Saturday, 14 June 2025, 4 to 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Screening, reading and workshop facilitated by
Anastasia Kolas | Hannah Wallenfels
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. After a break, we will discuss these materials alongside texts by Kristen R. Ghodsee & Julia Mead, Cristina Vatulescu and Selbi Durdiyeva, 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.
