slovensky/
tranzit.org/

tranzit.sk/

PATTERNS

lecture & discussion

13.05.2006, 6 p.m.
Mumok, Vienna and tranzit dielne/workshop, Studena 12, Bratislava

On publications, exhibitions and blind spots in the discourse on Central and South-Eastern Europe

One-and-half decades have passed since the fall of the iron curtain. Years of rapid change, but also years of war and nationalism. For the work of artists in a Europe that is imagined to be common, they were years of complicated approaching and distancing processes. It therefore seems all the more necessary now to critically analyse the differing local experiences in this period. Perhaps a common basis can be found on which the diversity of aesthetic practices can be productively linked with each other. The publication projects that are being presented among other things within the framework of PATTERNS, have also set themselves this objective.

Program:
2.30-3.30 p.m.: MUMOK, Vienna, guided tour (German)
4 p.m.: free tranzit shuttle service, from Bellariastraße, 1010 Vienna
5.30 p.m. tranzit workshops, Bratislava, guided tour (English)

6 p.m.
talk: BORIS BUDEN
in conversation with: IRWIN, KATRIN KLINGAN, PIOTR PIOTROWSKI

round table: BORIS BUDEN, KONSTANTIN AKINSHA,
VIT HAVRANEK, GEORG SCHÖLLHAMMER

publications:
EAST ART MAP
AVANT-GARDE IN THE SHADOW OF YALTA
LEAP INTO CITY
ANTHOLOGY OF CZECH ART 1937-1989

finissage: DJ POTKAN

in english language
admission free
10 p.m. bus transfer back to Vienna

arranged by
CHRISTINE BÖHLER &
GEORG SCHÖLLHAMMER


Konstantin Akinsha
was born in Kiev in 1960. In the 1990s Moscow correspondent and contributing editor of ARTnews magazine, New York. He worked on the confiscation of cultural property during World War II and, amongst other engagements, was a research fellow of Kunstverein Bremen, Research Center for East European Studies, University of Bremen, and Germanisches Nationalmuseum. 1999–2000 deputy research director of Art and Cultural Property of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. One of his most important publications is the book Beautiful Loot: Soviet Plunder of European Art Treasures (1995).

Boris Buden
is a writer and cultural critic. He received his Ph.D. in cultural theory from Humboldt University in Berlin. In the 90s he was editor in the magazine Arkzin Zagreb. He has contributed regularly to a variety of newspapers, magazines and cultural journals in former Yugoslavia, Europe and USA. His essays and articles cover topics of philosophy, politics, cultural and art criticism. Among his translations into Croatian are two books of Sigmund Freud. He has participated in various conferences and art exhibitions in Western and Eastern Europe, Asia and USA, among other Documenta XI, Wiener Festwochen, etc. Recently, he took part in the project: The Post-Communist Condition, organised by ZKM-Karlsruhe. Buden is the author of Barikade Zagreb, 1996/1997, Kaptolski Kolodvor, Belgrade 2001 and Der Schacht von Babel, Berlin 2004.

Vit Havranek
is an art historian and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. Since 1998 he has been working as a curator for the Municipal Gallery, Prague, CZ. In 2000 he founded the group PAS - Production of Activities of the Contemporary. He lectures in contemporary art at the Academy of Applied Arts, Prague. He has curated and organized numerous exhibitions, amongst which are: "Action, Word, Movement, Space" (Prague, 1999), "Glued Intimacy" (Prague 2000), Otto Piene "The Zero Experience" (Prague 2002), to mention but a few. He has had numerous publications on contemporary art in catalogues, has edited books (most notably "Action, Word, Movement, Space", 1999) and has written for contemporary art magazines (Umelec, Detail, Textes Sur L’art, Art Press), and for the daily press. He has been active on various juries, such as for the Ministry of Culture, the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Jindrich Chalupecky Prize. tranzit project leader Czech Republic [cz]

