[spectre] CFP: Recalling Avant-garde Moments (Tbilissi, 9-11 0ct 24)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Katharina Tchelidze
Date: Jun 16, 2024
Subject: CFP: Recalling Avant-garde Moments (Tbilissi, 9-11 0ct 24)

Tbilissi, Georgien, Oct 9–11, 2024
Deadline: Jul 15, 2024

Recalling Avant-garde Moments, Reconnecting Avant-garde Scenes.

Dedicated to the Centenary of the Georgian Futurist Group H2SO4.

9-11 October 2024, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

Historical avant-garde contains forgotten moments and scenes that still 
need to be rediscovered or reconnected with other, central or peripheral 
scenes of the European avant-garde. Avant-garde moments would not occur 
in different national cultures without the strong desire to connected 
with the wider web of aesthetic searches and experimentation, happening 
in various European cultural loci. However, due to historical changes, 
some moments/scenes were disconnected from the web, staying unrecalled 
for decades.

One such forgotten moment was that of the Tbilisi modernism/avant-garde 
(1917-1918) and the Futurist group H2SO4 (1920s), which has been erased 
from the Georgian cultural memory by the Soviet power while the country 
was disconnected from European cultural context. In the post-Soviet 
decades, Georgia had to reclaim this legacy. The present centenary of 
the Futurist group and journal H2SO4 (1924) is a good reason for 
discussing different, though often comparable avant-garde cultural 
experiences.

Understanding Avant-Garde as a constellation of different moments we 
will examine the specificity of each locality in their transcultural 
entanglement. To reconstruct these scenes, the conference will elaborate 
on networks, relationships, groups, and collaborations, on their coming 
together, forming, evaporating, and diverging again. What is the 
transformational power of Avant-Garde alliances, past and present, 
within the artistic and the societal field?

A particular focus of ours will be the question of gender dynamics 
within these local and transcultural webs. How have ways and forms of 
life been shaped throughout the Avant-Gardes? What are the gendered 
social and spatial structures, in which groups test and create forms of 
community through their artistic practices? The aim here will be to 
render visible realities of those groups and alliances that have not yet 
been acknowledged, due to geographical, institutional and/or political 
conditions.

Speakers are invited to elaborate on one or more of the following aspects:

- Networks, cooperation, groups and alliances and their transcultural 
entanglements
- Questions of gender and social structuring of spaces in the arts
- Practices of the avant-gardes
- Various narratives of modernism/avant-garde
- The transformative power of avant-garde and the challenges of the 
quest for cultural renewal
- Avant-garde and national cultures

Please send abstracts no more than 250 words for a 20-minute paper, and 
your short Bio to: complit at iliauni.edu.ge

Deadline: 15 July 2024.

There is no registration fee. Coffee breaks and lunches are free for 
conference participants.

The conference is organised by the Institute of Comparative Literature 
and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ilia State University, in 
cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, Leuphana 
University of Lüneburg, Germany.

Organising committee: Bela Tsipuria, Levan Gelashvili (Institute of 
Comparative Literature, Iliauni); Giga Zedania, Tamar Tolordava (Centre 
for Advanced Studies, Iliauni); Katharina Tchelidze (Leuphana University 
of Lüneburg).

2024


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Recalling Avant-garde Moments (Tbilissi, 9-11 0ct 24). In: 
ArtHist.net, Jun 16, 2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/42131>.