Nexus 2023 - Instytut Pileckiego

“The Nexus of Decision 2023: Germany, Poland, Ukraine”

“The Nexus of Decision 2023: Germany, Poland, Ukraine”

An interdisciplinary journey into the substance of Freedom, Peace and Security.

Three geopolitical regions representing different ways of thinking about Russia´s full scale invasion of Ukraine and the future of Europe.  

Organizers: Pilecki-Institut, Vitsche e.V., Genshagen Stiftung

Support: Stiftung für Deutsch-Polnische Zusammenarbeit, Auswärtiges Amt

Curator: Kataryna Tarabukina

Tutors: Mateusz Falkowski, Dr. Franziska Davis, Artem Chapaie, Lidia Gibadlo, Iryna Tsilyk, Agnieszka Róż, Dr. Jaroslaw Kuisz, Eva Yakubovska, Mariia Vorotilina, Kateryna Botanova, Ksenia Malykh, Valeria Schiller, Leon Kahane, Dr. Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk, Dr. Aleksandra Janus, Patryk Szostak

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An interdisciplinary residency-academy program offering a series of lectures, workshops, and city/museum tours led by top scholars and practitioners from Ukraine, Germany, and Poland.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has challenged the meaning of commonly shared values and revealed differences in their understanding, questioning what terms such as security, freedom, political nation and solidarity mean for each of us. We endeavor to reveal, re-open and share three different practices and approaches toward decision-making from three different political nations — Poland, Germany, and Ukraine.

The project „The Nexus of DECISION 2023″ has the ambition and courage to debate and compare the historical, political, philosophical, and spiritual paths of these three geopolitical regions – Ukraine, Poland, and Germany – the challenges they are facing and the decisions they are taking from different perspectives in dealing with the massive violence, both individual and collective, that has come to the European continent.

The aim of the program is to build a space for dialogue and collaboration between young artists and scholars from Germany, Ukraine and Poland.

The „The Nexus of DECISION 2023″ program addresses the differences and similarities in the way we think about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.  By the notion of "decision" we are unfolding not only political issues – why certain countries decide on a particular policy – but first and foremost about the individual roots of how and why we think about Europe, what its values are, the importance of choosing an identity, deciding to act or stay passive. We're creating a program to delve into the reasons behind cultural and historical differences that shape how we see topics and determine the sources of thinking – about pacifism, peace, patriotism, defending identity, solidarity, propaganda, fighting, surrender, correlations between individual and common decisions, etc.

In February 2023  we hosted a week-long residency in Stiftung Genshagen and Pilecki Institute.  During the 6-day program, participants took part in seminars, workshops, ice-breaking games, city tours, curatorial museum guided tours, and other activities that helped us to work through the topic.

Following this meeting participants took part in a reporting event at the Pilecki Institute to share their experiences, and thoughts, and to show intermediate results. 

Programme 2023

Day 0, Friday, 10.02.2023

• 15:00 Welcoming introduction to Stiftung Genshagen Castle. Informal introduction of the project.
   
• 20:15 Screening "The Earth Is Blue as an Orange" 2020 Documentary, 74 min. 

 Directed and written by Iryna Tsilyk, who won the Directing Award in the "World Cinema Documentary" category for the film at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. 

Short introduction and Online meeting with Iryna Tsilyk. 

Day 1, Saturday, 11.02.2023

#1. Freedom / Peace 

This part included seminars, lectures and workshops led by Polish and German historians, political scientists and practitioners. Participants jointly discussed texts dealing with the understanding of peace and freedom and the re-conceptualizing of peace. 

• 10:30 Programme opening. Welcome speeches by Mateusz Falkowski (Head of Pilecki-Institute) and Angelika Eder (Head of Stiftung Genshagen) 
   
• 11:00 Patryk Szostak - "Crisis of Peace ideas in Germany" 
   
• 12:45 Mateusz Fałkowski - "Jerzy Giedroyc's Legacy. On freedom, peace, Poland and Europe in the midst of the Cold War"
   
• 15:10 Dr. Franziska Davis - "Freedom in German, Polish and Ukrainian discourse"

Day 2, Sunday, 12.02.2023 

#2. Security / Fragility of the body 

This section included workshops led by Ukrainian and Polish intellectuals - security experts, curators, activists and a Ukrainian soldier. Decision-making on an individual level was discussed. The section concentrated on contemporary understandings of security and freedom from the standpoint of tensions between political/national community and individual liberty, and on liberal perspectives regarding security and the military. 

