Contested Spheres: Actually Existing Artworlds under Socialism

The conference provides a platform for fresh research into the art history of Eastern Europe that brings to light the varied solutions that artists and cultural workers found to living and working inside the socialist system in the period of the 1960s and 1970s. Like the majority of citizens of ‘actually existing Socialism’, artists, curators and art historians devised their own individual strategies for negotiating a haphazardly repressive system and actively participated in shaping a complex artistic landscape of alternative spaces, transitory gatherings and artist-run galleries which all functioned according to the unorthodox rules of the socialist art economy. Examining the variety of possible attitudes adopted by cultural producers to the socialist system that ranged from confrontation and withdrawal to conformity and compromise, this conference sets out to foster debate about the conditions of artistic production under Socialism and how these affected the individual trajectories, aesthetic choices and post-communist legacies of East European artists.

PROGRAMME

Friday, 27 May 2016

9.00 Registration

9.30 Introduction to Contested Spheres
Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Translocal Institute, Budapest

9.45 The Goals of the Kassák Museum Research Project
Edit Sasvári, Director Kassák Museum Budapest

10.00 Panel 1

Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
Olbram Zoubek, Sculptor in Public Service: A Case Study in Art Making during Socialism

Raino Isto, University of Maryland
The Dictator Visits the Studio: Enver Hoxha's Letter to the 'Monumental Trio' and the Politics of Socialist Albanian Sculpture in the 1960s and 70s

Kassák Museum 1960s-70s Research Group: 5' Position Papers

Lóránt Bódi, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Deals and Positions: The Role of Western Emigré Artists in the Cultural Politics of the Kádár Era

Júlia Perczel, Kassák Museum Research Group
Working and Living in Connectivity: Intentions, Strategies and Patterns of Networking within the Cultural Field of Hungary in the 1960s-70s

Gábor Dobó and Merse Pál Szeredi, Kassák Museum
Hungarian Culture ± Europe: Positions between East and West in the Self-Image of Hungarian Art (1918-1979)

Sándor Hornyik, Institute for Art History,Budapest
Reforming Socialist Realism: Different Encounters of Eastern Modernization and Western Modernism

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Panel 2

Mikolaj Czerwinski, University of Illinois, Chicago
"An Intelligent, Complex, and Human Design Project": Social Engagement in State Socialism during the 1960s

Armin Medosch, Artist, curator and scholar, Vienna
Cutting the Networks - the final years of New Tendencies (1973-78)

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Panel 3

Tomasz Zaluski, University of Lódz
KwieKulik and the Political Economy of the Potboiler

Daniel Grún, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava
Amateurism under Socialism

Helena Musilová, National Gallery of Art, Prague
Jirí Valoch and the "Position" of Curator in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1970s: The Official Curator and Unofficial Artistic Scene

15.30 Coffee

16.00 Panel 4

Susanne Altmann, Art historian and Curator, Dresden
Geometry as Crime: Concrete Art, Geometrical Abstraction, Minimalism and their strategies of surviving in Eastern Germany

Eva Forgacs, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena
"Art Has Become a Character Issue" Péter Donáth, and the Price of Independence in 1960s and 1970s Hungary

Sonja Simonyi, New York University
Dark Angel, Secret Agent: Avant-garde Film Cultures, Artist Communities, and Networks of State Control in 1970s Socialist Hungary

Saturday, 28 May

9.30 Registration

10.00 Panel 5

Marko Ilic, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
"A Taster of Political Insult": The Case of Novi Sad's Youth Tribune (1968­71)

Hana Buddeus, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague
From an Open Hand to a Closed Fist: Petr Štembera's Artist Networks

Kassák Museum 1960s-70s Research Group: 5' Position Papers

Emese Kürti, ACB Research Lab, Budapest
Poetry in Action. Language as a Medium in the Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde

Katalin Székely, PhD candidate, Eötvös Loránd University
The Influx of Images. Photo, Experimental Film and Video Art in the Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde

Dávid Fehér, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
(Dis)figuring Reality. New Forms of Figuration in Hungarian Painting

Daniel Véri, PhD candidate, Eötvös Loránd University
Conflicting Narratives. Jewish Identity and the Holocaust

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Panel 6

Candice M. Hamelin, University of Michigan
Alternative Sites: East Germany's Illustrated Magazines

Yulia Karpova, Central European University, Budapest
Decorative Art as a Space of Personal Freedom: Creative Strategies within official Soviet institutions, 1960s - 1970s

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Panel 7

Zsuzsa László, tranzit.hu, Budapest
Exhibition as a Diplomatic Tool

Alina Serban, National University of Arts, Bucharest
Negotiating Spaces: From Art to Pedagogy and Back to Nature

15.00 Roundtable discussion

Maja Fowkes (Translocal Institute), Beata Jablonska (Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava), Klara Kemp-Welch (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Zsolt Pétranyi (Hungarian National Gallery), Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague and Edit Sasvári (Kassák Museum Budapest), moderated by Reuben Fowkes.

The conference is co-organised by Kassák Múzeum – Petőfi Literary Museum and Translocal Institute of Contemporary Art and takes place within the framework of the Kassák Museum’s on-going research project into the art of the 1960s and 70s, led by Kassák Múzeum director, Edit Sasvári. The conference board members are Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes, Translocal Institute, Budapest, Dr. Klara Kemp Welch, Courtauld Institute London, Dr. Emese Kürti, ACB Research Lab, Budapest and Dr.Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague.

For the conference programme, paper abstracts, speaker biographies and registration details see: http://translocal.org/contestedspheres