[spectre] Fwd: ANN: Official and Non-Official in the Late Soviet Epoch (Rome/online, 18 Mar 24)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Oleksandra Osadcha
Date: Mar 13, 2024
Subject: ANN: Official and Non-Official in the Late Soviet Epoch 
(Rome/online, 18 Mar 24)

Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rom/ 
Online, Mar 18, 2024

In-Between: the Scylla and Charybdis of Official and Non-Official in the 
Late Soviet Epoch.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana is inviting you to the first seminar in the 
series of events “The Politics of Images.”

Speakers: Alex Bykov (Brno University of Technology),  David Crowley 
(National College of Art and Design), Agnė Narušytė (Vilnius Academy of Art)

The discussion of Soviet culture often revolves around triggering 
division into the official and the non-official, which simplifies our 
knowledge about the distribution of images at that period, omitting 
their existence in-between the extremities of allowed and forbidden. The 
research seminar will address these problematic dichotomies on the 
materials of different realms across the former Soviet space — from 
architecture to photography.

This research seminar is the first in the series of events “The Politics 
of Images” that will cover several aspects of the imagery’s circulation 
in, but not limited to, Ukraine. We seek the parallels within and beyond 
the former Soviet space that would help to have a better comprehension 
of the images’ social power and dispositifs. Organized within the 
ScienceForUkraine programme.

Programme:

11.00–11.40, David Crowley, Art as Dissent? Focusing on the 1960s and 
1970s, the period which saw a revival of modern art in the People’s 
Republics of Central/Eastern Europe, David Crowley will reflect on the 
ways that dissenting and official culture in Hungary, Poland and 
Czechoslovakia have been understood. The image of the artist as a 
dissenting nonconformist was particularly attractive to Western European 
intellectuals during this phase of the Cold War. The Biennale del 
dissenso culturale, in Venice in 1977, for instance, featured an 
exhibition titled ‘La nuova arte sovietica. Una prospettiva non 
ufficiale'. Ten years earlier, in 1967 Czech film-maker/artist living in 
West Germany, Petr Sadecký, invented a fictitious artistic group - 
Progressive Political Pornography (PPP), a network with cells in Soviet 
cities - to tap Western enthusiasm for the image of the political rebel. 
But few artists - in the region - accepted the mantle of ‘the 
dissident’. And, compared to other branches of culture, very few visual 
artists were targeted as ‘enemies’ by the authorities. Drawing on the 
work for his 2017 exhibition 'Notes from the Underground', Crowley will 
examine the ways in which ‘official’ and ‘independent’ artistic 
practices were entangled.

11.40–12.20, Alex Bykov, “Liquidation Recommended”. Creation and 
destruction of the Wall of Remembrance in Kyiv.
The “Park of Memory” at the Kyiv Crematorium, created by the artistic 
couple Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnychenko was probably one of the 
most significant constructions of the second half of the 20th century in 
Ukrainian architecture. Rybachuk and Melnichenko’s work belongs to the 
utopian practices of a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). They 
developed a complex idea of the Memory Park from a landscape design, to 
the monumental Wall of Remembrance and unique Halls of Farewell. A 
monumental Wall of Remembrance was supposed to be the central element of 
this park: more than two hundred square meters of artistic reliefs, 
which would be passed by funeral processions. Creation of the Wall of 
Remembrance lasted for more than 10 years, but in early 1982, when its 
reliefs were almost finished, the Party leadership gave the order to 
eliminate them. In no time The Wall of Remembrance was filled with 
concrete. This grievous outcome was due to the fundamental differences 
between the views of artists and the views of the leaders of the 
Communist Party of Ukraine. The presentation will reveal artistic and 
personal struggles of Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnychenko living and 
working under the Soviet stipulations.

12.35–13.15, Agnė Narušytė, Lithuanian Photographers’ Association: 
Managing Creative Freedom, Collaboration, and Resistance. Establishing 
the independent Lithuanian Photographers’ Association in Vilnius in 1969 
was, in itself, an act of resistance to the Soviet occupation because 
all organisations had to be founded in Moscow and only then would form 
their branches in the ‘republics’. Even before that, the so-called 
School of Lithuanian Photography became a positive example discussed by 
the most prominent Soviet photography historians and theorists and 
revered by photographic communities all over the Soviet Union. By 
discussing the photo album by Antanas Sutkus and Romualdas Rakauskas, 
Weekdays in Vilnius (1965), and the ‘aesthetics of boredom’ practiced by 
young rebels in the 1980s, Agnė Narušytė will show how the organisation 
balanced between allowing creative freedom and satisfying ideological 
requirements.

It will possible to follow the event also ONLINE on VIMEO CHANNEL of the 
Bibliotheca Hertziana: https://vimeo.com/event/4117645

Scientific Organization: Kateryna Filyuk (PhD Candidate, University of 
Palermo) and Oleksandra Osadcha (PhD, Bibliotheca Hertziana / Museum of 
the Kharkiv School of Photography)

https://www.biblhertz.it/events/36843/2206

Reference / Quellennachweis:
ANN: Official and Non-Official in the Late Soviet Epoch (Rome/online, 18 
Mar 24). In: ArtHist.net, Mar 13, 2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/41432>.