IRWIN
founded in 1983, Members: Dušan Mandič (Ljubljana 1954), Miran Mohar (Novo Mesto 1958), Andrej Savski (Ljubljana 1961), Roman Uranjek (Trbovlje 1961), Borut Vogelnik (Kranj 1959). Since 1983, the IRWIN artist group has been working with various media, from painting to public art, from sculptural works and installations to publishing. Following their "retro principle", the five-member-group utilizes and combines different motifs, symbols and signs from the fields of politics and art, which results in the transformation of their historical meaning and content, and in the re-contextualisation and deconstruction of their related ideologies. Exhibitions (selection): 2005 Double Check, Camera Austria, Graz, 2003 Retroprincip 1983-2003 “East Art Museum” Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum Hagen, 2003 Biennale die Venezia, Venedig, 2003 In den Schluchten des Balkan, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 1998 Galerie Grita Insam, Wien, 1996 Manifesta 1, Rotterdam, 1993 Biennale di Venezia, Venedig, 1992 Apt Art and Ridzina Gallery, NSK Embassy Moscow, 1992 Identität: Differenz, Neue Galerie Graz, Steirischer Herbst, 1988 Centre National des Artes Plastiques, Paris, 1987 Riverside Gallery, London, 1984 Galerija KUC, Ljubljana, Selected bibliography: IRWIN Retroprincip 1983 – 2003. Hrsg. Inke Arns. Frankfurt: Revolver, 2003. IRWIN and New Moment: East Art Map, Ljubljana: Dragan Sakan, New Moment d.o.o. 2002, IRWIN. Self Portraits and Projects, Ljubljana 2000, Marina Gržinić: Fiction Reconstructed, Wien: edition selene, 2002, Neue Slowenische Kunst; NSK, Ljubljana 1985

Katrin Klingan
artistic director of “relations,” Berlin. In 2001/02 she was an advisor on cultural matters for the Erste Bank Group in Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Slovakia. From 1998 to 2001 she was a dramaturge for the Wiener Festwochen and co-curated the projects “Wahlverwandtschaften” and “du bist die welt.” Since 2003 she has been artistic director of “relations,” a project initiated by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. www.projekt-relations.de

Piotr Piotrowski
is Professor Ordinarius and Chair of the Department of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, as well as the editor of the annual journal Artium Quaestiones. From 1992-1997, he was Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Museum in Poznan. He also was a Visiting Professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2001, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2003. He has written extensively on Central European art and culture. Piotrowski has also advised and co-organized a number of major exhibitions and projects including: 2000+: The Art from Eastern Europe in Dialogue with the West (Ljubljana, 2000); and The Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930 (LACMA, Los Angeles, 2001). He was a fellow - among others - at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington D.C. (1989-1990), Columbia University (1994), Humboldt University in Berlin (1997), and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ (2000). Fall semester 2005 he will be a fellow at Collegium Budapest. His latest book: Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. Art and Politics in Central-Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, Rebis Publishers, 2005.

Georg Schöllhammer
Editor, author and curator. Lives and works in Vienna. Editor-in-chief and co-founder of springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst (since 1995). 1988–1994 editor for visual arts at the daily Der Standard. 1992–1998 visiting professor for theory of contemporary art at the University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz. Numerous publications, exhibitions and projects on contemporary art and architecture. Director of documenta 12 magazines.

