News tagged:

Western Europe

  • CFP: Denkmalschutz im Baltikum (Leipzig, 10-11 November 2016)

    Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (GWZO), Universität Leipzig, November 10 - 11, 2016
    Deadline: March 31, 2016

    Denkmalschutz im Baltikum – Probleme, Potentiale, politische Bedeutung

    Tagung der Böckler-Mare-Balticum-Stiftung und des Geisteswissenschaftlichen Zentrums Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas an der Universität Leipzig (GWZO), 10.-11. November 2016 (= Homburger Gespräch 2016)

    FOR DESCRIPTION, SEE FULL POST

  • Exhibition: Monuments Should Not Be Trusted (Nottingham Contemporary; 16 January - 4 March, 2016)

    (http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/monuments-should-not-be-trusted)

    Artists and groups include Marina Abramović, Zemira Alajbegović (Gledališče FV), Lutz Becker, August Černigoj, Goran Djordjević, Vera Fischer, Karpo Godina, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Katalin Ladik, Lojze Logar, Dušan Makavejev, Goranka Matić, Slavko Matković, NSK/New Collectivism, OHO, Dušan Otasević, Zoran Popović, Bogdanka Poznanović, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Lazar Stojanović, Raša Todosijević, Milica Tomić, Goran Trbuljak, Želimir Žilnik.

    Bands featured in the exhibition include VIS Idoli, Disciplina Kičme, Šarlo Akrobata, Oliver Mandić, Laboratorija Zvuka, Tožibabe, Laibach, Borghesia, Ekatarina Velika.

    Curated by Lina Džuverović.

    Monuments Should Not Be Trusted brings together over 30 leading artists and groups from the “golden years” of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—the period between the early 1960s and the mid–1980s. The exhibition draws on new and innovative research into this period and features many of its most significant artists, groups and filmmakers.

    Over 100 artworks and artefacts illuminate the key contradictions of this single party state—built after WWII on socialist principles, yet immersed in “utopian consumerism.” This is the first time in the UK that the art of this period, which has attracted increasing attention, has been shown in the context of the social, economic and political conditions that gave rise to it.

    The exhibition begins with the rise of consumerism, midway through President Josip Broz Tito’s 37-year presidency, and ends a few years after his death in 1980. As well as artists’ works in moving image, collage, photography, sculpture and painting, the exhibition encompasses music, TV clips and artefacts from the Museum of Yugoslav History, such as gifts made by workers for President Tito’s birthday and ceremonial relay batons. Four key themes explore the complexities of Yugoslav art and culture:

    “Public Space and the Presence of Tito” reflects upon the Yugoslav people’s complex emotional relationship to their president, when censorship “from above” was replaced by censorship “from within.” Including photographic installations by Sanja Iveković, Sven Stilinović’s series of subversive flag works, and the infamous film Plastic Jesus by Lazar Stojanović, best known as the work that led to the demise of Black Wave film, resulting in Stojanović’s arrest.

    “Socialism and Class Difference” looks at both labour and the role of the artist during this period. By the late 1970s, Yugoslavia was suffering high unemployment that threatened its socialist ideals. Student protests and underlying ethnic tensions are also explored. Short documentary films by Želimir Žilnik point to these realities, whilst works by Mladen Stilinović address the relationship between art, language and the economy. Lutz Becker’s film Kino Beleške focuses on a group of artists in Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, which was also home to Marina Abramović’s first performance Rhythm 5, included here in the form of documentation.

    “Comradess Superwoman” addresses the complex issues faced by women in Yugoslavia, where new equal rights legislation proclaiming that “the women’s question had been solved” coexisted with, and masked, a lingering of traditional values in the private sphere. The proliferation of magazines, film and advertising also introduced a new role for women: the sex symbol. This section includes seminal photomontage works by Sanja Iveković and performance documentation and collages by Katalin Ladik, alongside works by Marko Pogačnik (OHO) and Tomislav Gotovac.

    “Utopian Consumerism and Subcultures” showcases the explosion of punk and psychedelia, as expressed in music, video, screen-printing and collage that appropriated popular culture, often humorously. These eclectic influences and media experiments culminated in the emergence of Yugoslavia’s New Wave, the country’s most definitive form of pop music, represented here in ’80s music videos and TV programmes. Originally banned for its slogan “swallow LSD,” Karpo Godina’s psychedelic film The Gratinated Brain of Pupilija Ferkeverk embraces hippy and drug culture, whilst OHO’s printed Rolling Stones and Beatles matchbox works reference pop culture and the fickle nature of consumerism.

