Mission

Tamizdat is a nonprofit organization that facilitates and advocates for international artist mobility and cultural exchange. Driven by the conviction that the international mobility and exchange of culture is fundamental to a healthy and progressive civil society, Tamizdat seeks through its program activities to assist the international performing arts community to address problems presented by international borders, and U.S. visa policies and procedures.

History

Tamizdat is a Brooklyn-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that facilitates international cultural exchange. Founded in 1998 by the members of the musical group, “Skulpey”, Tamizdat has been involved with a wide range of activities aimed at encouraging the international dissemination of culture. 

Initially, Tamizdat primarily helped independent musicians from Central and Eastern Europe reach broader international audiences. Tamizdat organized showcases and representation at music festivals like Popkomm, South By Southwest, and the College Music Journal Marathon. It organized tours for artists like The Plastic People of the Universe, and Metamorphosis. Between 2000 and 2005, Tamizdat ran a music shop and CD distribution coalition, “Tamizdat RPM” based in Prague, Czech Republic, providing an outlet for over 150 independent labels from throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In 2000, Tamizdat’s board of directors recognized that the U.S. visa system posed a significant impediment to presenters of foreign culture in the U.S. and launched Tamizdat Visa Services to provide non-legal assistance to the international arts community.

By 2009, Tamizdat’s visa services program was handling visas for over 1000 performing artists each year. Tamizdat Artist Services LLC was launched to streamline operations and allow the organization to serve the needs of an increasingly broad client base.

In 2014, in the increasingly complex arena of U.S. immigration law, the board determined that the interests of the organization’s constituents would be better served by migrating Tamizdat’s visa services program to an independent law firm, and CoveyLaw was created as an independent but affiliated law firm. 

Since 2014, Tamizdat has redoubled its work in artist mobility research, education, and advocacy. In cooperation with CoveyLaw, AILA, and other law firms, Tamizdat has taken a leading role in tracking systemic weaknesses and inefficiencies in the U.S. visa system, analyzing them, reporting them, and promoting viable solutions to them. Its research has allowed Tamizdat to pioneer legal strategies addressing timely matters, like Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban. Currently, in cooperation with CoveyLaw, Tamizdat organzies panels, symposia, and workshops on the U.S. artist visa process at numerous cultural events around the world where it works to keep the international cultural community up to date with the U.S. artist visa process. In 2018 alone, Tamizdat presented more than 20 sessions in 12 countries. Working with the National Endowment for the Arts, the League of American Orchestras, and other arts organizations, Tamizdat has taken the lead in articulating concerns with bureaucratic impediments to international cultural exchange, in addressing those concerns to the relevant authorities, and then worked with those authorities to find alternative solutions. In cooperating with OnTheMove in Brussels and other international mobility organizations, Tamizdat has expanded the scope of its work, which, though grounded in concerns for the U.S. artist visa process, increasingly recognizes the internationally interconnected nature of artist mobility concerns.

Definition

The word “Tamizdat” is a variant of the more commonly known word, “Samizdat” which was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. The word derives from sam (Russian: сам, “self,” “by oneself”) and izdat (Russian: издат, an abbreviation of издательство, izdatel’stvo, “publishing house”), and thus means “self-published”.

“Tamizdat” was distinct from “Samizdat” because it was work that was not produced for underground distribution within the Soviet Bloc, but rather was smuggled to the West and published there… “там,” “tam,” meaning “there.”

In the 90s, our organization primarily worked with Central and Eastern European independent musicians—the inheritors of the 80s samizdat legacy—helping them find ways to connect to audiences in Western Europe and North America. And today, Tamizdat remains committed to the mission of helping ensure that international art and artists can bring their voices to new audiences.