Critical Thinkers Series: Dr. Keren Zaiontz

Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. Join us for the second talk in the Spring Series by Dr. Keren Zaiontz, Assistant Professor in UBC’s Department of Theatre and Film.

Exilic Performances of Ukrainian Solitude in the Public Realm

This talk examines a trio of Ukrainian performance artists, living and working in exile, united in their opposition to Russia’s rapacious full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The artists Daria Pugachova (Rivne, b. 1990), Maria Proshkovska (Kyiv, b. 1986), and Maria Kulikovska (Kerch, b. 1988) variously engage in durational performance actions in the public realm. Their ephemeral acts are not so much an antidote to Putin’s neo-totalitarianism—which can only be remedied by the west mobilizing to arm and protect Ukraine and divest from Russian Big Oil—but a means of persisting in the face of existential violence. Staged in European capitals in the first two years of war, these works respectively repurpose damaged national symbols, such as burnt wheat and crumpled national flags, and assert basic facts, which the Kremlin devoutly opposes. While distinct in their use of form, the three artists reveal the modality of duration to be crucial to securing a performance of public solitude that wages aesthetic opposition to authoritarian reality.