• 09:35 Video interview / Artem Chapaie - Ukrainian soldier, writer, translator, pacifist. Perception of Peace ideas in terms of ruined security. From the perspective of a Ukrainian soldier, serving the Ukrainian army in the front line. 
   
• 10:00 Seminar and discussion / Lidia Gibadlo "Geo-political security, how to build an approach up to date"
   
• 11:00 Lecture / Agnieszka Róż "Feminist listening practices in the face of the Russian invasion”
   
• 13:00 Seminar and discussion / Dr. Jaroslaw Kuisz "The PTSD Sovereignty. How the traumatic past shapes the present of Central and Eastern Europe" 
   
• 15:45 Workshop/Eva Yakubovska "Security and Fragility of the body through performative practice of Les Kurbas” 

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Day 3, Monday, 13.02.2023 

#3. Decolonial thinking about Ukraine and Eastern Europe 

This section included both academic and practical ideas to formulate an approach for understanding decolonial practices in Ukraine. Possibility for reclaiming Ukrainian artists from the Russian art historical narrative. 

• 10:05 Text reading and discussion/ Mariia Vorotilina reading of Larry Wolf "Decolonial. Inventing Eastern Europe"
   
• 11:15 Seminar / Kateryna Botanova "Decolonial thinking and artistic practices in Ukraine after February 2022′′
   
• 13:00 Lecture/ Patryk Szostak “Understanding and deconstructing Russian mystique”
   
• 15:10 Workshop / Ksenia Malykh "Reclaiming Ukrainian artists from the Russian art historical narrative. Countering the russian cultural narrative adopted by international institutions regarding Ukrainian art between late 1970's till today. Based on materials provided by Research Platform of Pinchukartcentre
  
  

#4. Activists / Embodied practice 

The fourth part was a journey through Berlin's historical and cultural landscape. We travelled to Neue Nationalgalerie with a Ukrainian curator. After that we explored memory construction, propaganda narratives and continuation of German history through an East Berlin tour with a Berlin artist. This day was dedicated to working on understanding the historical, cultural, political and philosophical aspects of decision-making in German society that could be articulated through art. 

• 12:30 Museum Tour / Neue Nationalgalerie with Valeria Schiller "Art & Wide Audience" within the framework of the audience, curator gonna talk about the exclusivity and inclusiveness of art, accessibility for the viewer, responsibility to the audience in the process of museification.  
   
• 16:00 Berlin CityWalk / Leon Kahane is reconstructing the memory of East Berlin, area around Rosa Luxemburg platz, revealing and decoding the parallels and traces of propagandistic narratives that are still presented.
   

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Day 5, Wednesday, 15.02.2023 

#5. Responsibility for decisions making / Pilecki Institute Public Event

•  14:00 Workshop / Dr. Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk and Dr. Aleksandra Janus "Exercising (Eastern) Modernity 
   
• 17:30 Introduction of Pilecki-Institut Institutional legacy: directions, ideas and projects
   
• 18:15 Public event in Pilecki-Institute. "Decisions, reappraisals and the challenge of responsibility" 
  
  Introductions of partners, speeches regarding the project topic and results of residency. Public talk with participants of the residency, moderated by Patryk Szostak. Screening of "We will definitely talk about this after the last air-raid alert stops", 2022, 2023 by Yuri Yefanov, Produced by PinchukArtCentre.

Participants, selected from Open call: Kseniya Karman Samet, Stepan Rusyn, Daria Badior, Slava Svitova, Anna Ivchenko, Wojtek Michnik, Franciszek Ignacy Fortuna, Katarzyna Mlynczak- Sachs, Zuzanna Mielczarek, Monika Czajkowska, Roberta Bartkutė, Katharina Becker, Talitha Szallies, Jan-Tage Kuhling, Raphael Jacobs

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