27-28 May 2016
Kassák Museum, Budapest (1033 Bp. Fő tér 1.)
The conference on Contested Spheres: Actually Existing Artworlds under Socialism provides a platform for fresh research into the art history of Eastern Europe that brings to light the varied solutions that artists and cultural workers found to living and working inside the socialist system in the period of the 1960s and 1970s. Like the majority of citizens of ‘actually existing Socialism’, artists, curators and art historians devised their own individual strategies for negotiating a haphazardly repressive system and actively participated in shaping a complex artistic landscape of alternative spaces, transitory gatherings and artist-run galleries which all functioned according to the unorthodox rules of the socialist art economy. Examining the variety of possible attitudes adopted by cultural producers to the socialist system that ranged from confrontation and withdrawal to conformity and compromise, this conference sets out to foster debate about the conditions of artistic production under Socialism and how these affected the individual trajectories, aesthetic choices and post-communist legacies of East European artists.
The conference is co-organised by Kassák Museum and Translocal Institute of Contemporary Art and takes place within the framework of the Kassák Museum’s on-going research project into the art of the 1960s and 70s, led by Kassák Múzeum director, Edit Sasvári. The conference board members are Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes, Translocal Institute, Budapest, Dr. Klara Kemp Welch, Courtauld Institute London, Dr. Emese Kürti, ACB Research Lab, Budapest and Dr.Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague.
Programme
Friday 27 May
9.00 Registration
9.30 Introduction to Contested Spheres
Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Translocal Institute, Budapest
9.45 Edit Sasvári, Director Kassák Museum Budapest
The Goals of the Kassák Museum Research Project
10.00 Panel 1
Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
Olbram Zoubek, Sculptor in Public Service:
A Case Study in Art Making during Socialism
Raino Isto, University of Maryland
The Dictator Visits the Studio: Enver Hoxha’s Letter to the
„Monumental Trio” and the Politics of Socialist Albanian
Sculpture in the 1960s and 70s
Kassák Museum 1960s-70s Research Group: 5′ Position Papers
Lóránt Bódi, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Deals and Positions: The Role of Western Emigré
Artists in the Cultural Policy of the Kádár Era
Júlia Perczel, Kassák Museum Research Group
Working and Living in Connectivity: Intentions, Patterns
and Strategies of Networking within the Cultural Field of
Hungary in the 1960s-70s
Gábor Dobó and Merse Pál Szeredi, Kassák Museum
Hungarian Culture ± Europe: Positions Between East and West
in the Self-Image of Hungarian Art (1918-1979)
Sándor Hornyik, Institute for Art History, Budapest
Reforming Socialist Realism: Different Encounters of
Eastern Modernization and Western Modernism
11.30 Coffee break
12.00 Panel 2
Mikolaj Czerwinski, University of Illinois, Chicago
„An Intelligent, Complex, and Human Design Project”:
Social Engagement in State Socialism during the 1960s
Armin Medosch, artist, curator and scholar, Vienna
Cutting the Networks – The Final Years of New Tendencies
(1973-78)
13.00 Lunch break
14.00 Panel 3
Tomasz Załuski, University of Łódz
KwieKulik and the Political Economy of the Potboiler
Daniel Grun, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava
Amateurism under Socialism
Helena Musilová, National Gallery of Art, Prague
Jiří Valoch and the „Position” of Curator in Brno, Czechslovakia
in 1970s: the Official Curator and Unofficial Artistic Scene
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Panel 4
Susanne Altmann, art historian and curator, Dresden
Geometry as Crime: Concrete Art, Geometrical Abstraction,
Minimalism and their Strategies of Surviving in Eastern Germany
Yulia Karpova, Central European University, Budapest
Decorative Art as a Space of Personal Freedom:
Creative Strategies within Official Soviet Institutions, 1960s-1970s
Sonja Simonyi, New York University
Dark Angel, Secret Agent: Avant-garde Film Cultures, Artist
Communities, and Networks of State Control in 1970s
Socialist Hungary
17.30 End
Saturday 28 May
9.30 Registration
10.00 Panel 5
Candice M. Hamelin, University of Michigan
Alternative Sites: East Germany’s Illustrated Magazines
Hana Buddeus, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague
From an Open Hand to a Closed Fist: Petr Štembera’s Artist Networks
Marko Ilić, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
„A Taster of Political Insult”: The Case of Novi Sad’s Youth Tribune
(1968-71)
Kassák Museum 1960s-70s Research Group: 5′ Position Papers
Emese Kürti, ACB Research Lab, Budapest
Poetry in Action. Language as a Medium in the Hungarian
Neo-Avantgarde
Katalin Székely, PhD candidate, Eötvös Loránd University
The Influx of Images. Photo, Experimental Film and Video Art
in the Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde
Dávid Fehér, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
(Dis)figuring Reality. New Forms of Figuration inHungarian Painting
Dániel Véri, PhD candidate, Eötvös Loránd University
Conflicting Narratives. Jewish Identity and the Holocaust
12.00 Lunch break
13.00 Panel 6
Beata Jablonska, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava
Between the Universe and Zen – The Importance of Literature in the Context of Early Slovak Conceptual Art
Zsuzsa László, tranzit.hu, Budapest
Exhibition as a Diplomatic Tool
Alina Șerban, National University of Arts, Bucharest
Negotiating Spaces: From Art to Pedagogy and Back to Nature
14.30 Coffee break
15.00 Roundtable discussion
Participants: Maja Fowkes (Translocal Institute), Klara Kemp-Welch (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Zsolt Petrányi (Hungarian National Gallery), Tomáš Pospiszyl (Academy of Fine Arts, Prague) and Edit Sasvári (Kassák Museum, Budapest)
Moderator: Reuben Fowkes
Download programme and abstracts of the conference here.