This conference aims to critically position Russian colonialism not as an isolated phenomenon but as an integral part of the international project of colonial expansion, which encompasses both collaboration and competition between Western and non-Western empires. Encompassing the intersections of colonial warfare, resource extraction, surveillance, occupation, and other colonial technologies, our collaborative initiative aims at thinking with multiple histories and presents of decolonial resistance.
Consisting of three panels – technologies of occupation, technologies of persistence and technologies of implication –, the conference brings together researchers, artists and activists to analyze ways and methods of colonial violence, as well as develop to methods of translocal solidarity.
Monday, 28 April
11:30 – 13:30
Panel I: Technologies of Persistence
Chair: Vincent E. (independent researcher)
Respondent (online): Pujita Guha (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Iryna Zamuruieva (independent researcher and artist): “A Greasy Frontier, an Ouroboros of Oil”
Asia Bazdyrieva (University of Applied Arts Vienna): “New Energy Sovereignties in the Shift from Petro to ‘Clean’ Energies”
Yaniya Mikhalina (Trondheim Art Academy, NTNU): “The master’s tools don’t belong to the master: mapping psychic spaces of cross-colonialism through the lens of feminist-indigenous worldmaking”
14:30 – 16:00
Expert Panel
Chair: Svitlana Matviyenko (Simon Fraser University)
Pujita Guha (University of California, Santa Barbara): “The (Counter) Insurgent in the Forest” (online)
Darya Tsymbalyuk (University of Chicago): “Emptying the steppe” (online)
Tuesday, 29 April
11:30 – 13:30
Panel II: Technologies of Occupation
Chair: Vincent E. (independent researcher)
Respondent: Malaka Shwaikh (University of St Andrews)
Keto Gorgadze (independent researcher and writer): “‘Russian Riviera’: Elemental Histories of Colonialism in the South Caucasian (Sub)Tropics”
Donatella Della Ratta (John Cabot University, Rome): “Ask me for those unborn promises that may seem unlikely to happen in the natural…”
Daria Hetmanova (Simon Fraser University): “Infrastructuring (In)gratitude: On Russian 'Reconstruction' Projects in Occupied Mariupol”
Ilona Jurkonyte (University of Toronto) / Svitlana Matviyenko (Simon Fraser University): “The Sea of Land: Is Russia a Maritime Empire?”
14:30 – 16:30
Panel III: Technologies of Implication and Solidarity
Chair: Svitlana Matviyenko (Simon Fraser University)
Respondent (online): Darren Byler (Simon Fraser University)
Yuliia Kishchuk (INDEX): “Soviet Ukrainian Educational Infrastructure and the Possibilities of Grassroots Solidarity”
Zoe Samudzi (Clark University): “Anti-Black 'Friendship': Socialist Solidarity Statecrafting in Africa” (online)
Selbi Durdiyeva (independent researcher): “‘We cannot seek a separate peace.’ Reading Sylvia Wynter in the Context of russia’s/soviet colonialism, Transnational Solidarity and Where the ‘Western-Centered Marxism’ Went Wrong?”
