About Us

The Art of Resistance: Protest Movements and Performances in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia is a proposal for an online platform that both builds a digital archive and fosters a virtual network of scholars, artists, and activists, whose artistic and activist work centers on political resistance and social movements in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

While images of mass demonstrations are widely circulated in the international media, singular performative actions and more intimate protest performances often remain invisible even to local audiences. The spectacular images of mass protests—as the case of the demonstrations in Belarus or the anti-abortion movements in Poland have showed—play a key role in prompting international solidarity and raising awareness outside of the nation state’s borders. At the same time, for more nuanced (re)presentations and understandings of the resistance movements, it is important to locate sites and performances that advocate legal and social justice on a smaller scale. The objective of this new online platform is twofold: first, it proposes to build a digital archive that collects and documents singular events, performative actions, and protest performances across the Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European region. Second, it sets out to assemble an international network of scholars, artists, and activists working in and on the region, and to facilitate critical conversations and collaborations on the current pressing issues, including freedom rights, migration, gender and ethnic violence and inequalities a transnational context.