The Hymns of No Resistance

A mash-up of polemics and pop

While Slavic countries look increasingly to the West, the Slavs and Tatars collective is very deliberately looking in the opposite direction: to the East, more specifically to the region between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China. A region which all too often lies below Western radar. Slavs and Tatars wants to cherish the romantic heritage shared by Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. According to them, this heritage is not merely social, political, linguistic or aesthetic. There is above all a strong emotional bond. They seek out this bond, and polemics too, with unceasing dedication.

The core members of the Slavs and Tatars action group – Kasia Korczak, Payam Sharifi, Boy Vereecken and Victoria Camblin – operate from Brussels, Cambridge and Moscow. Their creations cannot be grouped under a single heading, but cross several disciplines: from performances to interventions in public space, and visual art. The group’s work has previously been shown at the Barbican in London, the Design Museum, the Moscow Biennale and Manifesta, and is also included in the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York.

Slavs and Tatars will be presenting The Hymns of No Resistance, a mash-up of polemics and pop culture, during Spoken World at the Kaaitheater. Classics and cult songs from pop history are rewritten and pieced together to create a performance-concert on territorial disputes, languages issues and other controversial questions from Eurasia. The songs are played live by Kurdish musicians who live in Brussels. The playlist includes She’s Armenian (previously known as She’s a Maniac), Young Kurds (Young Turks), Bomb Iran by Vince Vance and the Valiants, and Rock the Casbah by The Clash.