Doing Performance Art History. A Congress of Actors and Observers

Who is doing performance art history?

Strategies developed by performance artists, the orientation towards the event itself, and the focus on the aspect of action (on ‘doing’) pose a challenge to art historiography (art history, its institutions, and its concepts). Eastern Europe provides us, then, with a superb example of a performance art history that understands itself as a ‘doing’, as not only a performative, but also an artistic act.

Our congress will focus on those strategies, both past and present, employed by artists, critics and academics in order to create a performance art history. Among these are methods of documentation (photography, film, video, sketches, comments), of collection, archiving, writing, mapping, and re-enactment. Who were or are the actors? What were or are their concepts? How was performance art at the time of the Iron Curtain documented, archived and collected, and how are these documents historicised today? Which theories of collection, archiving and documentation can be deduced from these artistic or academic processes?


PROGRAMM

Thursday, November 3

18.30 Introduction by Sylvia Sasse:
»Doing Performance Art History«

19.00 Philip Ursprung:
»Zerreissprobe: Performance in the Cold War«

20.30 Film Night I
Lukasz Ronduda, Maciej Sobieszczanski: »The Performer«


Friday, November 4

DOCUMENTING

9.30 Introduction by Sabine Hänsgen:
»Media of Documentation«

9.45 Art Works I
Ion Grigorescu: »Work«

10.15 – Júlia Klaniczay:
»Performing for the Present, Documenting for the Future – Artpool and Performance Art«

11.00 Judit Bodor/Roddy Hunter:
»The Poïpoïdrome in Budapest: a Case Study in Curating Art and Changeability«

11.45 János Vet?:
»Lights of the Night. Cooperation and Interaction with Tibor Hajas«

Lunch break

14.30 Tomáš Pospiszyl:
»Reading Performances. Performative and Literary Aspects of Performance Art Documentation from Eastern Europe«

15.15 Marina Gržini:
»Recycling, Reconstruction and Repetition«

Coffee break

16.30 Vadim Zakharov:
»A Typology of Vadim Zakharov’s Actions 1978–2015«

17.15 Art Works II
Andrei Monastyrski: »Sounds from 1983«

Coffee break

COLLECTING / EXHIBITING

18.00 Introduction by Tomáš Glanc:
»Display Performance«

18.15 Ruth Noack:
»Tales from the Past? When Artists Were Posing the Self against a Political Other«

20.00 Film Night II
Claus Löser: »›Smashing the Black Box‹ – Independent Film and Performance Art in 1980s East Germany«


Saturday, November 5

COLLECTING / EXHIBITING

10.00 Zdenka Badovinac:
»Arteast 2000+ Collection and its Use«

10.45 Sasha Obukhova:
»Keep Acting: A Performative Exhibition Which Pretended to be Academic«

11.30 Art Works III
Milan Knížák: »Slide-Show«

Lunch break

DOING THEORY / THEORIZING

13.30 Introduction by Sylvia Sasse:
»Performance Art (as) Theory«

13.45 Pavlína Morganova:
»Performance Art – Remembered, Described, Interpreted, Photographed and Filmed, Sometimes even Reenacted«

14.30 Nikita Alekseev:
»Low Performance«

Coffee break

ARCHIVING

15.00 Introduction by Dorota Sajewska:
»Performance of the Archive«

15.15 Art Works III
Zofia Kulik: »The Archive Cultivation«

15.30 Sven Spieker: »Manifesto for a Slow Archive«

Coffee break

16.45 László Beke:
»Memories of a Witness/Art Historian/Archivist/Conceptor«

17.30 Art Works IV
IPUT (International Parallel Union of Telecommunications – Trust.ee in bankruptcy: Tamas St.Turba): »Portable I2 Museum – Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Actionism in Hungary during the 60s (1956–1976)«

Coffee break

RE-PERFORMING

18.15 Introduction by Kata Krasznahorkai:
»Performances Never End – and Never Begin«

18.30 Barbora Klímová:
»REPLACED – BRNO – 2006«

19.15 Janez Janša:
»WHAT DO WE ACT WHEN WE REENACT? Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav«

20.00 Anna Molska:
»Constructing the Archive«

Conférenciers: Little Warsaw & Mózes Márton Murányi