Samstag, 14. Mai 2025, 16 bis 19.30 Uhr, diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie
Film, Lesung und Workshop mit
Selbi Durdiyeva | Anastasia Kolas | Hannah Wallenfels
– Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt. –
The workshop invites participants to engage with the legacy and specificities of Soviet feminism through the lens of contemporary auto-ethnography. The first hour will be dedicated to screenings and a presentation: short Soviet agitprop documentaries by Elena Kolas, followed by an excerpt from TraumaZone by Adam Curtis; and a reading of two extracts from ‘ambivalent family archive’ by Selbi Durdiyeva. After a break, we will discuss these materials alongside text by archival scholar Cristina Vatulescu and take collective notes. Participants are invited to consider the materials in dialogue with the various waves of western, and not-western, feminist theory, and to bring their references on related topics to share with the group, to collaboratively compile a joint resource at the end of the workshop (the latter is optional).
Participation in the workshop is limited. To register and receive the reading materials in advance, please send a short message to mail@diffrakt.space.
Disappointed Archive | Soviet Girlboss Theory is the first in a series of events under the umbrella title Aesthetics of Disappointment, curated by Anastasia Kolas across various venues. Here, disappointment is considered as a diagnostic framework – the threshold emotion that arises before the resentment sets in. The latter, the consequence of disappointment, signals a mode of stagnation and a passive position of victimhood. In contrast, the focus on disappointment is offered as a reparative reading, acknowledging both: the failed expectation, and the choice and sense of agency that persists despite, or through, the sense of disappointment.
