Voices from the Underground: Artists Behind the Iron Curtain

On Thursday 24 November, 3.30 p.m., at the VMU Leonidas Donskis Library (23 V. Putvinskio g., Kaunas) a discussion will be held titled “Voices from the Underground: Artists Behind the Iron Curtain”. Those wishing to participate are invited to register.

One might think that the term “underground” was on its way to art history, but in 2022 it gets a new meaning. Concerts and festivals in the basements and metro stations of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and even Lviv are also a good reason to look a couple of decades back: did the artists of the past get proper credit after the end of the Cold War? What does their legacy mean today for our part of the world? Our speakers may help to outline the frame of numerous discussions we have ahead of us: on freedom, resistance, and Iron Curtains of the future.

Dr. Katherine Younger is a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Vienna), where she runs the projects Ukraine in European Dialogue and Documenting Ukraine. She received her PhD in History from Yale University in 2018. Her research concentrates on practices of international politics, forms of imperial governance, and the relationship between religion and power. Most recently, she edited “The Universe behind Barbed Wire: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Soviet Dissident by Myroslav Marynovych” (University of Rochester Press, 2021).

Dr. Katherine Younger

Prof. Habil. Dr. Gintautas Mažeikis is the head of Centre of Social and Political Critique at VMU, philosopher. His research interests include critical theory of symbolical thinking, which encompasses critique of propaganda, occultism, cultural industries and social politics.

Prof. habil. dr. Gintautas Mažeikis

Moderated by Oksana Forostyna

All discussions are in English. They will be broadcast live on the Kaunas 2022 Facebook page.

Participation at the discussions is free of charge, but registration is required by filling in the registration form.