This event focuses on the questions of ethics and technologies of representation of popular protests through the example of the photo exhibit "Belarus-Faces of Resistance" that took place in the Southspace Gallery, Chicago, in summer of 2022. The exhibit featured the work of nine artists, photojournalists, and filmmakers who chronicled popular protests in Belarus in summer of 2020.

The graduate curator of the exhibit Oliver Okun will come together with the architect Geoffrey Goldberg to discuss the problems of protest representation. The conversation will address the questions:

  • What can the representations of protests tell us through their visual dynamic?
  • What ethical problems arise from publishing protest photography in light of the recent uses of face-recognition software for identifying and persecuting the participants?
  • What are possible technological remedies for avoiding the trap of the "digital gulag"?

The program will be introduced and moderated by Olga Solovieva.

Participants’ Bios:

Oliver Okun, a graduate student in Slavic, is curator of the exhibit “Belarus-Faces of Resistance” (Southspace Gallery, Chicago, June 24 -September 30, 2022) and co-editor of the exhibit’s catalog for Academic Studies Press. Oliver writes a comparative dissertation about prison poetry in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

Geoffrey Goldberg is an architect and urban designer with G. Goldberg + Associates. Geoff has practiced architecture and urban design in Chicago for over 30 years. Projects done under his direction include planning an urban airport, building a new city college, and design management of large public transportation initiatives. He has taught architectural design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, urban design at Harvard University, and courses on form and urban protests at the University of Chicago. He has published both architectural and engineering histories and has received awards for work in design, urban planning, and historical research.

Olga Solovieva is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.

Cosponsors: University of Chicago Alumni Relations and the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights