the project is supported by SPIN
Supporting Principal Investigators 2024
conTEXT
Texts by researchers, curators, journalists, and writers that examine the phenomenon of migration from diverse social, political, cultural, and personal perspectives. This section brings together analytical materials, essays, and testimonies that trace how the experience of migration shapes identity, artistic practices, and modes of expression. In addition, the section includes texts on waves of artistic migration beyond the Soviet Union during the twentieth century, allowing for a comparison between historical processes and contemporary forms of forced and voluntary movement.
Nika Parkhomovskaja
“Russian-Speaking Theater Outside Russia”
(University of Zurich, 2024)
A dense and compelling text that explores the Russian theatrical diaspora following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Parkhomovskaia draws a true map of Russian theatre in exile — from Berlin to Tbilisi, from Almaty to Tel Aviv — where directors, actors, and set designers reconstruct a theatrical language “without a homeland.”
The author examines how the Russian language functions both as a constraint and as a point of support: it remains the primary medium of artistic communication, yet it also risks creating cultural ghettos. Figures such as Serebrennikov, Kulyabin, Didenko, and Khamatova emerge as key protagonists, reinventing the European and Caucasian theatrical scene by blending local experiences with Russian cultural memory.
The text offers a complex perspective: theatre in exile is not merely a form of survival, but a laboratory for new forms of artistic freedom, in which the scenic gesture replaces the lost homeland.
Invisible Line: Motherhood as an Artistic Practice of Anastasia Georgievskaya (Ana Saut)
Invisible on the surface yet remaining afloat, artist-mothers exist within a different dimension: neither exhibitionary nor domestic, but profoundly internal. This is not a pause, but a transition into a new space of self-knowledge: the artist, the mother, the child. The fragile and almost imperceptible thread connecting “her” and “the child” becomes the foundation of artistic expression — as in Anastasia Georgievskaya’s (Ana South) project Secondary Childhood.
Moral migration and transnationalism: Russian anti-war resistance after the full-scale invasion
of Ukraine
This paper examines the role of morality in migration and transnationalism, focussing on the case of Russian anti-war migration and activism against the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s regime. Drawing on moral philosophy and psychology, I argue that Russian departure and activism can be conceptualised as moral migration and transnationalism, defined as “decisions, reasoning, judgements and acts of resistance motivated by obligatory concerns for others’ welfare, rights, fairness and justice”. Applying this to Russian anti-war activism abroad, the paper underlines how the act of migration can be conceptualised as a form of moral protest, especially for citizens from authoritarian states and autocratic regimes. It also emphasises the role of morality in transnational mobilisation choices and causes activists take up, as well as the moral dilemmas and controversies these present for anti-war communities and movements.
"It 's not clear who is fighting with whom, people are not visible, they don't participate in the frame"
" The task of immigrant artists is to be sincere and speak
about what they feel at the moment...."
