Call for Participants: LCCA Summer School “Negotiating Gender in the Baltics and Eastern Europe”
Call for Participants
Summer School “Negotiating Gender in the Baltics and Eastern Europe” in Kuldīga, 31 July–5 August 2020
Deadline for applications: 15 June
The school is open to early career artists, art historians, humanities scholars, curators and cultural studies researchers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. MA and PhD students are particularly encouraged to apply.
Patriarchal, heteronormative and gender-based patterns, cultivated for centuries, have not faded today. The feminist movement and gender studies have played a crucial role in confronting these, raising long-ignored gender issues and pushing for changes in various aspects of political, social, economic and cultural life in order to build a heterogeneous society. The 2020 Summer School program will focus on the gender narratives marginalised in art history, as well as on issues of everyday solidarity and emancipation today. What social and historical reasons have shaped domination over women in our region? How can art become a political practice and change entrenched political and social structures in the context of gender? How can we build an alternative future by revisiting the past and reinterpreting archives?
The Summer School of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art is again held in cooperation with Kuldīga Artists’ Residence and the Art Academy of Latvia. It continues to draw on developments in critical thinking, artistic research and creative practices related to recent debates in contemporary culture. This year, it will focus on issues of feminism and gender studies from both historical and contemporary perspectives in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Speakers organising workshops and lectures are artists, political activists, researchers and experts in the fields of visual art, feminist cultural studies and cultural anthropology. Speakers include researchers Redi Koobak (University of Bergen) and Bart Pushaw (University of Copenhagen), critic and curator Jana Kukaine (Art Academy of Latvia), curator, artist and poet Laima Kreivytė (Vilnius) and artists Jaana Kokko (Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki) and Vala Tomasz Foltyn | Valentine Tanz (Cracow / Copenhagen). The curators of the Summer School program are Ieva Astahovska and Andra Silapētere.
The issues raised by feminism and gender studies are crucial both in the context of contemporary society and the past, where the experience and position of women in the general narratives of history have long been underrated. To revisit history and include “unwritten stories” not only opens up a more complete view of the past, but also revises the methods used in forming these narratives and offers alternative views.
Feminism and its understanding are changing today, becoming more visible and popular, bringing to the fore solidarity and concern for the common, collective and everyday. However, changes are taking place differently and at different speeds, and gender politics are more crucial in Eastern Europe than in many Western countries,, holding tensions between promises of the emancipation of women in socialism and unfulfilled equality, as well as today’s crisis of capitalism and neoliberalism. By focusing on different knowledge and practices, Summer School speakers will discuss feminist and gender issues of both today and the recent past in the context of the former socialist countries. Lectures, discussions and workshops will analyse the legacies of post-socialism and postcolonialism through a gender studies perspective, intersectionality, social conditions of gender inequality and the aesthetics of feminism.
Participation in the Summer School is free of charge; however, participants must cover partial accommodation and catering costs of 80 EUR.
To apply to participate, please fill out the application form:
https://ej.uz/lccasummerschool2020
The deadline for applications is 15 June 2020. We will respond to applicants by 22 June.
For any questions regarding the application, please contact Andra Silapētere at silapetere@lcca.lv
As a precautionary measure to limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the summer school organizers will follow the latest governmental recommendations and do our best to provide a safe environment.