Agents of Change: Folk Cultures in the Long 20th Century

The in-person workshop of the project "Beyond the Village. Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity 1918-1945" funded by the Czech Science Foundation brings together expertise on current issues that drive the latest research on folk art.

The main questions the convenors Marta Filipová, Julia Secklehner and Valéria Bláha from Masaryk University and the participants ask are: How do folk cultures interact with politics and ideologies through specific actors, from the extreme right to alternative subcultures, from conformity to resistance? How does folk art serve as a tool for emancipation and oppression? How and why does folk art enter the market? What roles do commercialisation, tourism, and souvenir culture play in its formation? How was folk art presented, exhibited and collected? How was folk creativity institutionalised? What are the ecological dimensions of folk art and material culture?

Programme:
18 June
08:30–09:00 Registration & Morning Coffee
09:00–09:15 Opening Remarks
09:15–11:15 Ciculations and Collections: Institutionalising the Folk
Maria Chiara Scuderi, The "European Others" in British Craft-Practice Education: The Circulation of Czechoslovak Objects in the Dryad "Handicrafts" Encyclopaedia
Aldona Tołysz, Research, collect, support – Polish ethnographic museums and folk artists in the first half of the 20th century
Inês Jorge, From Portugal to Wolverhampton: Basketry, Class, and the Politics of Folklore
Q&A

Coffee Break

11:45-13:15 (Pre-)Socialist Experiences of Folk and Craft Cultures
Ewa Klekot, Aestheticizing the Other: Folk Art and Cultural Politics in Poland, 1918–1989
Jasna Galjer, The Mapping of the Folk Culture in the “Long” 20th Century: From Representing National Identity and Promoting Modern Design to Post-Socialist Traditionalism
Enikő Róka, The Place of the Tulip: Folk Art and Cultural Debate in Hungary in the 1970s
Q&A

Lunch Break

14:15-15:45 Between "Authenticity" and Commodification: Folk Art ad the Market
Alida Jekabson, Mail-Order Morality: Cold War Ethical Consumption of Latin American Folk Craft in the U.S
Panagiota Andrianopoulou, “Hang a Piece of Naoussa on Your Wall”: Folklorisation and Commodification Practices of the Carnival Masks in a North Greek Community
Sol Izquierdo de la Viña, Transcultural Agency: European Women Artists and Folk Arts in Latin America
Q&A

Coffee Break

16:30 Keynote - Nicolette Makovicky, Always Dying, but Never Dead: Folk Art and the Paradox of Permanent Revival

19 June
09:00–10:30 Learning with and through Craft
Kristallia Markaki, Rag Dolls as Agents of Change: Refugee Women, Vernacular Modernity and the Politics of Folk-Making in Greece (1928–1945)
Johana Lomová – Veronika Rollová "Craft Intelligence as a Basis of Socialist Modernism: Design Education in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1955"
Tanya Talwar, Drawing Otherwise: Reconstituting "Folk," "Craft," and "Art" in Colonial South Asia
Q&A

Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 Constructions of Folk Heritage: Building Identities Samuel Albert, Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy and the Retreat into the Folkloric Past
Ágnes Fülemile, Threads of Agency: Embroidery, Enterprise, and the Crafting of Kalotaszeg's Identity
Tomáš Valeš – Jan Galeta, Robert William Seton‑Watson and the Mediation of Slovak Folk Art
Q&A

Lunch Break

13:15-14:45 Makers in Focus: (Re)Inventing Craft
Veronika Soupková, Abstraction at the Loom: The Interwar Textile Practice of Jaroslava Vondráčková (1894–1986)
Katia Denysova, Hanna Sobachko’s Folk Art Between Imperial Subjugation and National Revival
Johanna Függer‑Vagts, Knitting a Tyrolervest: "Model en foto austria" Recreating Folk Costumes in Exile (1939)
Q&A

14:45-15:00 Closing Remarks