Tribute to the Unknown

Duration: ca. 45 min
Performers: Ruthie Jenrbekova, Maria Vilkovisky

It’s difficult to experiment in the tradition of a literary cabaret, where everything was explored and tried out a century ago. However, Maria and Ruthia from krelex zentre do not look for easy ways in their pursuit of simplicity. Instead, they recycle the legacy of predecessors in their uniquely clumsy manner. Their small cabaret is created out of borrowings and derivations. Perhaps they do not even know what they are doing. As they often say: “we don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re doing it, and everything is stolen”, — but even these words are not their own: it’s a quote from Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion’s “Cheap Lecture”.

Shalazine: Art & Xenography

Шalazine (Shalazine) is a self-published pseudo-journal dedicated to queer art and xenography. Outlining loose networks of nascent life forms and their milleux, it stays unfocused, errant and unable to distinguish nature from culture. Speaking from the queer decolonial left, Shalazine proposes to revise the paradigm of territory and free it from the ancient prejudices of authenticity and identity. The journal is the main media organ of Kreolex zentr.

kreolex logo

This logo represents diffraction of light and refers to definition of creoleness by Edouard Glissant: “The world diffracted but recomposed“.  What is meant here by diffraction may refer to the disintegration of traditional way of life: the history of forced mass migration in times of imperial domination and sovetization. The Latin word diffringere means ‘to break into pieces’, which is normally describes optic phenomena, but here serves as metaphor of loss substantial unity of traditional society.  The resulting varicolored spectrum symbolises the birth of a new, creolised subjectivity. On the surface, the logo refers to light distribution in space. It illustrates rays’ behavior when they cross the border between two different environments. It refers to the Science of Light and following the winding path of Southern Enlightenment. The picture expresses the idea that every unity contains internal heterogeneity and everything that looks like a natural wholeness has in fact been composed this way and therefore can be recomposed anew.