Archiwum Edukacji #39 - Potential History Symposium. Anna Łazar

Weekend international symposium with participation of artists, curators and invited speakers who have been engaged for years in both theoretical and practical fields (artistic, curatorial, academic, activist) of potential history. They all have worked at the complex and creative intersections of topographies, methodologies, heritages, languages and politics. Drawing on this experience, they will share their research and engagement and will discuss possible scenarios of collaboration and solidarity, refusal and resistance to dominant narratives, affects and aesthetics in the face of violent forms of feeling and representation.

Anna Łazar, on curating in the post-soviet context, on the engagement with multiple perspectives and languages on imperialist history (and art history) of the region, as well as on the challenges of deconstructing histories through exhibitions.

- Anna Łazar, curator of the international artistic cooperation program Free Word within the framework of Gdańsk City of Literature, member of the Women’s Archive team. Author of texts and translator. Editor of the book on art by Aleksandra Kubiak I Will Make a Heart (2022). Curator of contemporary art exhibitions Look at this moment as it vibrates (Arsenał Gallery in Białystok, 2024), Murder to Be Accepted (Berlin, 2022), In what a beautiful place we are (Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, 2022). She has worked in public diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as deputy director and acting director at the Polish Institutes in Kyiv (2008–2014) and St. Petersburg (2015–2018) and as curator at the Museum of Art in Łódź (2021–2022). Member of the Polish section of AICA.

- Curator of the programme: Katarzyna (Kasia) Bojarska, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies of the SWPS University in Warsaw. Founder and head of Center for Comparative Research on Memory Cultures (CCRMC). Co-founder and editor of View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture journal. Scholar of visual culture, contemporary art and memory cultures. Translated among others Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2016). Author of a book Wydarzenia po Wydarzeniu: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman [Events after the event: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman] (2012). Editor and translator (among others) of Ernst van Alphen’s Criticism as Intervention: Art, Memory, Affect book (Polish edition 2019). Member of the Polish section of AICA.