Central and Eastern Europe

Experimental art in Central and Eastern Europe: artists, events, scholars and resources

For a multilingual bibliography of writings on experimental art, see Central and Eastern Europe Bibliography. For a bibliography of transversal, regional perspectives on contemporary art, see East Central Europe. For literature by and about individual authors and groups see their respective pages.

Light-music

Composers, artists, initiatives

1900s-1920s: Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (Warsaw/Vilnius), A.N.Scriabin, Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, Mikhail Matyushin (St. Petersburg), Alexander László, Arnošt Hošek, Zdeněk Pešánek (Prague), Miroslav Ponc (Prague)

1960s-2000s: Prometei (Kazan).

Colour organs

There will be a day when a composer will compose music with a notation that will be conceived in terms of music and light… and that day, the artistic unity we were talking about will probably be closer to perfection.. (Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, 1925)

• (Colour) pianos (or organs) were constructed by the likes of Alexander Scriabin (with Preston Millar), Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, Alexander László, and Zdeněk Pešánek (with Erwin Schulhoff) in an attempt to navigate between musical and visual realms.
• Scriabin composed the color-music piece Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1911) and commissioned Preston Millar to build an instrument to produce colours to the music, called the Chromola (Clavier à lumières; tastiéra per luce; keyboard with lights).
• Futurist painter Baranoff-Rossiné's instrument introduced patterns and shapes into a colour organ based on a modern piano, called the Optophonic Piano (Piano optophonique). The piano projected light through painted and rotating glass panels, whose colours, shapes and rhythms closely complemented the music (1916, developed since 1912); it was presented at Vsevolod Meyerhold's theatre, at his exhibition in Oslo (1916) and at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1924). Baranoff-Rossiné performed until the late 1920s, but his work was exhibited in several museums in Europe and the USA from 1966 to 1975.
• Alexander László, a Hungarian raised in Germany, a pianist and orchestra conductor, composed and performed music for various silent films in 1900s-1910s. Arguing for a relation between the film and the music, he wrote a theoretical text on colour-light music, "Farblichtmusik" (1925). The theories were put into practice in a series of performances throughout Europe. His device, the Sonchromatoscope, consisted of a few switches above his piano that controlled a few projection lights and a slide projector that illuminated the stage above the piano. When the first reviews came in, the main comment was that the projections were too simple. It was in a different league to the Chopin-like complexity of the piano music. At the time, Oskar Fischinger was experimenting with abstract films. László contacted him to improve his performance. Several extra slide projectors and overlapping projection lights were added to increase the complexity and number of possible colours. The result was a visual spectacle that completely turned the reviews on their heads. Both László and Fischinger toured with the show. [1] [2]
• With their Spectrophon-Piano (1928), Pešánek and Schulhoff attempted to create an audio-visual sculpture. The piano enabled the dynamic synthesis of music and coloured light in performances in large concert halls.

Exhibitions

• See This Sound exhibition, Linz, 2009. [3]

Publications

• Alexander László, Die Farblichtmusik, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1925, xii+71 pp.
• Hans Scheugl, Ernst Schmidt, "Lichtkunst", in Eine Subgeschichte des Films: Lexikon d. Avantgarde-, Experimental- u. Undergroundfilms, 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1974. (German)
• Teun Lucassen, "Color Organs", n.d.
• Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund (eds.), Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media, 2009, 320 pp. Book with DVD. [4] (English)/(German)
• See This Sound: Versprechungen von Bild und Ton / Promises in Sound and Vision, eds. Cosima Rainer, Stella Rollig, Dieter Daniels and Manuela Ammer, Cologne: Walther König, 2010, 320 pp. (German)/(English)
• Jörg Jewanski, "Color Organs", See This Sound Compendium, c2010.
• Jan Schneider, Lenka Krausová (eds.), Intermedialita: Slovo-Obraz-Zvuk: Sborník příspěvku ze sympozia, Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2008, 336 pp. (Czech)
• Manifesty pohyblivého obrazu: barevná hudba, eds. Martin Bernátek, Kateřina Krejčová, Martin Mazanec, and Matěj Strnad, Olomouc: Pastiche Filmz/PAF, 2010, 106 pp. Reader. [5] (Czech)
• Kateřina Drajsajtlová, Světelný klavír v uměleckém díle Alexandera Nikolajeviče Skrjabina a Zdeňka Pešánka, Brno: Masaryk University, 2012. Bc thesis. [6] (Czech)

Bibliography

• "Bibliography: Synesthesia in Art and Science", comp. Crétien van Campen (editor), Greta Berman, Anton V. Sidoroff-Dorso and Bulat Galeyev, Leonardo, 2012.

