This exhibition explores the political context of extractivist and logistical infrastructures, and digital and information technologies that have been affected by wars and political uprisings in geographies and temporalities that go beyond the post-Soviet condition.
The curatorial concept derives from the notion of infrastructure, which is understood as a way of distributing and organising power relations. Post-Soviet infrastructures have been built upon the ruins of military-industrial complexes and embedded into complex material and immaterial relations of colonialism, outsourcing, resourcification and externalities. Networks of infrastructure such as railways, gas pipelines, fibre-optic cables, Telegram channels and video monitoring systems (among many others) remain intangible in everyday life. At the same time, their breakdown, disabling or interruption exposes the work of the whole infrastructure and their interconnectedness—power and its materiality, in a literal sense, turn out to be visible, mundane and embodied through breakdown and interruption.
The geography and temporality of various artistic practices presented at the exhibition stretch far beyond the post-Soviet condition. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and recent political protests in various ex-Soviet countries—Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Armenia among others—demonstrate the activist and voluntaristic potential of the technologies themselves.
Photo reportage by Gintarė Grigėnaitė
Exhibition is open until 18 June 2023
Curators: Aleksei Borisionok, Antonina Stebur
Artists: Tekla Aslanishvili & Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Mariyam Medet, Yevgenia Belorusets, eeefff, Anna Engelhardt, fantastic little splash, Uladzimir Hramovich, The Museum of Stones editorial collective, Oleksiy Radynski, Alicja Rogalska, Sabīne Šnē, Nomeda&Gediminas Urbonas, XYANA
Exhibition architect Gabrielė Černiavskaja
Graphic designer Valentin Duduk
Exhibition coordinators: Kotryna Markevičiūtė, Austėja Tavoraitė
This project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
Partner: European Humanities University (EHU)
Sponsors: Goethe-Institut*, Exterus, Fundermax, Hostinger, FUNKYBEANS
Media sponsor Artnews.lt
*The project is incorporated into a comprehensive package of measures funded by the Federal Foreign Office from the 2022 Supplementary Budget to mitigate the effects of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
