[spectre] CONF: Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response (Zurich,
18 Oct 12)
Andreas Broeckmann
broeckmann at leuphana.de
Sun Sep 23 17:48:57 CEST 2012
From: Mateusz Kapustka <mateusz.kapustka at uzh.ch>
Date: Sep 21, 2012
Subject: CONF: Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response (Zurich, 18
Oct 12)
Zurich, October 18, 2012
Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response
International Symposium
Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich in cooperation with
the Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK-ISEA in Zurich
Thursday, 18th October 2012
University of Zurich
Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zurich
Room KO2-F-152
(entrance also through the main hall of the UZH, Rämistrasse 71)
Organization: Mateusz Kapustka
Concept:The conference explores the issue of collective imagination of
Eastern European art after 1945. Art history from this region, freed
from political burdens after 1989, is an essential part of present
scholarship with its new comprehensive methodical approaches and
contemporary claims for global perspectives. The presence of Eastern
European art in the discourse of the post-hegemonic, post-colonial and
transnational art history is, however, constantly obstructed by such
barriers as e.g. the myth of a collective identity of artists active
behind the (former) Iron Curtain. These are nowadays often labeled with
an avant-garde mark of anti-socialist nonconformists and hence their
artistic oeuvre appears immediately as a struggle for freedom. This
conference initiates a critical debate on this topic within the Swiss
research community together with art historians from Eastern Europe and
touches upon the problem of historical compromising attitudes and
different systematic alliances of artistic personalities and milieus
with state authorities. Also treated will be nationalistic tendencies in
art and art promotion after 1989. The presentations by researchers from
Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia as well
as Bosnia and Herzegovina offer a multifocal and transnational insight
into the contemporary reception of Eastern European art. Thus, the
conference contributes to the current general debate on the present
borders and aims of art history as an academic discipline searching for
its new identity beyond politicized geographical concerns.
Konzept: Die Tagung ist dem Problem der Homogenisierung der heutigen
Vorstellung zur Kunst Osteuropas nach 1945 gewidmet. Befreit nach der
Wende von 1989 von politischen Bürden der totalitären Ideologien, bildet
die osteuropäische Kunstgeschichte einen wesentlichen Teil der
heutzutage methodisch übergreifenden und global angestrebten
akademischen Disziplin. Die Präsenz der Kunst Osteuropas auf der
aktuellen Bühne der posthegemonialen, postkolonialen und transnationalen
Kunstgeschichte stösst jedoch auf Hindernisse, wie v.a. in Form des
Mythos der kollektiven Identität der hinter dem (ehemaligen) Eisernen
Vorhang aktiven Künstler. Diese werden mit einem avantgardistischen
Label des antisozialistischen Nonkonformismus versehen, die
künstlerische Tätigkeit wird somit en bloc zum Freiheitskampf erklärt.
Die Tagung setzt sich als Ziel, in der schweizerischen
Forschungslandschaft zusammen mit den osteuropäischen
KunsthistorikerInnen eine gemeinsame kritische Debatte zu diesem Thema
mit Berücksichtigung der historischen Kompromisseinstellungen und
systematischen Allianzen der Kunstszene mit dem staatlichen Apparatus
wie auch mit den nationalistischen Tendenzen nach 1989 zu initiieren.
Mit Präsentationsthemen aus Polen, Tschechien bzw. Tschechoslowakei,
Rumänien, Slowenien, Ungarn wie auch Bosnien und Herzegovina wird ein
transnationaler und doch differenzierter Blick vorgeschlagen, mit dem
die aktuelle Rezeption der Kunst Osteuropas erneut in eine allgemeine
Diskussion des kunsthistorischen Faches über seine heutige Grenzen und
Ziele vorgeschlagen werden kann.
