Points of Connection

The Vienna L’Internationale Conference
27–29 October 2010

The Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue
Armbrustergasse 15
A-1190 Vienna

http://internacionala.mg-lj.si/

The conference and research seminar, Points of Connection, is the first
in a series of projects at L'Internationale, a new transinstitutional
organization of five major European museums and artists archives. The
intention of this organization is a long-term collaboration based on
collective use of the institutions’ respective collections and archives.
One of the goals is to challenge common canons and master narratives of
art and investigate local-to-local comparisons and differences. In place
of the global hegemonic ambitions of the largest contemporary art
institutions, L'Internationale proposes collaboration between museums,
each with its specific collection focus and history, as a way to
instigate transnational, plural cultural narratives. One aim is to give
greater visibility to the similarities between different collections and
archives as the point of connection at which their interests,
methodologies, and visions come together. L’Internationale aims to build
a new, plural narrative and to keep the processes that build it
transparent. The first conference will give equal attention to the
object of research (avant-garde art from 1956 to 1986) and to the
methods of research and the sources used.

Speakers include: Alexander Alberro, Graciela Carnevale, Eda Čufer,
Jesa Denegri, Kodwo Eshun, Angela Ferreira, Cristina Freire, Vít
Havránek, Ernesto Laclau, Viktor Misiano, Piotr Piotrowski, Branka
Stipančić, Immanuel Wallerstein and others

The conference will be organized around two major thematic blocks:

1. Avant-Gardes from the Decline of Modernism to the Rise of
Globalization. 1956–1986

1.1. Contextualizing Post-War Avant-Gardes

Like the first part of the L’Internationale projects, the conference
focuses on the period between 1956 and 1986. This was a period in which
authoritarian regimes of different kinds predominated in a substantial
part of the world, but which was also characterized by the post-war
belief in a new modern era — shared in the societies of the
social-democratic or liberal West, the decolonizing South, the socialist
East, and the so-called block- free states of the Non- Aligned Movement —
where advanced technologies played an increasingly prominent role, the
world was better connected through new ways of transport and new
communication systems, and the media had increasing power. It was the
time of the Cold War, of Fordism, state socialism, and decolonization; of
politically and economically separated yet homogenizing scapes and
spaces, and at the same time of increasing processes of globalization.

1.2. Re-writing the Canons: Avant-Garde Art Practices Between 1956 and
1986

For this section L’Internationale is inviting experts involved in
post-war avant-garde art practices, who represent two fields of expertise,
one that discusses the construction of new narratives and the other that
relates lived experiences. By posing the same questions to experts from
Eastern Europe, Latin America, Western Europe, and North America, the
conference intends to serve as a tool of comparison for questions like:
Is it common ground for all the practices that appeared under different
names in different parts of the world to define the post-war avant-garde
as a reaction to the corrosion and break within Modernism? How did this
break occur in different cultural and political contexts, and what were
the key cases and the key issues?

2. Transnational Zones for Museums and Archives

L'Internationale can serve as a model for new ways of collaboration and
common methodologies in the museum world. The second part of the
conference will therefore discuss the ways in which the art system and
its alternative models operated in the period under scrutiny, as well as
the new possible ways of institutional and international collaboration
today.

* The founding partners of L'Internationale are the Moderna galerija,
Ljubljana; the Július Koller
Society (SJK), Bratislava; the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
(MACBA), Barcelona; the Van
Abbemuseum (VAM), Eindhoven; and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M
HKA), Antwerp.

Contact: mertenssjk.sk
Online Registration at: http://internacionala.mg-lj.si/