City storytelling with Arthur Klinau: MINSK, “Cité de rêve”

Categories: Literature
Date: 12/12/2017
Time: 18 h 00
Location: Librebook
Links: iCal - Google Calendar

Meeting with Arthur Klinau, visual artist, photographer and writer, in Russian and French / English. “Minsk, cité de rêve”, Editions Signes et Balises, translated from Russian by Jacques Duvernet. With humor and tender irony Arthur Klinau presents MINSK, the city of his childhood. This is the story of the Land of Happiness under the Soviet regime, the story of a utopia that demands its blood tribute, while being guided by universal ideals of generosity and fraternity. ” Paradise on Earth. A place that does not exist, a utopia. ” For the child author, as for so many others, Minsk is double. It is primarily a Soviet dictatorship, where you learn war and obedience from the primary school, where you can be imprisoned or killed. But it is also the ideal city, with its gods and its leaders: the “City of the Sun”. At school, on television, in the street, everything is  to believe in this utopia. Since 1988, Arthur Klinau has been president of the Belarus Association of Contemporary Art and since 2001 has been editor of pARTisan, the only Belorussian contemporary art magazine conceived as a “platform for independent Belarusian culture, which can only survive acting as a partisan”. And “the partisan does not necessarily have a rifle in his hand.”