Yes, Russia is Still an Empire, But This Won’t Last Long

Still from Chornobyl 22, a documentary film by Oleksiy Radynski, 2023. Camera: Max Savchenko.

Abstract

Join Ukrainian filmmaker Oleksiy Radynski and art historian Asia Bazdyrieva as they expand the territory of decolonial discourse by examining Ukraine’s anti-imperial war against Russia. Analyzing Russia’s tactics of energy colonialism, its neo-fascist regime, and the complicity of the West’s failing capitalist models, the presentation will expand the notion of the Russian Federation as a settler apparatus based on institutional racism and extractivist exploitation. The speakers will argue that the dissolution of the Russian Federation is a necessary element in the global fight against colonial and racist power structures.

Speakers

Asia Bazdyrieva is an art historian whose work focuses on hybrid European-Soviet modernity and its ideological and material implications in spaces, bodies, and lands. Bazdyrieva co-authored Geocinema, a collaborative project exploring infrastructures of earth sensing as a form of cinema, which has been nominated for the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research (2020) and the Golden Key Prize at the Kassel Dokfest (2021). She is currently an associate member of Critical Media Lab Basel and a resident of transmediale. [Portrait photograph of Asia Bazdyrieva by Support Your Art]

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was born in 1984 and raised on the ruins of a Documentary Film Studio in Kyiv. After studying film theory at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, he took part in several film education experiments including Home Workspace Program (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut) and Labor in a Single Shot by Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann. His films have been screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, e-flux (New York), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Krakow IFF, DOK Leipzig, DoсAviv, Sheffield Doc Fest, Docudays IFF, S A V V Y Contemporary (Berlin), International Studio & Curatorial Program (New York), among other places, and received a number of festival awards. As an essayist he contributed to publications including Proxy Politics: Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (Archive Books, 2017), Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and East Europe: A Critical Anthology (MoMA, 2018), and e-flux journal. [Portrait photograph of Oleksiy Radynski by Anastasiya Mantach]

Moderator

Laurie Kain Hart is Director of the Center for European and Russian Studies and a sociocultural anthropologist with a research focus on the long-term effects on persons and communities of ethnopolitical conflict, civil war, state engineered population displacements, migration, nationalism, racism, globalization, and ethnospatial segregation. As a former architect, she is particularly interested in theories of space and place that help us understand the impact of spatial, architectural, and geopolitical forces on social inequality and marginalization. Hart’s interest is in understanding the links between macro-social and political forces and individual subjectivity. She therefore works at the intersection of political anthropology, space and place theory, and medical-psychiatric anthropology. Hart is affiliated with UCLA Global Studies, Center for Social Medicine and the Humanities at the UCLA Semel Institute, and teaches courses on violence, urban anthropology, borders and migration, globalization and culture, the anthropology of space and home, the anthropology of art and architecture, and contemporary social theory.

Recommended Reading

• No Milk, No Love by Asia Bazdyrieva
• The Case Against the Russian Federation by Oleksiy Radynski

About Kyiv to LA

Kyiv to LA is a joint exhibition and residency project that supports Ukrainian arts at a time when Ukrainian sovereignty and culture are under attack. Organized by Marathon Screenings and independent curator Asha Bukojemsky, the initiative invites six Ukrainian artists and art historians to participate in a Los Angeles based residency, culminating in a public program of talks, screenings, listening sessions and presentations. The project marks a unique and timely collaboration with several LA-based organizations and institutions including 18th Street Arts Center; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (ICA LA); GRI Scholars Program; Villa Aurora Thomas Mann House (VATMH); The Center for European and Russian Studies, UCLA; The Fulcrum; and Art at the Rendon. Additional programming hosted by e-flux in New York. Kyiv to LA is made possible by a generous grant from Nora McNeely Hurley and Manitou Fund.

Venue

Bunche Hall, Room 10383 (10th floor)
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Parking

Parking at UCLA requires a valid permit at all times. Campus parking is available 24-hours a day at varying prices. Nearest parking to the event venue is Parking Structure 2 (P2). P2 rates: $3.00 – $15.00 (1 hour – all day). Visit UCLA Visitor Parking for information about how to pay.

Related Document: 20230420-Radynski-Bazdyrieva-poster-ln-rxz.pdf