12.06 at 7 pm: Lecture by Mitja Velikonja “When Walls Speak: Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe”

On 12 June 2024, the M17 hosted a public lecture-discussion by Professor Mitja Velikonja (Ljubljana, Slovenia) on “When Walls Speak: Political Graffiti of the Balkans and Central Europe”.

Mitja Velikonja is a professor of cultural studies, head of the Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), and a guest lecturer at Jagiellonian, Columbia, and Yale Universities.

Graffiti is not just a simple inscription on a fence, not just a form of painting. They are a screen for manifesting socially important thoughts when other channels of communication are not available. It is a place to express irony, and thus anti-fragility and resilience. Political graffiti remain as scars or nostalgic memories when the agenda changes, once heated political debates calm down, former leaders leave, old fears are replaced by new threats. What are these marginal and sometimes highly artistic wall images? How do they work with the collective consciousness? What will they speak to future generations? Will they turn into visual noise, will they still provoke an ironic smile, will they change the essence of the message if they are taken to museums?

The answers to these questions, as well as to the questions of how the Yugoslav countries came to self-awareness and independence, how the war trauma of the 1990s affects the political present of the Balkan countries, and what political nostalgia, including titostalgia, is, will be given by Mitja Velikenja, a professor at the University of Ljubljana. He is the author of the books ‘Images of Dissent: Political Graffiti and Street Art of the Post-Socialist Transition’ (2023), ‘Titostalgia: A Study of Nostalgia for Josef Broz’ (2024), translated into Ukrainian by Helvetica Publishing House.

Entrance to the current exhibition ‘Foretypes’ by Anatoliy Kryvolap at M17 is included in the price of the lecture ticket.

Opening hours of M17: Tuesday – Sunday, 11:00-20:00

Address: 102-104, Antonovycha St., Kyiv, Ukraine

Tickets are available for purchase here.