PUBLICATIONS

East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe
edited by IRWIN

with selectors and writers: Inke Arns, Vladimir Beskid, Iara Bubnova, Calin Dan, Ekaterina Degot, Branko Dimitrijević, Lilia Dragneva, Marina Gržinić, Sirje Helme, Marina Koldobskaya, Suzana Milevska, Viktor Misiano, Edi Muka, Ana Peraica, Piotr Piotrowski, Branka Stipančić, János Sugár, Jiri evčik, Miško uvaković, Igor Zabel, Nermina Zildžo Lutz Becker, Susan Buck-Mors, Roger Conover, Eda Čufer, Michael Fehr, Boris Groys, Jürgen Harten, Sergej Kapus, Erden Kosova, Rastko Močnik, Andreas Spiegl, Slavoj Žižek

Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. Art in East-Central Europe, 1945-1989.
by Piotr Piotrowski

is a historical discursive construct of a purely political character, which came into being as a result of World War II. This term refers to the territory between the "iron curtain" and the USSR - that part of the continent which in consequence of an agreement between the West and the USSR fell under the political control of the latter. The USSR itself did not fall under the "shadow of Yalta" since it remained one of the powers deciding about Europe’s future, which is why - apart from other reasons - its art has not been taken into consideration in the present study. East-Central Europe is not what used to be called Central Europe ("Mitteleuropa"), though the latter remains in part one of its components: East-Central Europe consists of the eastern segment of the former Central Europe (without Austria, but with the eastern provinces of Germany) and the western segment of the former Eastern Europe. In short, East-Central Europe included the following countries which since the mid-1940s till 1989, under the terms of the Yalta treaty, remained more or less strictly dominated by the USSR: Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Poland, Hungary, and - to some extent - Bulgaria, where the avant-garde tendencies were, however, rather insignificant. Besides, the area includes two countries which for various reasons and with different consequences broke the "friendly" relations with the USSR: Yugoslavia and Romania. The analyses which make up the book focus on the history of the art of the aformentioned countries, which is called - somewhat conventionally - the "avant-garde." It comprises what the Anglo-American tradition has been calling "modernism," as well as the neo-avant-garde and its later mutations. Geographically, emphasis is not distributed in a uniform manner: the historico-artistic analyses are more penetrating with reference to those countries where the postwar experience of the avant-garde was richer and more dynamic, and perhaps less so wherever it did not play an important role. The present book is by no means a definitive monograph of the art of East-Central Europe - it is not a complete overview, but rather, as it seems, an analysis of some selected, arguably crucial, historico-artistic questions. Neither is it an account of the art of particular East-Central European countries, since it does not pass from one country to another. Instead, specific artistic problems, tendencies, attitudes, kinds of expression, etc. have been put together and compared within appropriate time frames to create a map of the region, an outline of its geographical dynamic. Thus, the diachrony of the art of the area has been constructed of several synchronic cross sections. On the other hand, in each synchronic segment art has not been approached as an automous domain, but on the contrary, as an activity involved in politics. The art of the countries under scrutiny has been analyzed in comparable historical frames, which does not mean, however, that those were politically identical. The communist system differed from country to country as regards its dynamic and intensity: while one country might have been entering a phase of liberalization, another might have been simultaneously taking a much stricter course. Under such circumstances, one and the same type of artistic activity must have acquired different local meanings. The book has been composed as follows: after introductory remarks on artistic geography, the reader comes across an analysis of surrealism, observed, as it were, in the very heart of East- Central Europe, i.e. in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, where in the short period between the end of World War II and the proclamation of Stalinism in culture some artistic developments were locally referred to as surrealist. The next step is an analysis of the artistic culture during the de-Stalinization of East-Central Europe, i.e. modernism appearing within the still totalitarian system which, however, depending the situation in each country, underwent the process of erosion. Various kinds of artistic practice have been taken into consideration in this context: the informel painting, neoconstructivism, figurative tendencies, and the rising art of the neo-avant-garde. What follows is an account of the neo-avant-garde experience: the body art and the conceptual art in the changing political situation of the 1970s, in the times of the so-called real socialism. Obviously, just as the "thaw," the latter process looked different in each country, still, all of them underwent changes which brought about de-ideologization of the regime, introduced some elements of consumerism, and, last but not least, political pragmatism. The final chapter is an epilogue - a description of the end of the communist system in East-Central Europe and the art which witnessed that end.


