SONGS OF RESILIENCE
discussion program

photo: victoria nazarova

public talk

Multiple contemporary challenges demand our immediate attention and rapid action. War and conflict, climate change and rising illiberalism, displacement and forced migration, racism and economic inequality, data privacy and artificial intelligence are all impacting our present and threatening our future. Positive change that would really matter, it is often presumed, can only be achieved through active resistance. Implying moral positioning (which manifests itself in words) and corresponding deeds (actions), resistance is often contrasted with other forms of engaging with the world — resilience, for example. The former tends to be seen as active and the latter as passive, with respective ethical connotations. But resistance demands energy, and its levels get depleted by constant struggle. Meanwhile, in science we see that resistance is understood as the ability of a material to remain unchanged, and resilience as the material’s capacity to recover. And while the former is hardly possible in today’s circumstances, the latter offers a lot of potential for active being in the world. Can resilience be regarded as a form of resisting the status quo? This series of discussions, organised around the VOICES Performing Arts Festival, will investigate various ways to practise resilience today. The programme has been conceived by Dr. Andrei Zavadski.