[spectre] CFP: Research Projects in on Art in Eastern Europe (Bern, 10-11 Oct 14)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Ina Mertens <ina.mertens at ikg.unibe.ch>
Date: Apr 17, 2014
Subject: CFP: Research Projects in Eastern Europe (Bern, 10-11 Oct 14)

Bern, 10. - 11.10.2014
Deadline: Jun 6, 2014

Call for Participation: ‘Which Side Are You On?’ Positioning and 
Orientation in the Art Histories of Eastern Europe. (Workshop) 
University of Bern, Institute of Art History, 10-11 October 2014.

The workshop ‘Which Side Are You On?’ Positioning and Orientation in the 
Art Histories of Eastern Europe is designed as a working meeting for 
young academics (in history of art and cultural history), curators and 
artists engaged on a research project with reference to Eastern Europe. 
The goal of the event is to present for discussion specific approaches 
to the current art scene and readings of the histories of art in the 
formerly socialist Eastern bloc states. In the recent past this topic 
has attracted growing research interest and researchers in both East and 
West need a more nuanced approach to the transition histories of Eastern 
Europe and the changed structures of the art world after the fall of the 
‘Iron Curtain’. Even though museums especially have been constituting an 
essential intellectual space in East European studies over the past 
years, specific local conditions have so far not been thematised, 
studied and documented academically.
By exchanging ideas on specific projects and work processes, we aim to 
adopt a perspective that is firmly trained on practical research issues. 
The precarious situation of archives and collections, which often 
accompanies research in Eastern Europe, is just as much part of the 
workshop’s scope as the opportunities for getting access to material and 
immaterial knowledge and for establishing cooperations between 
institutions, researchers and artists. We also wish to articulate the 
challenges faced by researchers who try to take a stand within the 
existing art and academic worlds or within the – often also changing – 
political structures of Eastern Europe. Research that takes account of 
transcultural aspects has to react to complex local currents, to 
subjective accounts and to the ‘real place’ in all its banality and 
economies. The goal of the workshop is to make tangible these ‘soft 
aspects’, which are normally excluded from scholarly discourse, and to 
discuss them with an eye to the knowledge they may yield. On the one 
hand we are interested in learning more about specific transition 
processes in their local circumstances, but also, moving beyond this, we 
wish to promote a discussion of method in transregional research. Not 
least among our aims is to establish contact and discussion among the 
participants in the longer term.

We invite researchers in the fields named above to apply as participants 
with a project description (max. 2 pages) that provides information 
about the research area and progress of their own work, and a short CV. 
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.
Please send your application materials no later than June 6 2014 to 
ina.mertens at ikg.unibe.ch and marcel.bleuler at ikg.unibe.ch

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Research Projects in Eastern Europe (Bern, 10-11 Oct 14). In: 
H-ArtHist, Apr 17, 2014. <http://arthist.net/archive/7481>.