PROGRAM:
9.00-9.30
Coffee and Welcome
9.30-10.00
Mateusz Kapustka (Zurich): Collective Eastern Europe in the Present
Discourse of Art History – Opening Remarks
Chair: Beat Wyss (Berlin / Karlsruhe)
10.00-11.00
Piotr Juszkiewicz (Poznan): Farewell to a Myth. On Close Relationships
between Modernism and Totalitarianism
Regardless of the changing historical situation in particular countries
of the Eastern bloc, modernism is usually referred to as a distinct
artistic choice implying moral and political protest against
totalitarian Stalinist power in favor of the cultural and democratic
values of the West. Such a myth of modernism as a tool of resistance has
shaped the worldview and intellectual perspective of many artists and
scholars from Central and Eastern Europe and can be found even in those
studies whose authors realize that in some Eastern bloc countries modern
art was officially tolerated and manipulated by the regime. This paper
shows how “Socialist Modernism” – a specific combination of modernism
and many aspects of communist ideology, which impacted culture of
Central and Eastern European Countries after the WWII, confronts this
mythical modernism with its own historical and ideological foundation
and political history of the region.
– Coffee break –
11.15-12.15
Milena Bartlova (Prague): Supporting Insecure Identities: Political
Engagement of Czechoslovak Art History
Czech and Czechoslovak art histories were engaged from their beginning
in the 1860s in the discourse of constructing the Czech (and later
Czechoslovak) national ethnic (and later state) identities. German
speaking scholars, in turn, retaliated. Demarcation lines between Czech
and German culture were drawn in actual artistic production and in art
historical research, both with direct response to actual politics. After
the expulsion of the Germans in the aftermath of WWII, Czechoslovak art
historical discourse continued its political engagement in the Cold War
situation. As a result, art historical “mythology of the nation” retains
its strong position today.
– Lunch –
Chair: Akos Moravanszky (Zurich)
13.30-14-30
Liviana Dan (Sibiu): Romanian Classical Avant-garde and the Modern
Tyranny of Images
The presentation will focus on the way in which the Romanian classical
avant-garde influenced Romanian contemporary artists after the fall of
communism by changing their approach towards the mechanisms of art and
in starting constructing projects rather than simply showing or
exhibiting their works. In the context of this topic, the paper will
demonstrate that through the graphic arts of the classical avant-garde,
propagandistic art emerged. How this type of graphic arts will also
determine surpassing propaganda and the tyranny of images will be discussed.
14.30-15.30
Zdenka Badovinac (Ljubljana): “Institutional Critique”
The aim of the paper is to speak about Eastern European art from the
viewpoint of my own work as a curator, and to do so by using the term
‘institutional critique’. I want to point out how universal terms, such
as institutional critique, are problematic from the point of view of our
space. Contextualizing terminology seems particularly important today,
when different anthologies and exhibitions are being made on the
premises of universal terms. This is probably unavoidable, which makes
it all the more necessary to problematize such terms. The same goes for
auxiliary labels that only regionally prefix universal terms. In this
respect, the term ‘institutional critique’ seems more appropriate than
the label Eastern European institutional critique. The latter would
designate the particularity of something that has already been
designated as universal. In this sense, the part modified as Eastern
automatically sounds subordinate to the status of the general, the
canonic, the over-determining – although it is, in fact, only “Western”.
– Coffee break –
Chair: Annika Hossain (Zurich) and Jörg Scheller (Zurich)
16.00-16.30
Daria Ghiu (Bucharest): Mythmaking Eastern Europe on a National Scale:
The Legacy of Constantin Brancusi in Romania
In 2009, within the context of the Venice Biennale, the artist Alexandra
Croitoru together with the art historian Stefan Tiron submitted a
proposal that was never exhibited. Taking the Romanian Pavilion as the
perfect place for a national representation of the artist as a ‚national
hero‘, they virtually dedicated it to Constantin Brancusi. Focusing on
the infinite ways of ‚using‘ Brancusi and his legacy today, Croitoru and
Tiron reflected upon this project as a ‚model of a complex cultural
ecosystem which has to be fueled and preserved‘, imagining the Pavilion
as a place of active remembrance. How do we deal with Brancusi‘s legacy
today? Why is he still a controversial character? How do we perceive his
ambiguous personality – a synthesis of a Western and Eastern spirit –
besides the entire system of myths created around himself? The long
relation between Brancusi and the Venice Biennale will also be investigated.
