Performing Imagined Communities on Stage: On the Revival of Popular Music and Comedy in East-Central and Eastern Europe

During and after the breakdown of state socialism, the political and economic liberalisation enabled the revival and commercial expansion of previously marginalised cultural genres. Particularly popular music and comedy formats fostered experimentation, cross-border exchange and the emergence of new genres such as Disco Polo, Turbo-Folk and stand-up comedy. Since the 2010s, however, a re-centralisation of state power occurred. Populist measures gained ground in cultural politics and ideological pressures transformed the cultural landscape once again.

At our workshop, we would like to discuss how this change in the political landscape affected the stage performances of popular comedians and musicians. What active role and function do they have in the production of meaning, belonging and affect? How do they create spaces of cultural reflexivity and empower communities to negotiate trauma, to articulate dissent or to reproduce conformity? By foregrounding the performative and affective dimensions of popular music and comedy, the workshop examines how they contribute to identity formation, political mobilisation, resistance, but also to the mainstreaming of illiberal imaginaries, especially in the context of authoritarian tendencies and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Programm → WORKSHOP POSTER PERFORMING IMAGINED COMMUNITIES ON STAGE

Thursday, 25 June 2026

09:00-09:30

Registration (ZZF Potsdam, Am Neuen Markt 1 – Humboldt-Room)

09:30-09:45

Welcoming words

09:45-11:00

Keynote Session (Chair: Indira Hajnács GWZO, Leipzig)

• Ana Hofman (ZRC SAZU): Singing Socialism Now: Collective Voice and Reimagined Solidarities in the European East

11:00-11:30

Coffee Break

11:30-13:00

Performing Political Belonging (Chair: Matthias Schwartz, ZfL Berlin)

• Ondřej Daniel (Charles University, Prague): Bigbít as Populist Common Sense: Genre, Affect, and the Politics of Belonging in Post Socialist Czechia
• Darko Illin (University of Nova Gorica): Serbian Woman and Serbia: The Nation and Turbo-Folk
• Elena Bös (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich): Affective Stages of Extremism: Militant Zone, Black Metal, and the Performance of Far-Right Imagined Community in Ukraine

13:00-14:00

Lunch (ZZF Potsdam, Am Neuen Markt 9D – Großer Seminarraum)

14:00-15:30

Politics of Humor (Chair: Yaraslava Ananka, Leipzig University)

• Monika Borys (Warsaw): The Post-Socialist Zany. Humor, Poverty, and Work in Polish Sitcom ‘The Lousy World’
• Maja Milatovic-Ovadia (University of London): Resisting segregation: devised comedy as political intervention in Northern Bosnia-Herzegovina
• Daria Ganzenko (ZZF, Potsdam): “A Woman from the Caucasus” on Stage: Performing Gender and Ethnicity through Stand-Up in Russia

15:30-16:00

Coffee Break

16:00-17:30

Performing Communities through Music (Chair: Karin Reichenbach GWZO, Leipzig)

• Jakub Machek (Metropolitan University, Prague): Utilising common sense and folklore as the basis for forming imagined communities in Czechia after 1989
• Zsanett Abonyi (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Tuned to Attila – music, myths and communities
• Indira Hajnacs (GWZO, Leipzig): Sounding the Steppe in Contemporary Hungary

18.00-19:00

Dinner (Rechenzentrum Potsdam, Dortustraße 46, 14467 Potsdam)

19:00-22:00

Performance & DJ-Set at Rechenzentrum Potsdam (Dortustraße 46, 14467 Potsdam)
Voices from the Field. Stand-Up, Music, and Discussion with Berlin-based stand-up comedy collective and DJ Inda aka NépiSokkoló.

Friday, 26 June 2026

09:30-10:45

Keynote Session (Chair: Daria Ganzenko, ZZF Potsdam)

• Amy Austin Garey (Virginia Commonwealth University): Imagining the Ukrainian nation in wartime comedy

10:45-11:15

Coffee Break

11:15-12:15

Comedy in Times of Crisis (Chair: Nina Weller, ZfL Berlin)

• Yaraslava Ananka (Leipzig University): Comedy of Emergency: Multi- and Metalinguality in Eastern European War and Exile Stand-Up
• Alvina Saakyan (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg): Laughing from Abroad: Political Activism of Russian Comedians in Exile

12:15-13:15

Lunch

13:15-14:45

Music between Propaganda and Decolonisation (Chair: Olha Korniienko, ZZF Potsdam)

• Anastasia Gordienko (University of Arizona): Singing for the State: Shanson as Propaganda in the Russian War Against Ukraine
• Liudmyla Mobius (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy): Pop Beats and Decolonial Breaks: How Ukrainian Pop Music Resists ‘Russian World’
• Emil Chrol (Warsaw University): Performing the Nation under Fire: Popular Music, Affective Mobilisation, and Cultural Decolonisation in Wartime Ukraine (2022–2025)

14:45-15:15

Coffee break

15:15-16:15

Sounding Political Agency (Chair: Juliane Fürst, ZZF Potsdam)

• Irina Veselova (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) “To Slip Out of Control, to Step Out and Sing What You See, Not What You’re Allowed”: Rethinking Political Agency in Soviet Rock Movement during perestroika.
• Tim Wenzel (Free University Berlin): Performing Belonging: Cultural Festivals and Nation-Building in Gagauzia

16:30-Open End

Wrap-Up