Afghanistan and Switzerland may be far away but the visual iconography of both these mountainous countries cannot be closer. Imagine the famous 15th century Swiss revolutionary / terrorist, William Tell with his arrow and apple bringing havoc to his Austrian Colonizers, but then just for one minute update this image to the 9/11 attacks and its instigator, Osama bin Laden. I only say all this, not to applaud violence, but simply to show that even thousands of miles away and approximately 500 years in time, the strains of history are connected, even in the most unimaginable ways.

And the cinematic layout was always there; beyond the gorgeous mountains of both our respective countries, beyond the fact we both posses three main tribes, beyond the fact that we are both land-locked and beyond the fact we both had/ have enemies everywhere surrounding us and we always welcomed our anarchist guests. Sometimes we are too kind to our guests for better and worse. But beyond all those facts, the Swiss finally had a Pact of Grutli that united them once and for all. And we, the Afghans are still are going through our version of it, called the loya Jirga with our 3 main tribes. And here I stand before you, an Afghan / Dutch, imagining the past, watching the present and having a crazy affinity to this Master of cinema called Jean-Luc Godard.

Just imagine the magic of the moving images of Godard’s cuts, which are themselves a kind of endless revolutions in themselves. The changing in forms, context, contents and sub-subtext, whether it’s the classic dramas of Le Mépris, Masculin Féminin, made in the USA, or the more politically overt works like Le Petit Soldat, Les Carabiniers, or the literally boat rocking Film Socialisme. I am going to go through my personal history of cinema using Master JLG’s works and their artistic parallels to ideas of my own . Perhaps it will explain how and why I find this man, this honorary mountainous Swiss – French – Afghan maker so close to my heart, spirit, artistic and intellectual development.

Join me on a night of adventure. Perhaps Jean-Luc will be there as well in spirit and flesh.
Read more about Dawood

The fall of the Soviet system in 1990 has meant, for Eastern Europe, not only political change, but also the collapse of general structures of meaning and patterns of everyday life. “We live in the ruins of culture,”- Vytautas Landsbergis, the head of the state, said. The Eastern European states emerged from the “ruins” as uncertain and insecure, looking over their shoulders to Western Europe and feeling “almost European but not quite.”

The Eastern European societies have started intense processes of imitation and mimicry. By borrowing, adopting and appropriating Western European cultural and linguistic practices and life styles, they attempted to establish new identities and recuperate some legitimacy. At some point, the unequal relation between the two can be characterized by the metaphor of Plato’s cave – where Eastern Europe stands for the play of shadow, and Western Europe for the real world or authentic reality.

Anastasija has invited sociologist prof. dr. Rasa Baločkaitė, who has written extensively on the subject, to come and discuss with her the practices of the production of identity by the former Eastern Bloc. In this context Anastasija will also introduce her film Syndromes Of Mimicry. Rasa Baločkaitė is an associate professor in sociology in the Department of Social and Political Theory, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. Her scholarly interests include Soviet and post Soviet societies, Soviet colonialism, societies in transition. She was visiting Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley in 2011 and visiting fellow at Potsdam Centre for Contemporary History in 2012 and 2013. 

Independent curator Katia Krupennikova will moderate the talk.

Read more about Anastasija