Art: an instrument for non-violent resistance | Sonya Konovalova | TEDxUWCAdriatic
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j33UQRTCo80 Video ID: j33UQRTCo80 ============================================================ [Music] like clef politics is all about emotions and symbols the discipline called art does not have a monopoly on creativity and politics does not have a monopoly on real existential change and if you are wondering how to gain an endless amount of power i have a life hack for you just have more artists yes it's possible to achieve unity for propaganda for dictatorship but art also can be used for other purposes including nonviolent resistance i divided my token two parts first why the network and theory second how to work in practice so art is an effective tool to engage people in actions and bring them together to find the decision collectively because for focusing on emotions and stories easier build connections and trust between each other so it's the best ground for solidarity also art is about vulnerability and nonviolent approach and nonviolent protest is an effective one since if authorities will try to prevent it somehow especially violently it undermines the reducing extremely fun fuzzy we are living in the beautiful time when tolerance took death pain and violence at the historical minimum and we need to use it a lot of protests started with full scale and force after first violent actions from state as hydra civil society is renewable so when one of the creatures had cut off one or more grown back immediately but it doesn't mean that you need to go and promote police to hit you just to make other people raise that for protest don't do it and last point boredom is contrary revolutionary oscar wilde said if you want to tell people the truth you would better make them laugh otherwise we will kill you and thanks to creativity art stimulates people to think out of the boxes and brutally question comfortable art of the things in the playful way so no one's feeling will be hurt after all i wouldn't be convinced if someone told me what a few ideas with pressures and pain can overflow military dictatorship so how is the work in practice my path of activism in russia started to learn three years ago we went to their properties during international women's day we talked to people about new law that need to be accepted by parliament to regulate domestic violence unfortunately after one year of activism in this year field with specific field i realize whether it's not working not because minorities not only because my marriage is a target but also because the system itself and process of decision making is wrong it's not going it's corrupted it's too slow so it would make sense to start from the system and my first political action was in summer 2020 after covent after first got down we had a referendum parallel proposed to rewrite constitution so our president vladimir putin basically can stay longer until the death it's pretty sad it's pretty popular movement dictatorship the real constitution and i wanted to know what people think about it because i do not know otherwise since elections are not transparent the the wearing costumes we had a funny poster and some decorations we looked heartless so people somehow start trust us by telling us their story by they not politically engaged why we for example abstain voting because it's a big thing in russia and after one week of this performance when we were sleeping on the street we had a group of people who joined us and we started to other things and continue our work but very few photos from the street actions unfortunately i don't have a lot of them because we needed to delete um but when it was colder closer to winter we moved to the uh we decided to find another target audience they applied for modern artifact took space in the state museum and the main topic of our installation was culture of science and societal optimization there is a short description i will read it to you the culture of silence stands on the basis of oppression it starts small as a realization of domestic violence and ends up with great political interests and justice silence is an easy way to put problems in the blind spot of each other now it's a long time past to move political conversations from static teachers to public spaces maybe if you're living in a democracy because paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense but for young people who felt like they had some potential to speak up it was important to find the way when they don't have a official one so every artwork was dedicated for importance of speaking up and showing our own abilities uh there is a name of exhibition i think the most correct translation will be a silence is a violence and what could have gone wrong on the one hand we had open-minded creators target audience and artists but on the other hand strict administration of museum and i wouldn't say that we were narrow of minded they just were under certain degree of self-censorship and two days before opening of exhibition they walked around and said remove this remake this and just maybe cancel the whole exhibition we have two options remake everything according to where instructions all contain spending the next days we were cooperating with whole art group because we were not only one who faced censorship we contacted local media to share our stories and we proposed a compromise by inviting independent group of art critics to approve this exhibition so we don't have only two sides in this conflict after one week of work we walked around exhibition again to approve or disapprove it but this time we had much more people it was independent commission creators administration journalists and artists as well few art critics but we can keep our installation in the same way but put h means for minors i was 16 at this point and i don't know what we wanted to hide another part of critics told us what regional space for politics and art and viral extremists we ended up with removing one artwork there is a photo on next plate the text reads evaluation plan there is a map of russia and labyrinth inside it was dedicated for a few fires what happened basically because of the corruption and indifference it was dramatic that we decided to make this work uh even though we removed it from exhibition a lot of people saw the photo of this because we shared it in local media so was censorship successful not really it made artists work together to fight it it made history to the museum and as i said before a lot of people saw the photo of his artwork anyway what i tried to distract by the story if a piece of art resonates with audience and it probably represents social moods and ideas but already were floating in the air art is multi-semantic by definition and it implies multiplicity of interpretation so censorship is powerless because you don't need to say your statements straightforwardly your target audience who share concerns and experience will get you by interpretation of use symbols it's not about being furious you need to be brave enough to show your indifference and not everyone is ready to take risk and have face-to-face confrontation but by showing your vulnerability and freely showing you and freely sharing your stories you will be able to create an efficient support system to make political involvement as safe as possible in certain conditions so art is powerful to communicate your values stay safe do art that's it [Applause]