
The knowledges and affects surrounding the post/de/neo/trans colonial discussions come from people’s direct and embodied experiences of the colonial materiality and colonial state of mind and being. While Eastern Europe as a region has only recently and hesitantly been coopted into academic and public debates on its (post)colonial status, young and emerging artists from the region are translating these dialogues into the medium of the screen. In their work, they not only ponder on the (post)colonial condition of the Global East but they also look into the future and trace possible forms and spaces of coallitions and solidarity with the Global South. The curated selection of short films by Eastern European artists addresses the questions of (de)coloniality, decentering and disengaging from the core/West, (self)representation and agency, and transnational and intersectional solidarities. These four short pieces invite the viewer to consider their positionality and to reflect on various modes of (post)colonial conditions and materialities; they invoke images of the past to articulate the future, they use novel cinematic and narrative tools to subvert the viewer’s notion of what it means to decolonise the screen as a medium and as an imagined space.
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Aldona (2013) by Emilija Škarnulytė. Emilija was born 1987 in Vilnius, Lithuania and she is a visual artist and filmmaker. She obtained her BA in sculpture from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy, and an MA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. Existing between the fictive and the documentary, she works primarily with deep time, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political.
Rok w którym porzuciłem sztukę/The Year I stopped Making Art (2020) by Wojtek Rodak. Wojtek is a recent graduate of theatre direction at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków and a graduate of the Łódź Film School. In his artistic practice, he is constantly searching for his own language and forms of expression although, as he admits, matters which are especially close to his heart include socially engaged issues, queer art and conceptual activities in the area of performance and contemporary art.
Double Exposure (2020) by Ingel Vaikla. Ingel is a visual artist and filmmaker from Estonia, currently based in Brussels. She studied photography at the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts (BA) and Film at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Gent (MA). Ingel’s artistic research focuses on the relationship between architecture and its users, and the representation of architecture in photography, video and film. In Double Exposure, she explores the relationship between history and present, past and future, utopia and dystopia.
Riding Towards the Sunset (2023) by Lia Dostlieva with Andrei Dostliev. Lia, orignally from Donetsk, Ukraine, is an artist, cultural anthropologist and essayist. Primary areas of her research include the issues of collective trauma, post-memory, commemorative practices, and agency and visibility of vulnerable groups. She works in a wide range of media including photography, installations, and textile sculptures. Riding Towards the Sunset was commissioned for the exhibition Chronic desire — Sete cronica, curated by Cosmina Goagea, Corina Oprea, Brindusa Tudor, in the framework of the Opening of Timisoara 2023 European Capital of Culture.