    Monuments Should Not Be Trusted is the largest ever exhibition of Yugoslav art in the UK. Its title is taken from a work by the Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev.

    Milica Tomić will perform The Nottingham Statement on Friday, January 15.

    The exhibition will be accompanied by a conference on January 16. Speakers include David Crowley, Branislav Dimitrijević, Lina Džuverović, Sanja Iveković, Antonia Majaca, Zoran Pantelić, Zoran Popović and Milica Tomić.

  • Exhibition: Stongue: Slavs and Tatars at Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, Denmark; December 9, 2015–March 6, 2016)

    Kunsthal Aarhus
    J.M. Mørks Gade 13
    8000 Aarhus
    Denmark

    http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programme#overlay=en/programmes/collective-making-03-stongue

    Kunsthal Aarhus presents COLLECTIVE MAKING 03 / Stongue by the artist collective Slavs and Tatars.

    From medieval advice literature to Russian futurism, Stongue examines language as a source of political, metaphysical, and even sexual emancipation. The artist collective continues to probe “high highs and low lows” in their pathological interest in philology and its discontents. Their new film Deepthongs reflects on the various failed attempts, from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, to cyrillicise non-Cyrillic-based languages, namely those of Muslim citizens but also, surprisingly, the Poles. The imposition of graphemes or letters onto phonemes or sounds is never a neutral act. Alphabets accompany empires: of land and peoples but also sounds and senses.

    Scrawled across a rearview windshield of a Polski Fiat 126, a legendary car manufactured in Communist Poland, are the words “Chajda Chłopaki” (roughly translated as “Let’s go, boys!” in an archaic, literary Polish). Weeping Window sets the tone for the exhibition with an anti-modernist trope, facing backwards to history, but moving forward towards the future, a recurring idea in Slavs and Tatars’ practice. One found in their latter-day mascot Molla Nasreddin always seated backwards on his donkey or Sartre’s description of Baudelaire, driving into the future with an eye on the rearview mirror.

    For one year, Slavs and Tatars’ work PrayWay has been permanently on display at Kunsthal Aarhus and has acted as a site of discussion, debate and gathering throughout the COLLECTIVE MAKING series. Slavs and Tatars’ Stongue highlights the 2015–16 programme, developed by former Artistic Director Joasia Krysa, with a turn to language, a compelling case of collective action and individual thought.

    Opening performance: On the opening day, Slavs and Tatars presented The Tranny Tease, a lecture performance exploring the potential for transliteration through the lens of phonetic, semantic and theological slippage.

    Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, books and lecture performances. They have exhibited in major institutions across the Middle East, Europe and North America. Select solo engagements include MoMA, New York (2012), Secession, Vienna (2012), Dallas Museum of Art (2014), Kunsthalle Zurich (2014) and NYU Abu Dhabi (2015). The artists are nominated for the 2015 Preis der Nationalgalerie and 2016 Vincent Award.

  • CFP: Panels at 4th Euroacademia International Conference (Venice; 4 - 5 March 2016)

    As part of the Fourth Euroacademia International Conference ‘Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities’, Venice, Italy, 4 - 5 March 2016 Cultural Centre – Don Orione Artigianelli, Venice, Italy, March 4 - 5, 2016 Deadline: Jan 15, 2016

    Call for Papers for the Panel: Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction

    Panel Description:

    Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that does and does not surround us, thus finding its place in every discourse on making and re-making, invention and re-invention, destruction and construction. Every transition is synonymous with said processes, be it a tectonic change or a peaceful shift. As political systems and countries disintegrate and new ones rise, as they become more entangled in the global hyperspace, their skin changes in a manner of theatrical scenery change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptation, sometimes with radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads, museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants and the burden of their existence, if this setting is a city, every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities. However, can one speak of an identity of the urban space in the singular form?

