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19.5.2012 | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

No Revolution without Innovation

Workshop with Srđa Popovič and Anna Jermolaewa

Visual artist and activist Anna Jermolaewa and Srđa Popovič, founder of the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) of the University of Belgrade, organize a workshop about the methods of nonviolent struggle and the role of art within those. The workshop takes place on 19.5.2012, 11 am–8 pm at KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

As a preparation for the workshop participants are invited to design and perform a nonviolent action addressing to any restriction or prejudgment that women are facing in their society.

Srđa Popovič is one of the founders of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group OTPOR which led to the downfall of President Slobodan Milosevic, when hundreds of thousands of protestors took over the Serbian Parliament in 2000. In 2003 he founded the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a non-profit educational institution spreading knowledge on nonviolent strategies and tactics to be used in nondemocratic countries. More recently he has worked with April 6th, a key group in the Egyptian uprising, and with other groups from the Middle East. His book, Nonviolent Struggle 50 Crucial Points, co-authored with Andrej Milivojevic and Slobodan Djinovic, is one of the leading manuals on public mobilization for human rights and democracy activists worldwide.

Anna Jermolaewa is a Russian artist, who was political active against the regime of the USSR in the 1980s in organizing governmental- critical demonstrations, co- founding the first oppositional party as well as the journal of the party. Being charged with anti- sowjet propaganda, she had to flee from the USSR in 1989. In her artworks and projects she is criticizing and dealing with the grievance and disparity in the distribution of power on a private, socially and a political level. Currently she is actively supporting the opposition in Russia that is working with “classical” methods of resistance like demonstrations and flyers as well as with happenings that ridicule the regime. In St. Petersburg p.e. a chorus of horns as a symbol of disapproval was taking place while Putin was driving through the city and in the Siberian Barnaul toys were provided with protest signs against the corruption and electoral malpractice in order to avoid the banning of the demonstrations there. Those and other examples of the non- violent forms of protest in Russia will be discussed within the workshop.