People

Ludmila Pogodina

(Belarus)

Ludmila Pogodina is a writer, photographer, DJ and art manager. In 2011, after 11 years in international journalism as an interviewer, she applied her communication skills into working together with local community and artists to support freedom of expression, inclusivity, diversity and equality inside a rather heavily censored patriarchal society. As a result, the art collective #KeepMinskWeird, co-founded by Pogodina, hosted more than 150 events (including sub-cultural festivals, art laboratories, and theme parties), and produced the interview podcast #KMWoice and a series of radio shows. The collective also worked with the Goethe-Institut Minsk until it was liquidated by the local officials in 2020.

In her solo career, Pogodina mostly focuses on biography, interviews and storytelling as a form of research and production. Working with visual materials (photography, collages and video) she’s done over the years Pogodina traces back the elements of society that are excluded from the social norms and binary perception, and the influence it has within it.

Her interview with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was published in the sixth issue of the almanac “Кабинет: Картины мира / Kabinet: world views” (2015) – an intellectual magazine about contemporary art and science edited by philosopher and psychoanalyst Viktor Mazin.

In 2022, Pogodina is curating a special program at the Interfilm film festival “Spotlight: Belarus”.