    As the chaotic canvases of cities are being stretched over a framework of identity, its further exploration seems more than appropriate. Amidst the incredibly rapid urban growth crowding more than half of the world population in towns and cities, the questions are only going to keep multiplying. How are city identities made and re-made, used and abused, imagined and narrated, politicized and communicated, expressed and projected, imposed and marketed? And above all, how do they thrive within the dynamic interpolation of the nexus of East-West, Europe-Balkans, center-periphery, urban - suburban, old and new. As outdated as these dichotomies sound, in many places their daily life is far from over. As old cities became new capitals and new capitals struggle for more capital, the challenges of maintaining state-driven collective identities in the face of cultural fragmentation and diversification, coupled with consumer-attractiveness is turning them into urban palimpsest. This transformation is ever more complex in the cities of Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe. In these last decades, during the period of socio-political and cultural deconstruction, the redefinitions of their urban space reflect the need to refashion, consolidate or even establish their new/old identities. Flooded with imported ‘non-places’, (not) dealing with the material legacy of memories of the recent past that seem unable to resolve, trying to accept or reject the rest of Europe in the race towards ‘Europeanization’, these cities adopt different approaches in their aim to resemble and at the same time, differ. Zagreb generously welcomed its marketing nickname “pocket size Vienna”, while regenerating itself with the mega Museum of Contemporary Art tailored up to an imagined ‘Western European’ standard. Skopje’s attention seeking project transformed the ‘open city of solidarity’ into a literal national identity construction site. The list goes on. Queuing to win the old continent’s capital of culture contest and eager to squeeze into the ever-enlarging itinerary of the consumerist Grand Tour, the only thing cities are not allowed to be, is invisible.

    As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various transitional processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay.

    FOR THE COMPLETE LIST OF RELEVANT TOPICS AND APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS, SEE FULL POST

  • CFP: Kunstgeschichte des oestlichen Europas (Berlin; 29 April 2016)

    Deadline: January 31, 2016

    The Berlin “International Forum for doctoral candidates of art history of Eastern Europe” already goes into the third round. The previous events (in 2014 and 2015) have shown us that young researchers all over the world working in this field feel the strong need to have a direct and lively exchange on specific conceptual issues and methodological problems of art historical area studies in the region of Eastern, East Central and South Eastern Europe across different epochs.

    With the forum we have initiated an open platform for this purpose, and the annual meetings are intended to offer a constant opportunity and space to exchange ideas and experiences, to make contact, to bring together expertise and to establish networks. Moreover, current research projects – and over the years advancements and alterations – can be presented on the homepage of the forum, and PhD students working on similar topics can locate each other and build up networks also via our social media group.

    Doctoral candidates dealing with a topic in East European art history (or a neighboring discipline) are cordially invited – explicitly also those who came to Berlin in 2014 and 2015 already. If you are interested in taking part in the event, please send us a paper outlining the subject and issue of your dissertation project as well as possibly the sources it is based on and the methodology applied. Dependent on the thematic focuses resulting from the papers submitted we will select ca. 8 contributions for twenty-minute presentations. The other participants will have the opportunity to introduce themselves and their topics briefly (5 minutes). Important to us is to have plenty of time for discussion and the exchange of ideas. The languages of the conference are German and English.

    Ideally, all papers will be available for the participants as printed copies and subsequent to the event will be published with basic contact details on our website.

    Please submit your proposal:

    • of ca. 4000 characters (including blanks)
    • as a doc or docx, no PDF
    • indicating your contact details
    • and a brief information whether you agree with the publication of your paper

    by January 31, 2016 to Prof. Dr. Michaela Marek and Jan Elantkowski

    The forum is organized by the Chair of Art History of Eastern and East Central Europe, Humboldt University Berlin and will take place on April 29, 2016, in Berlin, Humboldt Graduate School. Contributors will be granted a travel allowance.

    04 December
  • CFP: Forgotten Geographies in the Fin de Siècle, 1880-1920 (Birkbeck College, London; 8 – 9 July, 2016)

    Posted in: Academic, Art, Russian art-Dec 02, 2015Comments Off on CFP: Forgotten Geographies in the Fin de Siècle, 1880-1920
    Birkbeck College, London
    8 – 9 July, 2016
    https://forgottengeographies.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

    Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
    Professor Regenia Gagnier (University of Exeter)
    Dr Olga Kirillova (National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Kyiv)
    Dr Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, University of Oxford)

    Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in fin-de-siècle cultural studies and, in particular, in the growth of cosmopolitanism and internationalism in Europe during the 1880s and 1890s. This critical reception has tended to read British fin-de-siècle culture as a reflection of and reaction to specific European countries, mainly France. The wealth and variety of imperial and industrial Britain’s cross-cultural exchanges, however, has not been generally considered as a whole. British artists and writers of the 1880s and 1890s were avid travellers and readers who came in contact with a vast range of European cultures – Belgian, Bohemian, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish… As a way of escaping industrialisation and cultural homogenisation, or as a consequence of imperial politics, many artists and writers also interacted with further cultures, such as Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Moroccan, and Turkish, to name but a few. British authors of the fin de siècle were undeniably influenced by French writing, but also by Scandinavian naturalists like Ibsen and Hamsun, and by the newly translated fiction of Turgenev and Tolstoy. Likewise, the impact and response to British art and literature in the international cultural community has yet to be explored. Anglomania was a distinct tendency among aesthetes in turn-of-the-century Hungary, Russia, Austria, Ukraine, and Poland, to name but a few. The promotion of British aestheticism was often seen by the locals as a step to modernisation and advancement of national artistic and literary tradition. English magazines, which facilitated revolutionary changes in publishing, design, and international networking, e.g. The Studio, The Yellow Book, The Savoy, were set as examples for the emerging culture of periodicals in Eastern Europe. The late Pre-Raphaelite movement, especially works and ideas of Burne-Jones and Watts, was also a powerful yet underappreciated influence on the development of Symbolism in Polish visual culture. As recent research questions the cultural segregation between East and West, challenging post-colonial assumptions about imperial hierarchy, and instead emphasising global networks of reciprocity, it is the intention of this conference to further expand this debate. By bringing together established and emerging scholars, we aim to reconsider the intellectual and national foundations of the British fin de siècle, assessing the role of other ‘forgotten’ cultures in the articulation of British cultural movements of the time. At the same time, we intend to unlock and reframe the perception of British authors abroad by explicating the reinvention of meaning of their work in different cultural, social, and political environments.

    We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on topics related to forgotten geographies in the fin de siècle, which may include, but are not limited to:

    • Dialectic between the cosmopolitan and the local/national
    • Non-traditional European identities
    • Non-European collaborative links of British cultural producers
    • Portrayals of difference in cosmopolitan literature and art
    • Cosmopolitan practices (travelling, translation, hospitality)
    • Modern cities as centres of transnational cultural exchange
    • Literary and artistic networks of the turn of the century
    • Fin-de-siècle cultural imperialism, aesthetic Orientalism
    • Mass culture and popularization of aestheticism

    Please email 300-word abstracts to forgottengeographies@gmail.com by 20 December 2015.

  • Exhibition: UK/Raine (Saatchi Gallery, London; 24th November 2015 - 3rd January 2016)

    http://www.saatchigallery.com/uk/raine/

    UK/raine is the first ever open competition for all emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine who are between the ages of 18-35. Worth GB£75,000 in prize money, the aim of the competition is to find and support the most imaginative and talented young artists, including students on BA and MA courses who live and work in the UK or Ukraine, or born in either country.

    Artists entered their work via the Saatchi Gallery’s website into one of five categories: installation, new media (including video and photography), painting, sculpture and street art. A shortlist of 30 artists (six from each category) are exhibiting their work over one entire floor at the Saatchi Gallery in an exhibition running from 24th November 2015 - 3rd January 2016. A winner from each of the categories, as well as an overall winner were selected by a renowned panel of international judges including: Johnson Chang - Co-founder Asia Art Archive, curator and Guest Professor of China Academy of Art (Hangzhou, China) and founder of Hanart TZ Gallery (Hong Kong), Nigel Hurst - Saatchi Gallery CEO, Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Thailand and Oleksandr Soloviov - Ukrainian author and curator. There was also a winner of a separate public vote. All winners were announced at the exhibition’s launch and VIP private view in London on 23rd November 2015.

  • Exhibitions: RECYCLE GROUP. KEEP ME UPDATED YOUR HOLINESS (Gazelli Art House, London; November 20, 2015 – January 10, 2016)

    http://gazelliarthouse.com/exhibition/keep-me-updated-your-holiness/

    Photo project in collaboration with Andrey Losev

    The exhibition Keep Me Updated Your Holiness, introduces Recycle Group’s, two latest bodies of work including ‘Conversion’, recently exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale within the Church of Sant’Antonin and ‘Future Archaeology’ an on going body of work where the artists turn to history to address topical issues and aspects of contemporary lifestyle.

    Inspired by the stream of virtual information that flows endlessly, ‘Conversion’ compares the globalisation of information networks and our need for new technologies to the historic conversion of Christianity. Proposing the Internet as a new vehicle for faith, a belief system where advice on everyday problems, health and assistance with technical issues is sought online.

    As the introduction to the series within a much larger body of work titled ‘Future Archaeology’, the duo have created an interactive robotic figure, which assists the viewer with the viewing of a set series of fifteen photographs, individually selected by the robot.

