#Yevgeniy Fiks

[bahateven]

Soviet Moscow’s Yiddish-Gay Dictionary – Yevgeniy Fiks

[russianreader]

Yevgeniy Fiks: The Wayland Rudd Collection

Yevgeniy Fiks: The Wayland Rudd Collection

Join us for the Book Launch and Panel Discussion for The Wayland Rudd Collection by Yevgeniy Fiks 6 PM ET, Wednesday, November 17, 2021 Wayland Rudd Collection book cover. Image courtesy of Ugly Duckling Presse This event will be held via Zoom. To register for this event go here. How can the complicated intersection of race and Communist internationalism be engaged through cultural materials from…

[amor-rojo]

Yevgeniy Fiks: ‘Any utopia is queer by nature, because it takes you from the present and directs you to a strange time and place’

the utopianism of queerness

https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/future-queer-perfect-station-independent-projects-yevgeniy-fiks-olga-kopenkina

The second video was from Bishkek, formerly Frunze, capital of Kyrgyzstan?

YF: Yes, this is a very interesting collective, which does both research and art. It is called Stab (School of Theory and Activism of Bishkek) and it was formed about five years ago. They are curators, artists and theorists. They are rethinking the Soviet experience, including that of LGBT and queer. They have a website, en.art-initiatives.org. The film was made in Bishkek, where the group found an archive of a commune from the 1970s, called the Kollontai Commune, which was interested in [Alexandra] Kollontai’s writings and theories concerning sexual liberation and futurism under communism. In the film, various members of the collective and invited speakers discuss the archive and the life of the commune. Presentations by various speakers are interspersed with fragments of verse-reading by an actress. The verses are akin in spirit to Kollontai’s writings. The timeline on the wall features quotes from Kollontai’s writing and speeches, with commentary underneath by members of Stab. In fact, the story with the archive of the Kollontai commune is only one of Stab’s projects. In general, they organise exhibitions, make films and curate projects, as well as participating in conferences and organising film screenings. In some ways, their work is akin to a Russian group Chto delat (What’s to be Done?), who are artists as well, but also publish a newspaper and run a school. They can be called activists and cultural producers.

[mashkaroom]

yevgeniy fiks thinks through how dictionaries can be cultural and artistic projects so well, i fucking love it and i love that dude’s work!

[yasbxxgie]

Masha Chlenova Explores Black People’s Soviet Union’s History

Claude McKay was a young writer exploring the possibilities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics when he addressed the 4th Congress of the Comintern in the Kremlin’s Throne Room in 1922. A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the Jamaican writer wondered if the USSR could offer him what the United States did not: racial equality.

With the centennial of the former Soviet Union coming up Oct. 17, Masha Chlenova, curator of the exhibit “Russian Revolution: A Contested Legacy,” uses still images of McKay from that day in 1922 to help us understand just what he was feeling at the time. She takes a very measured approach to how she presents MaKay’s images, along with other images and artworks from the time that represent the USSR’s attempts to bring equality to women, Jews and LGBTQ people.

Chlenova, a Columbia University-trained art historian who emigrated from Russia in 1995, feels it’s important to take Americans back to 1917 to explore the dynamism of the USSR experiment without judgment.

For example, did communism fail McKay? Were the Soviets sincere in their outreach to black Americans and other black peoples whose favor they curried with generous academic scholarships? That is for you to decide. Chlenova’s job is to present the facts. You can feel free to draw your own conclusions.

As for images of McKay, Chlenova makes sure visitors can see him for who he was at the moment the image was taken.

“I heard his voice as someone who comes at a particular historical moment to a particular place and makes sense of it for himself in an honest way,” she said. “And this is what I want to salvage and preserve for people. It’s a particular historical moment of this young man standing in the Kremlin.”

Accompanying the set of McKay photos will be a copy of an essay (pdf) written in the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, in which he details his experience speaking at the Kremlin and his optimism about the new state.

McKay’s welcome in 1922 operated in sharp contrast with the treatment of black people in Russia today, where African immigrants often complain of racially motivated attacks. In 2011, artist Yevgeniy Fiks was video-recorded reading McKay’s speech at sights around Moscow where racist attacks took place in 2011. Video of his performance will also be featured at the exhibit, along with the works of Anton Ginzburg.

Photograph:

Claude McKay addressing the 4th Congress of the Comintern in the Throne Room of the Kremlin, Moscow, 1922 (Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

[sunkentreasurecove]

[ruthcore]

new header from pleshka-birobidzhan by yevgeniy fiks, a very interesting gay jewish conceptual artist whom i love!

[elisehu]

What Do We Know

Yevgeniy Fiks, Sovetish Kosmos/Yiddish Cosmos, 2018, prints on paper. Soviet space program monument photos overlaid on a Yiddish-language literary magazine published in Moscow, which couldn’t discuss Judaism. He added anti-Soviet slogans, invoking the stalled identity of Soviet Jews, and suggesting their embrace of space was a substitute. How many people have I interviewed in my lifetime?…

[zombiemarydaly]

In honor of seriously asking myself how much of a tankie I am for the first time in years, I’m changing my icon to this soviet art.

