘transitions’ in Russian and South African literature, film and visual art. Her work as the principal investigator of the Constructive Advanced Thinking project “Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions” involves collaborations with NGOs and museums in Poland and Germany.
Second Thoughts — a collective exploration on Eastern Europeanness, is a social setting, an informal kitchen conversation, a reading club, a political cafe, a community. We are here to be lost and found, to learn from and with each other. We want to learn about our hidden histories, similarities, and differences, to make unrepresented identities visible and expose the complexity of understanding the ‘Second World’.
