International conference | Kassák Museum Budapest | 27-28 May 2016

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

CONFERENCE BOOKLET

REGISTRATION

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.

Speakers include: Susanne Altmann (art historian and curator, Dresden), Hana Buddeus (Academy of Performing Arts, Prague), Mikolaj Czerwinski (University of Illinois, Chicago), Éva Forgács (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena), Daniel Grun (Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava), Candice M. Hamelin (University of Michigan), Marko Ilić (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Raino Isto (University of Maryland), Beata Jablonksa (Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava), Yulia Karpova (Central European University, Budapest), Zsuzsa László (tranzit.hu, Budapest), Armin Medosch (artist, curator and scholar, Vienna), Helena Musilová (National Gallery of Art, Prague), Tomáš Pospiszyl (Academy of Fine Arts, Prague), Alina Șerban (National University of Arts, Bucharest), Sonja Simonyi (New York University) and Tomasz Załuski (University of Łódz).

The conference is co-organised by Kassák Múzeum – Petőfi Literary 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.