Backst_age

Involving collaborators from those whose lives are embedded in the region and those from afar, Dissolving Earths was due to launch in March 2020. Funded by The British Council, it was a casualty of blanket sanctions by the UK Foreign Office.

As an indigenous population and land colonized by Russia, many of the collaborators’ knowledge and work had already been silenced within the country; now treated as holders of Russian passports”, their voices were now silenced internationally too. Furthermore, permafrost underlies almost a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere landmass, but most of this is in Russia: urgent ecological research exchange has now been severed.

Backst_age will hold a space to discuss some of the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on both the Dissolving Earths programme – its collaborations, concept and agency – and wider cultural activities bridging indigenous and ecological concerns, and how these have been navigated from within the country and externally.

Soledad Gutierrez, Chief Curator at TBA21, will chair a conversation between Dissolving Earths curator, Sophie J Williamson (Initiator and convenor, Undead Matter); curatorial team, Timur Zolotoev (former editor-in-chief, Strelka Mag); and Yulia Gromova (former Strelka Mag editor).