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SAVA Research Week // Greening Socialism: Women Eco-Activisms I
28 November 2024, 4:00 pm–5:30 pm
Panel on Greening Socialism with Doubravka Olšáková (Czech Academy of Sciences), Aigerim Kapar (artist, Almaty) and Alex Petrusek (SAVA UCL).
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Maja and Reuben Fowkes
Location
-
IAS Common Ground, G11ground floor, South Wing, Wilkins BuildingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
This SAVA panel brings together reflections on women’s environmental activism in public space under socialism and post-socialism, with a presentation by environmental historian Doubravka Olšáková on the late 1980s informal group of Prague Mothers in Prague and a talk by artist, curator and activist Aigerim Kapar on the performative strategies of activist movements in Kazakhstan. Moderated by Alex Petrusek (SAVA UCL).
ABSTRACTS
Doubravka Olšáková: Prague Mothers
Doubravka will present her research on the Prague Mothers, an informal group of mothers who, in the second half of the 1980s, decided to fight for a better environment for their children. They did it in the way that mothers do: dancing and singing with their children in the streets of Prague - and collecting signatures for a petition they sent to the Conference of European Environment Ministers, held in Prague in May 1989. Instead of making a political statement in their apartments like dissidents, these women chose street activism in Prague, demanding a safe and unpolluted world to live in with their children.
Aigerim Kapar: Artcom Platform: Engaging Communities for Environmental Justice
Aigerim will explore the vital role of women-led grassroots initiatives in advancing environmental activism in Kazakhstan. Drawing from her work with the Artcom Platform, Aigerim will discuss how contemporary art and public engagement serve as powerful tools for addressing environmental injustices, fostering community solidarity, and preserving cultural heritage. By embracing decolonial, feminist, and intersectional frameworks, Aigerim will discuss how eco-activism can empower local community voices, foster collective memory, and create transformative pathways for environmental and climate justice.
Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) is a visual arts led interdisciplinary research project that challenges the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene by asserting the constitutive role of the environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. Led by Dr. Maja Fowkes at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, the project was selected for a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) and is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Image: Performance Şalqyma by Adyr Aspan_SOS Taldykol_Artcom Platform_photo by Ospan Ali
About the Speakers
Doubravka Olšáková
Senior Researcher at Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
Doubravka Olšáková leads the Department of Global Conflicts and their Consequences at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research is oriented towards the intersection of the history of science and environmental history. She is actively involved in academic life and acts as a member of various committees and editorial boards. She is a member of the DHST Committee on Science, Technology, and Diplomacy. In 2014, she published a book titled Science Goes to the People! (2014, in Czech) about the dissemination of science in communist Czechoslovakia and the indoctrination of the masses. In 2016 she worked as the principal editor of an edited volume In the Name of the Great Work. Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe (New York: Berghahn Books).
Aigerim Kapar
Interdependent curator
Aigerim Kapar is an interdependent curator, interdisciplinary researcher, decolonial and environmental practitioner based in Kazakhstan. Kapar founded Artcom Platform, a community-based contemporary art and public engagement organization in 2015. Collective memory, practices of care, nomadic culture, environmental and climate justice, are cross-cutting in all their processes and activities. She has also been organizing Art Collider, a school where art meets science bringing communities together, since 2017. Currently, Kapar curates a hybrid reality project Steppe Space, the place for contemporary art and culture of Central Asia. In 2020, she initiated ecological movement SOS Taldykol and projects of care for lake ecosystems Care for Balkhash. Her previous key works include "Re-membering. Dialogues of Memories" (2019), an international intergenerational project in memory of survivors and victims of 20th-century political repressions in Kazakhstan, and "Time&Astana: After Future" (2017-18), an urban art research and engagement project.
More about Aigerim Kapar