16.30-17.00
Kinga Bodi (Budapest): The Heritage of „Cultural Centres” in Hungary.
Andreas Fogarasi at the Venice Biennale in 2007
In 2007 Andreas Fogarasi (b. 1977) represented Hungary at the Venice
Biennale and his project entitled Kultur und Freizeit (Culture and
Leisure) won the Golden Lion Award for the best Pavilion. Fogarasi
created six video films dealing with the problem and history of former
cultural centres from a contemporary perspective. The origin of cultural
centres dates back to the 19th century with the idea to create places of
leisure, education and culture for the workers from different factories.
However, cultural centres have become rapidly quite popular among the
people and opened for the whole society. During Socialism cultural
centres played an important part of the socialist cultural propaganda
and education. After the change of the regime some have been closed,
some have become abandoned, but some still exist as hobby clubs, cinemas
or underground gallery spaces. Instead of documentaries, Fogarasi
combined in his short films texts, pictures, sounds together and touched
issues like origins, heritage, tradition, public monuments, historical
myth, continuity, timelessness, and the idea of a „nation”. Thus, he
focused on a common phenomenon of the whole former Eastblock during the
Cold War.
– Coffee break –
17.15-17.45
Seraina Renz (Zurich/Belgrade): “Art and Revolution” – The Student
Cultural Center Belgrade as Place between Affirmation and Critique
The paper elaborates on the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade as
a place for artistic production and its specific position in the
cultural life of Yugoslavia during the 1970s. These Centers were
established in all capital cities of former Yugoslavia after 1968, the
time of severe student protests. They were linked to the universities
and were often run by former leaders of student protests. In these
terms, they served as a means of institutionalizing and canalizing
potentially subversive forces. In the same time, the institution of SKC
in Belgrade became the place of the most advanced art production and of
exchange with artists from Europe and the US. By the example of works by
Raša Todosijevi? the paper will show how problems of culture and art
production in Yugoslavia were addressed. These examples will demonstrate
how the (Western) notion of “dissident” artists is totally inadequate to
grasp the complex relationship between the state and the young artistic
generation.
17.45-18.15
Mirela Ljevakovic (Florence/Munich): Art in “No Man’s Land”: Case Study
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Globalization and political developments caused an immense explosion of
public interest in emerging art markets outside of the contemporary art
scene in Europe and the US. Since the late 1990s and the collapse of
communism, new territories have struggled to recreate their national
heritage and artistic identities within a global context. The proposed
paper reviews the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina which has developed
along a very different way because of the tragic war which raged in the
region. The cultural policy of the country and current institutional
organization will be the main focus of this paper. The nationalist
movements of the country have stimulated a very intense and dynamic
response of artists, during and in the post-war period, but at the same
time national heritage agendas have failed to support this contemporary
artistic production. Some major museums and galleries have been closed
recently and there are no attempts to establish any stabile platforms or
funds.
– Closing Discussion –
For more information please see:
http://www.khist.uzh.ch/lehrstuehle/neuzeit/res/conf/zurich12g.html
Reference / Quellennachweis:
CONF: Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response (Zurich, 18 Oct 12).
In: H-ArtHist, Sep 21, 2012. <http://arthist.net/archive/3872>.
____________________________________________________________________
H-ARTHIST
Humanities-Net Discussion List for Art History
E-Mail-Liste für Kunstgeschichte im H-Net
Editorial Board Contact Address / Fragen an die Redaktion:
hah-redaktion at h-net.msu.edu
Submit contributions to / Beiträge bitte an:
http://arthist.net/mailing-list/mode=contribute
Homepage: http://arthist.net
More information about the SPECTRE
mailing list