Authors

Olena (Syaivo) Dmytryk¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

The presentation will weave together feminist traditions of analysing (slow) violence and the reflections on Ukrainian (queer) feminist art. I consider the dissenting artistic imaginaries and how they relate to the knowledge produced within social movements. Artistic works often work as the sites where these antagonistic modernities meet, are reflected upon, and (dis)identified with. Time and time again, nonnormative aesthetics reveals the fragility of the human, the artificial quality of temporal division into past, present, and future, and the ‘alien’ character of lived experience.
In Ukraine, we can observe cultural practitioners reworking the past, turning to traditions to subvert or revitalise them, and creating unexpected temporal alliances. The conditions of the war aggravated the situation of living in multiple temporalities at the same time – especially for migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons. It is therefore unsurprising that artistic imagination turns to other times, or even the end of time itself.