Olia Sosnovskaya’s Citing Sources derives from the artist’s reflections on archival material she encountered at the National Library of Belarus during the 2020 anti-government uprising. Adopting the conventions of a public lecture, the work examines the relationship between performativity, writing, and the archive through the notion of a movement score. It operates across multiple temporalities: the past of the movement’s trace, the future of an action continually imagined, and the present gesture of the reader.
Olia Sosnovskaya is an artist and writer from Belarus based in Vienna. Her practice interweaves performance, visual art, and text, addressing practices of assembling and collective choreography at the intersection of the festive and the political. Working across video essays, digital collages, lecture performances, and events she draws on historical events and personal experiences to examine the politics and affects of language and documents in relation to the archive and the movement score. She is a co-founder of WHPH / Decentric Circles, a self-organised platform, and a member of the artistic-research group Problem Collective.
Her individual and collective works have been presented at Kunsthalle Wien and Tanzquartier Wien in Vienna, e-flux in New York, the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Kyiv Biennial, Biennale Matter of Art in Prague, Haus der Kulturen Welt in Berlin, HAU in Berlin, Manifesta Biennial in Kosovo, documenta 15, Ars Electronica in Linz, Centrale Fies in Dro, Norbergfestival in Norberg, and Under Bron in Stockholm, among others.
Performance credits:
- Centrale Fies_art work space and Live Works in Italy.
- With support and choreographic advice from Alix Eynaudi and Elizabeth Ward. Supported by Huggy Bears Art Space and Tanzquartier Wien.
- Costume design: Pille-Riin Jaik.
- Additional sound design and mixing: Markus Steinkellner.
- Main image credit: Roberta Segata