We are organising a new series of online exchanges entitled SAW Radical Voices / Radical Actions, in which we will discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation.
Our discussions are broadcasted live in our Support Art Workers Facebook pagefacebook page. During live broadcast, the audience can post questions and comments in that page. Because of the international character of these talks we use the English language.
EPISODE I
On Tuesday 1st December at 18:00-18:45 Greek time (17:00-17:45 CET) SAW Nexus invites you to the first of a new series of online exchanges entitled SAW Radical Voices / Radical Actions, in which we will discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation. Ingrid Vranken from Brussels will talk with us about her participation in the creation of a fairtrade system of exchange in the arts (Just Is Just https://www.juistisjuist.be) as well as her participation in a group of artists who created a Common Wallet (https://vimeo.com/295537042) to manage their income together, as a reaction to the individualist capitalist model.
EPISODE II
On Tuesday 22nd December at 18:00-18:45 Greek time (16.00-16.45 GMT, 17.00-17.45CET) SAW Nexus invites you to the second online exchange of the series Radical Voices/Radical Actions, in which we discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation. Nicky Harley and Fionnuala Kennedy from Belfast, Northern Ireland, will discuss with us their initiatives 'Artists NI' and 'NI Freelancers Surviving Corona', which emerged during the first phase of the pandemic aiming to bring together independent artists from the region.
EPISODE III
On Tuesday 26/01 at 17:30-18.15 Greek time (16:30-17:15 CET) SAW Nexus invites you to the third online exchange of the series Radical Voices / Radical Actions, in which we discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation. Our guests are Nicolay Spesivtsev (artist, computer scientist, researcher) and Dzina Zhuk (writer, artist), initiators of the collective eeefff nd co-organisers, together with Aleksei Borisionok and Olia Sosnovskaya, of WORK HARD! PLAY HARD!, based in Minsk and Moscow.
Dzina Zhuk and Nicolay Spesivtsev will talk about electronic infrastructures of solidarity as processes of ‘decentralized care’. By focusing on the recent political events in Belarus, they will discuss the potential for reinventing social relations through a use of technological infrastructure based on political necessity. Through this prism, our guests will speak about different digital structures such as the creation of wifi hotspots, undetectable chats for the organization of protests, systems for intervening in state mechanisms (to delay payments), but also about the construction of a LARP (Live Action Role Play) game where participants can test decentralised alternative economies.
EPISODE IV
On Monday 15th February at 17:30 (16:30CET), SAW Nexus invites you to the fourth online exchange of the series Radical Voices/Radical Actions, in which we discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation. This time, we welcome Escena Política from Argentina, a collective of performing artists formed to address issues in cultural production and structural racism in Argentina. We will firstly discuss how Escena Política was formed in 2015, under what political and cultural conditions, what their aims were, and the actions they took. We will then go on to talk about their more recent work against structural racism in Argentina, and what has occured and shifted between 2015 and today for them. ESCENA POLÍTICAare a group of performing artists from the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, an open space, without hierarchies or fixed roles. In 2015 they began to carry out actions, which they called ‘Iceberg’, questioning and making visible dark areas of politics and the cultural production of the city. In 2016, they held the ‘Escena Política Transversal Congress’, a space and time for collective meeting, cooperation and complicity, where they created other possibilities to perceive, think and experience their own political practices and artistic creation. After four years of Macrism (Macri was the president at the time), Escena Políticacame together again in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic. This time, together with other collectives, artists and academics, they are working against structural racism that runs through Argentina.
EPISODE V
On Thursday 5th March at 19:00 (18:00CET), SAW Nexus welcomes Marijana Cvetkovic from Belgrade, Serbia, to the fifth online exchange of the series Radical Voices/Radical Actions, in which we discuss ideas and actions with artists outside Greece that seek to make bold shifts in cultural policy and social organisation. This time, Marijana Cvetkovic will speak to us about the creation and modes of operation of the artist-led cultural centre Magacin, which opened in June 2007, in the former Nolit warehouse, as an alternative cultural centre for the preparation and presentation of exhibitions, performances, discussions, films, educational and other independent cultural programmes. Marijana Cvetcovic is a cultural worker and activist wit3hin the independent cultural scene of Belgrade and Serbia. She is the co-founder of Station-Service for contemporary dance and the Nomad Dance Academy and teaches at the University of Arts in Belgrade.