Artists & Agents: Performance Art and Secret Services (2019)

“Artists & Agents puts the spotlight on a neglected aspect of performance art from the 1960s to the 1990s: the interaction between secret services and performance art – an art form which the secret service agencies of communist Eastern European countries considered especially dangerous. Eastern Europe is one of the few places where archival records have been made public, and they reveal how these agencies acted to “undermine” and “eliminate” dissident artists. To achieve this objective, however, the agents themselves sometimes had to become “performance artists.”

Building on in-depth research into the archival records of secret services in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Germany, this publication shines a light on the files which the secret services of these countries kept about such artists. It showcases instances of artistic subversion and agent infiltration, some of which have not been disclosed before, while more recent works demonstrate that the issue of ramping up intelligence gathering operations in politics and everyday life is highly topical. This catalogue includes an introduction, a glossary explaining secret service terminology, entries on the relevant works of art, and background information on all of the files presented.”

Edited by Inke Arns, Kata Krasznahorkai, Sylvia Sasse, and HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstverein)
Publisher Kettler, Dortmund, 2019
Open access
ISBN 9783862068395, 3862068390
224 pages

Interview with curators: Map (2021, DE).
Exh. review: Georg Imdahl (FAZ, 2019, DE).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (11 MB)

Diana Taylor: ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence (2020)

“In ¡Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps ¡presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. ¡Presente!—present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition—requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.”

Publisher Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2020
Dissident Acts series
ISBN 9781478009443, 1478009446
xii+329 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (31 MB, updated on 2021-4-13)

Tanja Ostojić: Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2018)

“This publication is based upon the Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2011-2017), an interdisciplinary participatory research art project by Tanja Ostojić that included academic and artistic research, five creative workshops, a number of public events, one group performance, and two exhibitions involving more then 30 women.”

Edited by Tanja Ostojić
Publisher Live Art Development Agency, London, and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, 2018
ISBN 9780993561139, 0993561136
157 pages
via author

Reviews: SeeCult (2017), Bojana Videkanic (Sociologija, 2018).
Interview with author: Matthew Rose (Artblog, 2018).

Author
Exhibition (MoCAB, Belgrade, 2017)
Exhibition (MMSU, Rijeka, 2017)
Publisher (with audio recording from book launch)
WorldCat

PDF (11 MB)