Leap Into the City - Seven scenes from Europe A book on cultural positions and political conditions in Chişinău, Sofia, Pristina, Sarajevo, Warsaw, Zagreb und Ljubljana.
edited by Katrin Klingan and Ines Kappert.

What does one encounter when in Berlin you ask about Chişinău, in Chişinău about Sofia, in Sofia about Pristina? Mostly and above all: ignorance. Around 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years after the end of the war in Kosovo, Europeans still have astoundingly little understanding of the everyday life of their neighbors. Leap into the City counters this with multiple levels of information. Starting from the conviction that art and culture form the vital center of a society, the book offers artists, theoreticians, journalists, and cultural actors a platform. In essays and reportages, in literary texts and artistic contributions they take positions on current issues, pose new questions, and so portray a subjective tableau of their cities, the cultural scenes, and the public realms.Seven cities are presented in seven chapters. The chapters begin with a specific artistic work, while they conclude with an essay whose thematic points beyond the local context. How are the new elites facing up to the wars of the recent past and their consequences? Who is bringing the Communist era to the museum? How is the European Union securing its external borders and who is the Protectorate in the former Yugoslavia actually protecting? The publication provides insights into a European present that is determined by numerous different factors and yet has at least three things in common: a Socialist past, the experience of radical social reconstruction, and the task of establishing a democratic political culture. And it shows how artists and intellectuals are tackling this challenge, and what they stand up for. With contributions by Konstantin Akinsha, Branislava Andjelković, Boris Bakal, Edwin Bendyk, Sokol Beqiri, Regina Bittner, Latchezar Bogdanov, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Sezgin Boynik, Pavel Brăila, Boris Buden, Cosmin Costinaş, Ivaylo Ditchev, Nicoleta Esinencu, Yavor Gardev, Maciej Gdula, Mauryzy Gomulicki, Mathias Greffrath, Marina Gržinić, Enver Hasani, Vadim Hîncu, Emil Hrvatin, Jasmina Husanović, Astrit Ibrahimi, Emir Imamović, Nebojsa Jovanović, Migjen Kelmendi, Vesna Kesić, Sławomir Magala, Joanna Mytkowska, Aldo Milohnić, Nataša Petrešin, Piotr Piotrowski, Platforma 9,81, Marjetica Potrč, Andrzej Przywara, Marija Mojca Pungerčar, Tilman Rammstedt, Petrit Selimi, Christian Semler, Sławomir Sierakowski, Klaus Ronneberger, Sean Snyder, Hito Steyerl, Marlene Streeruwitz, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, Alexandru Vakulovski, Nataša Velikonja, What, How & for Whom, Dominik Zaum, Jasmila Žbanić, Maria Ziegelböck, and Andrea Zlatar. A book by “relations,” an initiative project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation that is exploring new ways of cultural exchange between Germany and the countries of eastern Europe. “relations” becomes active wherever cultural actors, starting from local problems and issues, develop artistic projects which tackle socially relevant questions in a unique and idiosyncratic way and critically discuss and analyze both the present and the past. Together with its cooperation partners, “relations” initiated in 2003 the projects Alte Arte (Chişinǎu), De/construction of Monument (Sarajevo), East Art Map (Ljubljana), Missing Identity (Pristina), Re:form (Warsaw), Visual Seminar (Sofia), and Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000 (Zagreb), as well as the international film project Lost and Found. Since 2005 projects elaborated with German partners have ensued: displaced (Berlin), Wild Capital / Wildes Kapital (Dresden), Academy Remix (Frankfurt/M.), Mind the Map! – History Is Not Given (Leipzig), and Peripherie 3000 (Dortmund).

Anthology of Czech Art 1937-1989
by Jiří evčík and the collective of Scientific Dept. Of Academy of Fine Arts Prague

anthology of texts on arts, ideology, political and cultural history

Related
KONTAKT. Works From the Collection of Erste Bank Group