Ana Lok
Bereich: Kuratorin, Theorie
Key Facts
Nationalität
BelarusBereich
Kuratorin, TheorieWohnort
MinskEmpfehlende Institution
BMEIAZeitraum
August 2021 - August 2021Anna Lok|tionova is a curator, culture manager, organiser, lives and works in Minsk, Belarus.
She works on long-term curatorial projects on the topic of community, horizontal communication, self-care, queerness/ing, memories, care as (r)evalution in post-soviet context.
Co-founder of the festival of queer culture ‘DOTYK’.
She open/closed an art space Canteena.xyz- an old soviet canteena, which became a place for art, design and different communities.The space was closed by the government after the massive complaints from religious groups.
Now she supports collaboration and networking between Belarus culture communities by involving them in the process of collective restoration and preservation of the history of the independent art and culture scene in Belarus between 2004 and 2020.
Ana is interested in locally focused, accessible and inclusive approaches to spaces that can resist the neoliberal growth-driven structures they find themselves in. Her attention currently spikes for explorations of spaces, safe-care and horizontal communication.
Ana is a co-founder of Chascha - art-retreat program for ac(r)tivists in Belarus.
1) Artivist group ‘Чаще быть в Чаще’ / Artivist group “Pay thicker visits to the thicket” (space and communities)
The current situation in Belarus is a high-risk and high-opportunity situation for the whole society and for those on different levels of it who seek change.
Months of protests, mobilization, creating solidarity networks have been truly exhausting. There are many more months ahead in this transformation.
It is the most essential thing now to help people ration their energy, to help them recover and keep on, so that we stay there and carry on.
A series of 3-day retreats is, of course, not going to become a turning point, but it will give an important space to breathe in and breathe out to those who are putting themselves out there.
These retreats are designed as resource spaces that offer tools and support for self-recovery and opportunities for experience exchange, including:
- Creating a temporary safe space for people who have been in a prolonged situation of extreme pressure;
- Providing participants with simple and accessible practices for regaining balance and for self-care (breathing, body-centered therapy, self-massage, art therapy, etc.); exploring techniques for burn-out prevention, stress management, processing activist trauma, and rehabilitation after experiences of violence;
- Offering a dedicated space and structure to rest, with flexible time arrangements allowing for quietness and disconnection and basic stabilizing daily routine;
- Facilitating connections between participants, experience and knowledge exchange.
in progress: 2) RE:construction culture BY (book)