Debates on Division: When Private Becomes Public

Debates on Division deals with the complexity of the current political reality and its implications for the lives of individuals. Organized as a fictional TV talk show, the project spotlights different forms of human fragility and traumas caused by the deviations in various political structures. The Brussels performance focuses on the subjects of fear, suspicion and distrust fueled by social segregation, financial insecurity and xenophobia, especially in the context of growing degeneration of the political systems in the EU and across the globe.

Several stories are narrated by local artists and performers, all revolving around different pieces of clothing that play an intermediary role between private and public, exposing the conflict between the inner world of a person and the political system. You are invited to vote whether each presented piece of clothing enters the collection of the Museum of Utopian Clothes – a speculative public institution. A group of 5 to 6 experts – each representing different professional fields – will reflect on the different stories.

Following the tradition of historical avant-garde that strives to overcome the gap between art and everyday life, the performance bursts out of the theatre into the public space, and morphs into a performative demonstration that moves towards the European Parliament. Let's manifests for human and non-human rights, for equal and inclusive politics, locally and globally, with the European elections on the horizon in May 2019.

• Gluklya/Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya is an artist living between Saint Petersburg and Amsterdam. Her research revolves around the ideas of inclusiveness, embracing poetry and performance practice. She was one of the founding members of the feminist movement ‘Factory of Found Clothes’ and the collective Chto Delat. She has exhibited internationally, including Manifesta10, the 56th Venice Biennale of Art, Positions#4 in the Van Abbe Museum, MUMOK Wien, to name but a few.

• Anna Bitkina is an independent curator and a co-founder of curatorial platform TOK in Saint Petersburg. Her practice is a multidisciplinary process that connects art, theory, social and political science, philosophy in order to generate knowledge and articulate conditions of contemporary society. She lives and works between Russia and the Netherlands.