SAVA Conference: The Great Transformation of Nature

The SAVA Conference on the Great Transformation of Nature examines the multiscalar processes that shaped socialist paths through the Anthropocene as figured in visions of extractivism, developmentalism, terraforming and monoculturalization. Across the differentiated terrains and plural temporalities of global socialism, it brings together scholarly and artistic unearthings of its contested praxes to unravel domineering infrastructures and assess the vitality of ecosocialist and biocultural insurgencies.

PROGRAMME

16 May 2024

10.00   Introduction to the Socialist Anthropocene
            Maja and Reuben Fowkes (SAVA UCL)

PANEL I: EXTRACTIVIST FRONTS

Chaired by Jan Burek (SAVA UCL)

10.20   Jakub Gawkowski (Central European University Vienna)
Temporalities of Coal Mining in 1950s Upper Silesia

10.50   Nikolay Erofeev  (University of Kassel)
Extractive Assistance: Copper Mining, Socialist Development and Urban Planning in Cold-War Mongolia

11.20   Bogna Stefańska & Jakub Depczyński (Museum of Modern Art Warsaw)
Socialist Extractivist Pasts and Postanthropocene Futures in Poland: On Ecological Art and Postartistic Practices in Opolno-Zdrój

11.50   Hana Janečková (Academy of Fine Arts Prague)
Conservation, Care and Identification: Animal Extraction from Countries of Global South in Eva Koťátková’s The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter

12.20   Discussion

13.00   Lunch

PANEL II: INDUSTRIAL TEMPORALITIES

Chaired by Reuben Fowkes (SAVA UCL)

14.00   Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius University)
Dream Factories: Visualizing High Industrial Period in the Baltic States

14.30   Victoria Donovan (University of St. Andrews)
Resisting ‘Resourcification’: Artist Engagement with Industrial Heritage as Resistance to Soviet and Russian (Re-)Colonial Epistemic Violence

15.00   Dimitra Gkitsa (Winchester School of Art)
Memory Matters: Revisiting Albania's Post-Industrial landscapes and Wastelands

15.30   Discussion

16.00   Coffee break

PANEL III: SYNTHETIC MATERIALISM

Chaired by Maja Fowkes (SAVA UCL)

16.30   Andrija Filipović (Faculty of Media and Communication Belgrade)
Yugoslav Petroaesthetics: On the (Non-)Use of Petrochemicals in Socialist Modernism and Neo-Avant-Garde Art

17.00   Inga Lace (Almaty Museum of Arts)
Evolving Attitudes: Industry, Technology and Nature in Soviet Latvian Artists’ Works

17.30   Anna Zett (Artist, Leipzig)
Dispose, Discard, Discare

18.00   Discussion

18.30   End

17 May

PANEL IV: REAL TERRAFORMING

Chaired by Alex Petrusek (SAVA UCL)

10.00   Anel Rakhimzhanova (Performance Studies NYU)
Constructing TurkSib and Human (Im)mobilities: When a Transit Materializes in the Environment, Episteme and Method

10.30   Maja and Reuben Fowkes (SAVA UCL)
Great Dams in the Hydrologics of the Socialist Anthropocene

11.00   Sarah James (Liverpool School of Art and Design)
Radioactive Marxisms, Technocratic Dystopias & Socialist Ecofeminisms

11.30   Rita Suveges (Artist, Budapest)
Cloud Seeding - the Glare of the Silver BulletQ

12.00   Discussion

12.40   Lunch

PANEL V: RECORDS OF MONOCULTURALISATION

Chaired by Reuben Fowkes (SAVA UCL) 

13.30   Agata Pietrasik (Freie Universität Berlin)
The Peasant Anthropocene: Images of Rural Life in SR

14.00   Rugilė Rožėnė (Vilnius University)
In Search of Authoritarian Landscape

14.30   Jérôme Bazin (Paris-Est Créteil)
Socialist Intensification as seen by Amateur Photographers

15.00   Discussion

15.30   Coffee break

PANEL VI: ECOSOCIALIST PRAXES

Chaired by Maja Fowkes (SAVA UCL)

16.00   Karolina Kolenda (Institute of Art and Design Krakow)
Earth, Matter, Rhythm: Władysław Hasior and the Socialist Anthropocene

16.30   Marie Meyerding (Freie Universität Berlin)
Visions of Trees: Environmental Art and Surveillance in the Global GDR

17.00   Lenka Vráblíková (Goldsmiths University of London)
"The Czech Are Excellent Mushroom Hunters:" The Visual Politics of Fungi in (Post)Socialism

17.30   Discussion

18.00   The Other Side of the Pipeline
A performative screening of fragments of Where Russia Ends (2024) and conversation with filmmaker Oleksiy Radynski and cultural researcher Philipp Goll.

19.00   Drinks

For abstracts, speaker biographies and more details see: www.sava.earth