Vika Biran
area: Literature, Activism
Key Facts
nationality
Belarusarea
Literature, Activismresidence
Berlinrecommending institution
BMEIAtime period
September 2021 - October 202131 years old, born in Pinsk, Belarus.
LGBTQ activist, publicist and project manager from Belarus. She is a co-founder of MAKEOUT, a project on gender and sexuality in Belarus. In September 2020, she was arrested after participating in a peaceful protest in Minsk and sentenced to 15 days in prison. Vika Biran is now studying cultural studies at Viadrina University in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. During her stay, Vika will work on her first literary autobiographical project about political protests in Belarus, LGBTQ activism, struggle against the system, confrontation with police violence and control, and search for meanings and sources of strength.
I want to complete an autofictional novel about the protests in Belarus, the life of an LGBTQ activist, the struggles with the system of police control and violence, the search for meaning, the daily struggle. So far, 50 pages of the book have been written and there is a preliminary agreement with a publisher in Belarus on the publication of the book.
If most of the book is already written, I would like to take the time to work on the podcast "I'm Coping" about everyday struggles, self-preservation and self-care strategies.
From September to October 2021 I was in Vienna as part of an artistic residency. During my stay I worked on an autobiographical book. It is set in four countries - Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and Germany - and describes different experiences with the collision of systems: Taxes, justice, visas, etc. The central themes are political protests in Belarus, administrative detention and migration. The book is narrated in the first person and includes documentary material: interrogation protocols, entries in social networks, instructions for medication. Diary entries of different people are also used.
In November 2021, we analyzed the results of my work together with the editor of the independent publishing initiative Pflyaumbaum Alena Kazlovaia (Belarus), who plans to publish the book. Alena believes that the book is 80 percent finished. The deadline for completing the book is December 31, 2021, after which we will begin editorial and administrative work related to its publication. The book is expected to be published in Belarusian in 2022.