[1]Cold-War Stories: Decolonizing the Post-1945 Avant-Garde

From: Isabel Wünsche
Date: 5 Feb 2024

Chairs: Sascha Bru, University of Leuven, Belgium and Isabel Wünsche, Constructor University Bremen, Germany

This panel seeks to move beyond the dominant discourse of the avant-garde as a typically Western phenomenon by exploring avant-garde practices since 1945 within the “peripheral” regions of the former Eastern bloc (including Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Balkans, Caucasus region, and Central Asia) as well as in relation to the liberation movement and the emergence of new independent states in Africa and Asia. The goal of this panel, which ties in with a larger project set up by the chairs (see: https://d-ag.weebly.com/), is to start decolonizing both the avant-garde’s perceived history since 1945, and the historically erroneous, West-centric view of the avant-garde more generally.
We invite contributions on
1) avant-garde practitioners across races and ethnicities who do not fit into the typical narrative of a Western avant-garde,
2) the impact of avant-garde artists who worked behind the Iron Curtain forging alternative networks within and beyond the Eastern bloc,
3) the often self-named, anti-colonial avant-garde initiatives of artists' formations in the Global South that have asserted the existence of a self-conscious, non-Western avant-garde since 1945.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short bio of no more than 150 words until February 25, 2024 to sascha.brukuleuven.be and iwuenscheconstructor.university