Upcoming events

TUESDAY, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. | Hybrid format | This book offers a unique IR perspective on resilience-nurturing generally, and with a focus on Central Eurasia, using the lens of complexity-thinking and community of relations. Steeped in centuries-long traditions, social memory, and culture, Central Eurasia,spanning Belarus and Ukraine in the west, South Caucasus in the south, and Kazakhstan in the east, faces multiple challenges today—from rampaging poverty and climate emergency, to democratic struggles, conflicts, and a devastating war in Ukraine, with global consequences for the planet. And yet, this region demonstrates remarkable resilience being stubbornly affirmative about their better (alternative) futures, and visions of the good life, in the context of the Anthropocene. Central Eurasia avidly showcases aparticular kind of resilience—that is, deeply ideational, spiritual, and always communal. This book will guide the reader towards discovering the real meaning of resilience, reclaimed from neoliberal thinking, and instead immersed into complex life, using Central Eurasia as a case study. Resilience on this journey becomes not just a quality of a complex system, or an analytic of governance to manage uncertainty. Resilience comes to encapsulate an almost revolutionary process of community’s worlding into a universe of more-than-human complex relations, attuned to the precarious conditions of the Anthropocene, and more crucially, able to act on them, with a political agency, collectively.

TUESDAY, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. I Hybrid format I This talk presents and explores the questions central to the exhibition ‘Everything for Everybody’ (curators: Natasha Chychasova, Victoria Donovan, Kateryna Rusetska), which forms part of the Kyiv Biennale 2025 and is currently on display at the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture in Dnipro, Ukraine. ‘Everything for Everybody' raises questions about how archives come into being, who has access to their contents, and who controls their meaning. It explores the role of the archive during wartime and how these collections form unique testimonies about places that have vanished or been destroyed.

29. Januar 2025. | Anmeldung erforderlich | Der Film dokumentiert das von Russland in den besetzten Gebieten der Ukraine errichtete System aus Entführung, Haft und Folter. Auf Grundlage eindringlicher Zeugenaussagen entführter Zivilist*innen zeigt er, was mit Menschen geschieht, wenn sie in russische Gefangenschaft geraten, wie sie zu überleben versuchen und für ihre Freilassung kämpfen. Der Film macht sichtbar, dass dieses System des Terrors historisch gewachsen ist und völlig außerhalb eines rechtlichen Rahmens funktioniert. Bis heute befinden sich tausende Menschen in den Foltergefängnissen. Zugleich stellt er die dringende Frage, was internationale Akteur*innen tun müssen, um weitere Menschenrechtsverletzungen zu verhindern und zivile Geiseln zu befreien.

TUESDAY, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. I Hybrid format I Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has destroyed lives, communities, and cities. From the start, images of this destruction spread across various media platforms. Paintings, photographs, drone footage, TikToks, and Instagram posts shaped how the war is experienced, represented, and archived. In the multidisciplinary volume Images and Objects of Russia’s War against Ukraine (Natasha Klimenko, Miglė Bareikytė, Viktoriya Sereda, eds.), artists, scholars, and writers from Ukraine and beyond explore how art, media, infrastructures, and material culture respond to and contest the Russo–Ukrainian War. This book-talk will feature a presentation of the volume Images and Objects of Russia’s War against Ukraine. The editors of the book will explore how different forms of media and artistic expression document and interpret the war, influence collective memory, and engage with the lived realities of the war. In addition, the event will include a screening of an essay film based on selected contributions from the book, highlighting the intersections of art, media, and war. By combining a presentation, video essay, and discussion, the event aims to provide an interdisciplinary reflection on war, visual culture, and media-infrastructural practices in Ukraine.