  • Conference: Stravinsky’s Fox: Folk, Myth & Ritual in the Russian Silver Age (Cambridge, UK; December 14, 2015)

    Conference: Stravinsky’s Fox: Folk, Myth & Ritual in the Russian Silver Age (Cambridge, UK; December 14, 2015)

    Monday 14 December 2015
    10.20-14.30
    The Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge

    The centenary of the riotous first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s best known modernist work, Le Sacre du printemps (1913), has inspired numerous scholarly and public events in recent years. Less well known are the works Stravinsky wrote in Switzerland during the wartime years, which saw him developing his interest in themes drawn from Russian folklore. After the Pribautki of 1914, the one-act ‘burlesque in song and dance’ Renard, commissioned by the Princess de Polignac, was written between 1915 and 1916; this was followed by, among other works, The Cat’s Lullabies (1915), Three Children’s Tales (1917) and Four Russian Peasant Songs (1917).

    This interdisciplinary workshop explores ideas of folk, myth and ritual in early twentieth-century Russian culture. It comprises four papers situating Stravinsky’s work in the context of visual culture, music, fashion and dance, followed by a panel discussion. Papers seek to highlight synergies between modernist trends in these differing genres during the ‘Silver Age’, as well as the impact of Russian culture on the development of modernism in Western Europe around the time of the Great War.

    For a full programme and booking instructions, please visit http://ccrac.hoart.cam.ac.uk/upcoming-events/

    This workshop is organised by the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre and seeks to complement the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 2015-2016 season ‘Myths and Rituals’. For more information, see here.

    The event is enabled by a conference grant from the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge.
    Convenors: Dr Rosalind Polly Blakesley: University of Cambridge; Dr Louise Hardiman: Independent Scholar

  • Conference: Politics of Aura. El Lissitzky’s ‘Abstract Cabinet’ between Musealisation and Participation (Berlin; December 2, 2015)

    Conference on the project „Demonstrationsraum“ (Demonstration Room) at the Representation of Lower Saxony at the Federal Government in Berlin as part of its annual program “inspections // participation” in cooperation with the DFG Post-Graduate Program 1843 “The Photographic Dispositif” at the Braunschweig University of Art

    Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2015, noon – 5.30 pm, followed by an evening lecture at 7 pm
    Location: Vertretung des Landes Niedersachsen beim Bund, Ministergärten 10, 10117 Berlin

    “Demonstrationsraum” is an exhibition on the “Abstract Cabinet” by El Lissitzky (1890-1941) conceived as an Augmented Reality app. The project is based on Lissitzky’s artistic and social vision of the combination of art and technology which is transferred into an interactive application consisting of historical and contemporary photographs. By employing this media technology, the complex history of the “Demonstrationsraum” is rendered visible with the help of its archival material. At the same time, the application opens a virtual space in which users can inscribe themselves into the historiography of this museum object by taking a selfie. The active participation of the viewer as an constitutive part of the museum presentation of the “Abstract Cabinet” is thereby reactivated. The project explores new methods of research, exhibition and knowledge production with the aim of a scientifically sound and at the same time low-threshold representation of the history and art historiography of this complex art object.

    In June 2016, the app “Demonstrationsraum” will be available in the “Abstract Cabinet” at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. It will be presented in the Representation of Lower Saxony at the Federal Government in Berlin as part of the annual program “inspections // participation” from November 30 to December 13, 2015. In October 2016, the project will be presented in the gallery of the Braunschweig University of Art.

    On December 2, 2015 the conference “Politics of Aura. El Lissitzky’s ‘Abstract Cabinet’ between Musealisation and Participation“ at the Vertretung des Landes Niedersachsen beim Bund, Berlin, will discuss the project and the issues it aims to address.

    The tension between aura detachment and the auratic appearance of the means to achieve it that made Lissitzky’s installation such an interesting case for contemporary artistic and curatorial practices is accelerated by its art historical canonization. The primal space was destroyed in the 1930s under the pressure of the cultural political campaigns of the nazi regime and re-erected as late as in 1968. This reconstruction of the “Abstract Cabinet” was moved to the Sprengel Museum Hannover in 1979, where it has since been on view as part of the permanent collection. The museum’s logic transformed it into a Gesamtkunstwerk, in opposition to a space dedicated to the experience of the spectator. An object, that today is the subject of considerations of conservation on the basis of the interpretation of historical documents of the space.

    To what extent is the “Abstract Cabinet’s” claim of participation compatible with its musealization? Do non-morphological aspects of the space have to be taken into account when it comes to its preservation? And how can an original state be postulated, when even the complex form of the installation is only fragmentarily conveyed in photographs, construction sketches and drawings? How can its initial mission be experienced now by contemporary visitors? Which methods and media could be employed to re-activate the “Abstract Cabinet”?

    These and further aspects of the project will be reflected from different perspectives in the format of short lectures followed by a discussion during the conference on December 2.

    FOR COMPLETE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE, SEE FULL POST