[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>.

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