Deriving from the speculative topography of the Museum of Stones in Minsk, Belarus, that brings together deep time temporality and post-socialist immediacy – prehistoric land- scapes, IT-labour and counter-cultural communities, curator and writer Aleksei Borisionok will share observations on the peculiar connections between extraction and computation in the region. Since the massive social uprising against rigged presidential elections of 2020, (post)industrial labour unrest and various forms of anti-war resistance against the russian full-scale invasion to Ukraine, multiple artistic practices delved into questioning existing in- frastructures of power, logistics, extractivism and warfare. Departing from his and Antonina’s Stebur curatorial research for " If Disrupted, It Becomes Tangible. Infrastructures and Solidarities beyond the post-Soviet Condition exhibition" (National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; 2023), as well as "Matter of Art Biennale" (National Gallery of Art, Praguel 2024) Aleksei proposes to read them through the notion of anti-imperialist disruption and infrastructural theory.
Aleksei Borisionok is a curator, writer and organiser, who currently lives and works in Vienna. He is a member of artistic-research Problem Collective and working group of Work Hard, Play Hard! He writes about art and politics for various magazines, catalogues and online platforms such as e-flux Journal, L’Internationale Online, Partisan, Springerin, Paletten, among many others. He is currently a fellow at Vera List Center, New York, and, together with Katalin Erdődi, he is co-curating the upcoming edition of the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague (2024).
*The lecture will be held in English.