“Ukraine Week” in St Andrews 

2024 marks 10 years since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine. In recognition of this dark anniversary, join us for a programme of cultural events that reflect on Ukraine’s cultural and environmental heritage and celebrate its activist cultures. The programme is kindly supported by the Centre for Global (Post-)socialisms and the Centre for Art and Politics. We would appreciate it if you could publicise the programme around your networks and lists.

2 April 12-2pm: Self-Documentation and Community Archives Workshop, Buchanan Building 312

This workshop brings together researchers working on documentary practice, activist preservation, community & family archiving, and digital resilience in Ukraine and beyond. Participants will share findings and challenges from their work, inviting discussion of the practices and ethics of self-documentation and archival resistance to erasure. 

3 April 6.30-8pm: ‘Energised Ukraine: Art in Precarious Times’ Byre World Talk, Byre Theatre

Hosted by Viktoriia Grivina and Kateryna Volochniuk in conversation with Ukrainian photographer Igor Chekachkov, this Byre World talk will look at the way Ukrainian artists have engaged the country’s vast energy landscapes in their work and ask what it means to make art when the infrastructure of the city you live in is crumbling and blackouts are changing daily routines and habits. Igor Chekachkov will present his own documentary work and offer reflections on the practice of photography in wartime conditions. 

4 April 2-4pm: A Celebration of Ukrainian Cultures, Sandy’s Bar, Student Union

Marking the 10th anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine, we come together to celebrate Ukraine’s cultural diversity, which continues to inspire artists, filmmakers, thinkers, and activists even in the most difficult conditions of terrorism and military aggression. Join us for food, drink, music, film, art, literary readings and more.

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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature With Dr Anna Elena Torres

Dr Anna Elena Torres will read from her latest book Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature, in a conversation with Dr Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, Director of the Centre for Art and Politics with conversational and musical contributions from Michael Alpert.

Dr Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Comparative Literature and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. Torres is the author of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press) and co-editor of With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism (University of Illinois Press).

Michael Alpert has been a pioneering figure in the renaissance of East European Jewish music and Yiddish culture since the 1970s, and is the recipient of a 2015 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts — the USA’s highest honor for traditional and heritage artists. He is internationally known for his award-winning performances and recordings with Brave Old World, David Krakauer, Itzhak Perlman, Theodore Bikel, Andy Statman, Daniel Kahn, Frank London and others.

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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas – Arts/Photo Exhibit – Guided Tours Friday 15.03 and Monday 18.03 at 3.30pm

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
Maré from the Inside is an interactive multi-media exhibit developed by artists, activists, and academics from Complexo da Maré, a group of 16 contiguous favelas (informal and marginalised neighbourhoods) in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibit’s photographs, films, and texts present Maré and its residents in all their vibrancy, diversity, and contradictions. In so doing, the collaborative project leverages art’s pedagogical potential to contribute to a more nuanced public understanding of favelas. The favela, after all, is both a product of the structural forces of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, as well as a geography of resistance in which Black, Indigenous, and other marginalised Brazilian communities have refused to be overdetermined by these interlocking systems of oppression. From this perspective, favelas are also an ongoing project, a desire for utopia, and a dream.

When and Where
Maré from the Inside will be located on the ground and first floors of the Theatre Arts Building from March 15th until May 25th.
Guided tours (starting in Arts Lecture Foyer):
Friday, March 15th: 3:30pm — 5pm (followed by a catered reception)
Monday, March 18th: 3:30pm — 5pm
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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

Q&A with Dr Castelloe and Professor Vamik Volkan

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/40aag_VCKtzY8PHYOH5IeTi2cJqyF8Z8UGBGm4NWIphiAg3sSsASGjRBOBG9cIKn.rMkkmiIj861dzmkF

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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

‘All. Rights. Matter.’Centre for Art and Politics Seminar

Thursday 21 September 20234:00pm to 5:30pmSchool II, St Salvator’s Quad, School II

‘Leilah Babiyre made and exhibited the installation ‘I care about you’ (2016) during the ARTWORK AT KAMPALA Exhibition hosted at Makerere University in 2016. She used this work to publicly declare that she was gay (something that costed her admission for graduate training in 2018). She is currently exiled in the USA. In the presentation, I shall raise issues of art, politics and law to speak about Babirye’s work, mine and that of two others Sheila Nakitende and Mzili Mujunga. These are the few visual artists who have dared to speak about gay rights in Uganda.’

Dr Angelo Kakande (Associate Professor, Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Uganda) is visiting the School of Art History in September 2023 as part of his 2023-2024 Global Fellowship at the University of St Andrews. Dr Kakande is an artist, art historian and lawyer, and an expert in histories of modern and contemporary art in East Africa. His artworks and publications have particularly engaged with the ways in which art functions in defense of individual and collective rights. He joins us at St Andrews in connection with Dr Kate Cowcher’s ongoing research project, Dar to Dunoon, investigating the African modern artworks in the Argyll Collection.

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Featured Past Events

Art Practices in the Time of War: Ukrainian Artists and Authors Residency

Art Practices in the Time of War: Ukrainian Artists and Authors Residency

18th August 2022

17:00 – 19:00 BST

Online Event

Art Practices in the Times of War: Ukrainian Artists And Authors Residency

NGO Cultural Traffic (Ukraine) and The Centre for Art and Politics at the University of St Andrews invite you to join a roundtable discussion with Ukrainian artists and creative authors who have chosen to stay in Ukraine and continue their creative practices in the country during the war.

In June of 2022, NGO Cultural Traffic organised a series of pop-up residencies for artists and other creatives in the Carpathian Mountains, a relatively safe area in western Ukraine. Organized by Olena Kasperovych, an art curator from Kharkiv, the residencies did not require artists to create any “finished products” (artworks, exhibitions, texts), but instead offered them a space to recuperate artistically, physically and mentally.

At this talk, we have invited the participants of the pop-up residencies in Vyzhnytsa and Creative Rural Hub to reflect on their art and working process in the times of war. They will discuss how they are processing displacement, grief and a sense of loss through art and text. At the roundtable, we will also open a wider discussion on Ukrainian contemporary art and literature, allowing the audience to ask questions about particular works, creative processes and practices, the challenges and opportunities that arise in our understanding of Ukrainian art life and, finally, what this war means for a wider world of art and culture.

You can read more about the artists and see some of their work on our Art Practices in Times of War page here.

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Dr Molly Castelloe award winning film Vamik's Room

Places We Love: Art and the Ukrainian East

Places We Love:

Art and the Ukrainian East

St Andrews Botanic Garden

June 16th-July 12th 2022

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Past Events

This Is Not A War Story

This Is Not A War Story

Thursday, 26th May

6.30pm

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Featured Past Events

Theatre of War

 

Thursday, 19th May

2.30pm to 5.00 pm

The University of St Andrews and Bravehound present

 Ajax and Philoctetes: Theater of War