REVOLUTION17
CAFÉS - 2017
Five Years with Dash Arts in the Post-Soviet World
22 November 2017 | Rich Mix, London | FREE
This November Cafe reflected on Dash Arts' five-year journey through the Post-Soviet world. This last Revolution17 Dash Café looked back on these last five years with a group of exceptional colleagues and friends including journalist Oliver Bullough and playwright Natalia Vorozhbit who will help us explore how politics and the arts have changed over the period. Plus there’ll be live music from our great collaborators Mazaika and Sasha Ilyukevich and tunes from DJ Mourrka who have performed with us many times since 2012.
Revolution - 100 Years On
25 October 2017 | Rich Mix, London | FREE
Held on the anniversary of the October Revolution a century ago, this Dash Cafe explored the impact on the revolutionary events of 1917 on Russia today. Participating artists, activists and writers included Charlotte Hobson, award-winning novelist, translator and journalist, and author of "Black Earth City" and "The Vanishing Futurist", and Vladimir Ashurkov, Russian dissident and colleague of anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny to look back and reflect on the potential for a future Russian Revolution that might shake the world.
The talks were accompanied by music from unmissable Russian singer-songwriter Lena Kaufman, Based between Moscow and Paris, composing and performing both as a soloist and in collaboration with groups including Bristol-based "White Bully", "Truffle", "Triangle Sun" and top-10 Russian band “Би-2”/"Bedva", Lena also composes music for theatre including Moscow's Meyerhold Theatre.
On Meyerhold
27 September 2017 | Rich Mix, London | FREE
This Dash Cafe celebrated the life, work and exceptional influence of Vsevolod Meyerhold. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in October 1917 the young theatre director was the radical, star pupil of the great Stanislavski. Meyerhold's productions shook up classical theatres and his plans for actor training were a century ahead of their time. Like many artists he supported the revolution and put his full creative weight behind some of most exciting propaganda the world has ever seen. The shocking narrative of his tragic demise makes for an archetypal parable of the artist and the state. Featuring guest speakers Dr. Amy Skinner of the University of Hull, Director Oleg Mirochnikov, and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Beatriz Calvo-Merino.
Disgraced Monuments, Iconoclasm and Soviet Dreams
26 July 2017 | Rich Mix, London | FREE
This café explored the creation of icons in Soviet times and the significance of their existence and destruction in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union. The evening included a screening of Laura Mulvey's 1994 poignant film Disgraced Monuments which looked at the sudden changes to political and cultural life in the former Soviet Union through the prism of its classic icons as well as music and conversation with Mulvey and writers Zinovy Zinik and Owen Hatherley. To round off the night - and our last Cafe of the summer - the comparable DJ Sasha Ilyukevich played a set to keep us dancing until late.
The Revolution that Changed The World
28 June 2017 | Rich Mix, London
This June Café, at the heart of our REVOLUTION17 year, probed an investigation into the gripping events of 1917 in Petrograd, the year of revolutions that changed the world: what exactly happened between the less known February revolution and the iconic October uprising. Located within the pop-up installation of the Dacha at Rich Mix, the evening featured exciting conversation between special guests including historian and writer Orlando Figes, art curator and Courtauld Institute of Art lecturer Natalia Murray and Russian art expert and curator Elena Zaytseva. The lively conversation was accompanied by film clips compiled by our friends from Obskura, music and, as always, our brilliant audience.
The Émigré Flight from Russia
24 May 2017 | Rich Mix, London
This café focused on the writers and artists caught up in the chaos of the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War. Many writers went on to settle in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere and forged new lives in exile. We explored the wonderful Nadezhda Teffi, the hugely popular and funny story writer and author of Pushkin Press ‘Memories, From Moscow to the Black Sea’ and stories by the more famous émigré writers, Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin with speakers and readers including Robert Chandler, Bryan Karetnyk, Dr Maria Rubins and Dash artistic director Josephine Burton. The speakers were accompanied by live music to bring the words to life, thanks to the brilliant Sasha Ilukyevich and Rochelle Swanson.
Clouded Lands and a New Cold War
Wednesday 26 April 2017 Rich Mix, London
This Dash Café took place within Food of War’s Clouded Lands exhibition at Rich Mix, a show of photography, installation, painting, gastro-performance, sculpture and filming that explored the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, precisely 31 years on. As part of our Clouded Lands Cafe, we sampled the gastro-performance and discussed the work and wider issues with several of the participating artists from Food of War, including Zinaida Lihacheva, Hernan Barros and Omar Castaneda inspired by Noble prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich's Chernobyl Prayer, plus BBC journalist Lucy Ash and Peter Conradi author of the very newly published Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War. Additionally, we had hauntingly beautiful live music from Ukrainian songstress Iryna Muha.
Exposure - Soviet Politics on Film with Kino Klassika
Wednesday 22 March 2017 | Rich Mix, London
Dash Arts and Kino Klassika presented Exposure: The Politics of Soviet Filmmaking Industry as our March Dash Cafe. We showed clips from across the decades that took in representations of early Soviet social realism, war patriotism and the impact of tight censorship on the industry, with lively debate from experts including Orlando Figes and Vlad Strukov, Associate Professor in Film and Digital Culture at the University of Leeds. We also had live music from the brilliant Mazaika Duo, who played a set drawn from and inspired by the phenomenal film music hits.
Odessa a City of Rogues and Schnorrers
22 February 2017 | Rich Mix, London
In February’s Café, we delved into the world of Isaac Babel's Odessa and explored his tales of the dark underbelly of the city, filled with gangsters, prostitutes, beggars and smugglers and everyday Jewish life. This included the first part of Michale Boganim’s documentary Odessa Odessa (2005), which captured the former yiddish stars of Odessa living out their last days in deep poverty in the crumbling city, readings from the Boris Dralyuk’s new translation of Babel’s Odessa stories published this year by Pushkin Press and songs from Russian / Yiddish maestro Polina Shepherd and London Yiddish Choir.
Ukraine - An Artist’s View
25 January 2017 | Rich Mix, London
Ukraine - An Artist’s View explored contemporary Ukraine through the eyes of its some of its most dynamic artists. It featured live music from the wonderful Ukrainian singer and songwriter Olesya Zdorovetska who launced her new project Telling Sounds, a sonic journey across the landscape of contemporary Ukrainian poetry, award-winning visual artist Nikita Kadan from Ukrainian contemporary art collective R.E.P (revolutionary experimental space), director of the Ukrainian Institute Marina Pesenti and contributions from Royal Court playwright Natalia Vorozhbit on her project Theatre of the Displaced, which told the stories of people who have lost their homes in Eastern Ukraine.
Radio Gagarin: Come the Revolution
23 February 2017 | Rich Mix London
Never mind the Bolsheviks.....this is Radio Gagarin....! Balkan/Russian/Baltic/Gypsy/Anarko/Klez/Mash/Thrash/Trash/KULTURKlash.
Featuring Tantz, Theatre Borscht’s Travelling Vegetable Company, DJs Max Reinhardt, Penny Metal & Mourrka -- Radio Gagarin filled Rich Mix to overflowing with a tundra-melting mix of live music, digital DJ prowess, performance art, cinema, poetry, puppetry, poverty, latkes, bilinis and vodka.