INVISIBLE HISTORY OF EXHIBITIONS - symposium
21-22 May 2009, Budapest
tranzit.hu-artalways.org project

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Invisible History of Exhibitions", a symposium organized by
tranzit.hu (HU) aims at the formation of shared knowledge and
discourse on Eastern European art exhibitions from the 1960s until now.
The framework of this project is a long-term international
collaboration, "art always has its consequences", that focuses on
invisible, alternative histories through exhibition history, artists'
texts, archives, and conceptual design, which have had restricted
international visibility and accessibility so far and thus are often
missing from the canonized narratives of contemporary art.

The symposium investigates the history and the current interpretations of
the exhibition, as the dominant format of contemporary art
production and presentation. "History" in this context is interpreted as a
group of constructed narratives based on events that constitute shifts in
the notions of art (art history) and the modes of its
presentation (exhibition history). In Eastern Europe progressive art
events between 1945 and 1989 could often only happen in the "second
publicity", so they are embedded in the historical conditions of the
public sphere. While in western countries mainstream art institution
hosted curatorial group exhibitions that constitute the landmarks in the
history of exhibitions, in Eastern Europe paradigmatic events
often happened in private flats and off-site spaces outside of
official art institutions. Consequently, a different methodology must be
introduced to be able to include Eastern-European events in the
international discourse of exhibition history.
The symposium presents historical and contemporary case studies
describing paradigmatic art events that significantly affected our
understanding of exhibitions. Examples of Eastern-European art
practices are suggested to be related to such topics of the
international theoretical and curatorial discourse as:

the spatial and temporal nature of the exhibition
the ephemeral qualities and methodologies of reconstruction and
documentation
the role of the location from site-specificity to institutional critique
authorship and artistic-, curatorial-, visitor positions
exhibition as a historical, ideological, or political construction in
relation to the transformations of the public sphere
the collective/unifying concept and representation of Eastern-European art

Together with the symposium we intend to launch an Eastern-European online
database of exhibitions. The first items in the database will be the
references of the speakers at the conference and in the future the archive
will grow by the submissions of other invited and
voluntary contributors.
The language of the symposium is English. Speakers are invited by the
organizers and selected from the applications submitted to call below. The
papers of the symposium will be published on www.artalways.org.

APPLICATIONS

If you are interested in participating in the symposium with a paper
please submit a 200 word abstract.
Please send your proposal to officetranzitinfo.hu until 15 MARCH 2009.

concept: Dora Hegyi, Zsuzsa Laszlo, Emese Suvecz

http://www.artalways.org http://www.tranzit.org

Supported by the EU's Culture 2007 Program.
tranzit is a contemporary art initiative supported by Erste Bank Group