Navigating Dangerous Terrain
The Yard Movement and the Tactics of Publishing, Care, and Collectivity of the Belarusian Museum of Stones
In part 1 of this discussion, the Museum of Stones – a name that refers to both a collective and the publication/newspaper they produce as well as a concrete location in Minsk, Belarus – talk about the practices of collectivity of Minsk's “yard movement” and the alternative infrastructures, tactical media, and technopolitics of care that developed in response to the parallel threats of political repression and the pandemic that escalated from 2020 and continue to this day. In a landscape of internet blackouts and water contamination, when the state not only abandons the public, but employs the most extreme disciplinary measures against it, complex strategies for disseminating information and for archiving and preserving knowledges of struggle emerged. Reflecting on the suspended timelessness of protest in relation to the legacies of resistance of the past and the imaginaries of the future, we discuss different tools – technologies, languages, experiments with multiple temporalities, among others – for confronting these ongoing challenges.
Due to these conditions, the voices of the members of the collective have been masked with voice filters to protect their anonymity. As a result, there are occasional sound quality imperfections and echoes. We ask for your understanding and patience while listening.
These audio episodes are part of Peripheral Visions.
Navigating Dangerous Terrain, Part I
In this second part of the discussion with the Museum of Stones, we look at the impact of the historical legacy and continuity of practices of the left in Belarus, how these informed revolutionary events of recent years, and experiments with blending reflections on the past with futuring for reimagining the present and rethinking archival practices. We look at their understanding and use of tactical media and discuss perspectives of “cybernetics of the poor,” while reflecting on the sustainability and non-sustainability of movements.