Bodies Perform Resistance: Protest and Performance in Russia and East Europe Today

The Bodies Perform Resistance conference assembled an international network of scholars, artists, and activists to discuss protest and performance in Russia and East Europe. Held in 2022—a year marked by the pandemic, the devastating war in Ukraine, and political rage worldwide—this two-day hybrid conference examined the centrality of performance art to contemporary protest movements, focusing especially on the leading roles played by women cultural producers and feminist performance. 

The conference set out to analyze both recent protest performances and two decades of twenty-first-century mass events in the region, with an eye to local traditions and historical roots, as well as transnational alliances and solidarities expressed even in pandemic conditions. Over the course of two days, Bodies Perform Resistance sparked critical conversations and experimental collaborations, within the Yale community and across the globe, examining urgent issues of political oppression, mass migration, gender, racial and ethnic violence, and social and economic inequalities in transnational contexts. Through four hybrid sessions, featuring scholars, performance artists, and activists from near and far, the conference helped develop a shared vocabulary and theoretical framework for analyzing singular acts and movements of resistance.