Review of Belarusian Culture: Intro (May-August '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: INTRO (MAY-AUGUST '22)
General Situation
General Situation
The current state of Belarusian culture is defined by its geographical, political, mental, and stylistic inconsistency.

Even earlier, in the times of relative "stability", one could speak about some unified culture only conventionally. Nowadays, in the situation of a continuous political crisis, Russian intervention, cultural terror, and emergency migration, such conventionality is becoming even more acute. The incoherence of the cultural sphere is progressing following the inconsistency of political and social spheres.

State models of servile cultural creativity manifested their absolute creative paralysis already at the beginning of our crisis — at the level of Lukašenka’s election campaign as well as during the evolving of the manhunt for "the incredible" [Belarusians who took part in the protest]. The state of general stagnation and evident secondariness, natural for the culture of an authoritarian society, allows us to focus in our review mainly on the events and personalities belonging to the sector of Belarusian culture, which is independent of the state.

Here is an undefined state with non-evident consequences. Previous patterns of cultural communication and creative alliances became disintegrated and static. No new ones are yet visible on the horizon. In fact, the enhanced reproduction of breaches and vacuities is taking place. There are no common matrices of the national culture, but the cultural field is undergoing accelerated atomization instead, being divided into separate projects and private areas of influence.

The intensity of the struggle for resources and goal-oriented project competition is increasing respectively.

The situation of conventions and communications being deteriorated (within the country and in the sphere of international contacts as well), is common for everyone. As a result, creators and culture managers found themselves in a problematic cultural environment, deprived of their previous comfortable status of "the cultural alternative" subsidized by domestic patrons and foreign donators.

How the new territory of the global culture has met Belarusian independent creativity? On the one hand, artistic communities and projects coming from the environment of the former Belarusian "inner Europe", got a clear impulse for growth, once they relocated abroad and renewed European contacts. They have transformed into independent "embassies of culture". On the other hand, many things, designed for local consumption, turned out to be unsustainable in a broader context. Natural selection and challenging cultural adaptation practices take place — entry to different dimensions or acquiring a "niche artist" status. It is mainly inertial creative work "for the own people" which is working out — a new old emigrant style. Verses, feuilletons, stand up. Just homemade sketches and no qualitative development.

The prolonged artistic crisis of "the culture in exile". Many of those who have left Belarus hoped for a short-term trip and the possibility to return quickly — have recently raised the issue of a conceptual and stylistic reset and search for sustainable patterns of up-to-date existence.

Those phenomena, which can be observed within the framework of the "new Belarusian cultural mobility" have neither common benchmarks nor clear growth models. And resemble a chaotic search for a cultural residence in a world that does not really need us. The attempts to sell a remote past mythology-2020, stories of protests and misery, to the public are prevailing at the moment. Those stories, being consistent with their origin of media effects, cannot be exploited in the long term. There is no future in such a situation. In the best case, there is a heroic past.

Fundamental incompleteness of the Belarusian cultural project is inevitably leading to the emergence of "half-done" authors, events, which are not figured out completely, and imperfect texts. Nothing is to be expected yet from our "luggage" creativity and clandestine underground. Competitive ability in the global hypermarket is the goal for tomorrow.

And for the time being, all of us are an unaccomplished nation. Our revolutionism made in 2020 is just a nice episode that has not evolved further, into a story-driven and coherent chain of events. On the other hand, totalitarian degradation, being also unaccomplished, is spreading within society.

The alternative narrative hasn`t been formed yet. That is why we express ourselves mainly in the format of self-reference or gropingly working for the future: designing a culture for a better country that doesn`t exist yet.

Belarusian culture of the transition period is the experience of self-identification and upgrade. The time of fragmentariness. The age of segregated clubs and studios is still not united into one single puzzle, which is yet to be completed.

This is why our topic for today (and for tomorrow as well) is transformations of the cultural field, shifts of meanings, current trends, and creators of new icons and trends. Those who are breaking the obsolete patterns. And increasing significance and influence of the modern Belarusian culture.

It is also worth understanding what doesn`t work and how to live with it.