I still think I get to “count” as anarchist and state/prison abolitionist, and I’m not particularly nostalgic for the ussr, but I really don’t fucking care, and this propaganda slaps.

The image caption on the article I found it on reads:

“For the solidarity of women of the world!’ says this poster from 1973. Photograph: Wayland Rudd Archive/Yevgeniy Fiks/Flint”

[degeneratedworker]

Soviet poster from 1933, part of the Wayland Rudd Archive. Courtesy of Yevgeniy Fiks

[russianreader]

Yevgeniy Fiks, "Moscow: Gay Cruising Sites of the Soviet Capital, 1920s–1980s"

Yevgeniy Fiks, “Moscow: Gay Cruising Sites of the Soviet Capital, 1920s–1980s”

Exhibit Opening. Moscow: Gay Cruising Sites of the Soviet Capital, 1920s–1980s Wednesday, September 4, 2019, 6:00 pm Harriman Institute Atrium (12th floor, 420 W 118th St., New York)

Please join the Harriman Institute for the opening reception of the exhibit Moscow: Gay Cruising Sites of the Soviet Capital, 1920s -1980s featuring a series of works photographed in 2008 by artist Yevgeniy Fiks.

T…

[ozfactsblog]

Artist Yevgeniy Fiks Photographs the Gay Cruising Sites of Soviet Moscow

Artist Yevgeniy Fiks Photographs the Gay Cruising Sites of Soviet Moscow

It always struck me as odd when I was living in Moscow that, in a city of 12 million people, I had so many occasions to be alone – in metro underpasses late at night, in snow-covered courtyards, in the endless maze of backstreets and alleyways. It never occurred to me that these moments alone in the Russian capital were missed opportunities for sexual encounters but, after seeing ‘Moscow: Gay…

[spectaclecommittee]

Farbrengen presenter bios ( for Purim 2018)

This year we had our content launch early to facilitate having our script written earlier. The event took place on December 9th 2017.  Here is who was there to share their arts and smarts.  Videos to follow soon!

Dania Rajendra – is a writer, an editor, a journalist and social justice strategist (daniarajendra.net)

Alexis Pauline Gumbs poet, independent scholar, and activist. She is the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, also published by Duke University Press, coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, and the founder and director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina. http://alexispauline.com/

Outside Voices Theater Company- wish you to know the following: We are about Advocacy, Empowerment, Out-of-the-Box-Thinking and Disability Pride! https://www.facebook.com/pg/Outside-Voices- Theater-Company- 225359374334054/about/?ref=page_internal-

Bonafide Rojas: author of Notes On The Return To The Island (Grand Concourse Press, 2017), Renovatio (Grand Concourse Press, 2014), When The City Sleeps (Grand Concourse Press, 2012) & Pelo Bueno: A Day In The Life of a Nuyorican Poet

(Dark Souls Press, 2004). (http://bonafiderojas.com/)

Stomp the Ban/ Khlood Zanta/ Esraa Warda : Thoughts and dances by young Arab women showcasing dabkeh, a form of Arab step dancing. Stomp the Ban was featured at a rally in which girls and young women were invited to share the impact the Ban and anti-Muslim bigotry has had on them and their communities.

Hate-Free Zone Queens Campaign, represented by campaign core partner Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change. Hate Free Zones is building a community defense system that will allow us to defend our communities from workplace raids, deportations, mass criminalization, violence, and systemic violation of our rights and dignity. https://www.hatefreezones.org/

Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in New York since 1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: “Lenin for Your Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries. He recently published “Soviet Moscow’s Yiddish-Gay Dictionary” http://www.cicadapress.net/products-page/

Ethan Cohen led a lovely Havdaleh

Rubulad: a community of artists, performers and entertainers based in Brooklyn, NY. Huge thanks for sharing your space with us today and tonight!!!! https://www.facebook.com/pg/rubulad/about/?re f=page_internal

Jews For Racial And Economic Justice

For 27 years, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) has pursued racial and economic justice in New York City by advancing systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in people’s everyday lives. We are inspired by Jewish tradition to fight for a sustainable world with an equitable distribution of economic and cultural resources and political power.

The movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation will be led by those most directly targeted by oppression. We believe that Jews have a vital role to play in this movement. The future we hope for depends on Jews forging deep and lasting ties with our partners in struggle.

GREAT SMALL WORKS was founded in 1995 by a collective of six artists, all veterans of Bread and Puppet Theater, to keep theater at the heart of social life. The company draws on folk, puppet, avant-garde and popular theater traditions to address contemporary issues. Great Small Works performs in theaters, schools, parks, libraries, museums, prisons, street corners, and other public spaces, producing work on many scales, from gigantic outdoor spectacles with scores of volunteers to miniature shows in living rooms. In curated festivals, cabarets and soirees, Great Small Works collaborates with artists from varied traditions, provides performance opportunities for artists in diverse genres, and engages the participation of young artists in the process of finding their own voices. In community-based pageants and parades, the company works with groups of students, activists and artists to address issues of common concern. On any scale, Great Small Works productions seek to renew, cultivate and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, promoting theater as a model for participating in democracy. http://www.greatsmallworks.org

New York State Council on the Arts

The Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee Purim Shpil is supported by the Special Arts Services program of NYSCA.