• Part of the PhD-Workshop «Imagination as a Site of Struggle»
Shocking Periphery aims to rehearse a ‘potential history’ of Poland’s reintegration into international capital markets after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It refuses the implementation of the liberal-economic Shock Therapy post 1989 carried out under the infamous Margaret Thatcher slogan ‘there is no alternative’ (the TINA hypothesis).
This transformation paved a way to a recession of unparalleled proportions, while dismantling socialist elements of the economy and the state. Using storytelling the presentation will rewind to the events of 1989 to rehearse a different socio-economic scenario. One in which a socialist utopia, practised with others who are situated in the periphery, is re-imagined.
Chair: Helen V. Pritchard, Shaka McGlotten, Ines Kleesattel, and Lucie Kolb.
Biography
Katarzyna Łukasik looks at the relationship between imperialism and periphery. She examines conflicting notions of political imaginary as both means of erasure and potential. In her artistic practice she investigates the economic and cultural subjugation of Eastern Europe, treated as the testing ground for realisation of Western and Eastern imperial fantasies, tracing histories of imperial formations, and neoliberalism. Through fictional narratives she seeks to retrieve the political possibility of worldly cocitizenship and the commons, re-writing the periphery as a site of resistance and potential.
She holds an MA in Research Architecture and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art at Goldsmiths University. Her doctoral research project ‘Shocking Periphery’ aims to rehearse a ‘potential history’ of Poland’s reintegration into international capital markets after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Together with Daisy Smith and Rufus Rock she curates Mascara Film Club, which creates a space for screening artists’ works outside of institutional organisations, in a more convivial setting, fostering a self-organised infrastructure for moving image practitioners.