See also

Further bibliography.

Constructivists, Futurists

Terms

formism (1910s, Chwistek, Czyżewski), Pure Form (1920s, Witkiewicz), strefism (1920s, Chwistek), mechano-faktura (1920s, Berlewi), unism (1920s, Strzemiński), photogenism (1920s, Funke), robot (1920s, Čapek)

Artists

Groups, networks, journals

• MA, Budapest/Vienna, mid 1910s-mid 1920s
• Bauhaus, Weimar/Dessau/Berlin, 1920s-mid 1930s
• OBMOKhU, INKhUK and VkHUTEMAS, Moscow, 1920s
• Devětsil, Prague, 1920s
• Zwrotnica, Krakow, 1920s
• Blok, Warsaw, 1920s
• Zenit, Zagreb and Belgrade, 1920s
• Travelers, Zagreb, 1920s
• Group of Estonian Artists, Tartu and Tallinn, 1920s
• Contimporanul, Bucharest, 1920s
• 75HP and Punct, Bucharest, mid-1920s
• Tank, Ljubljana, late 1920s
• Praesens, Warsaw, late 1920s
• School of Arts and Crafts, Bratislava, 1930s
• a.r., Łódź, 1930s

Artists (active c. 1910s-1920s)

• Henryk Berlewi, Warsaw/Berlin/Paris
• Victor Brauner, Bucharest/Paris
• Avgust Černigoj, Trieste/Ljubljana
• Leon Chwistek, Krakow/Lwow
• Ferdo Delak, Ljubljana
• Jaromír Funke, Prague/Bratislava
• Naum Gabo, Moscow/Berlin
• Aleksei Gan, Moscow
• Karl Ioganson, Moscow
• Marcel Janco, Bucharest
• Vytautas Kairiūkštis, Vilnius
• Wassily Kandinsky, Moscow/Weimar
• Lajos Kassák, Budapest
• Katarzyna Kobro, Warsaw/Łódź
• El Lissitzky, Moscow/St. Petersburg/Vitebsk
• Kazimir Malevich, Moscow/St. Petersburg
• Ljubomir Micić, Zagreb/Belgrade
• László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin/London
• Alexander Rodchenko, Moscow
• Josip Seissel (Jo Klek), Zagreb
• Stenberg brothers, Moscow
• Varvara Stepanova, Moscow
• Anatol Stern, Warsaw
• Władysław Strzemiński, Warsaw/Łódź
• Mieczyslaw Szczuka, Warsaw
• Vladimir Tatlin, Moscow
• Karel Teige, Prague
• Jaan Vahtra, Tartu
• Ion Vinea, Bucharest
• Josef Vydra, Bratislava
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Warsaw
• Teresa Żarnowerówna, Warsaw
• more

Events

Second Spring Exhibition of OBMOKhU, Moscow, May-Jun 1921.

Congress of International Progressive Artists, Düsseldorf, May 1922. L-R: unknown boy, Werner Graeff, Raoul Hausmann, Theo van Doesburg, Cornelis van Eesteren, Hans Richter, Nelly van Doesburg, unknown (De Pistoris?), El Lissitzky, Ruggero Vasari, Otto Freundlich (?), Hannah Höch, Franz Seiwert and Stanislav Kubicki.

Congress of the Constructivists and Dadaists, Weimar, Sep 1922. Top-bottom L-R: 1st row: Lucia Moholy, Alfréd Kemény, László Moholy-Nagy. 2nd row: Lotte Burchartz, El Lissitzky, Cornelis van Eesteren, Bernhard Sturtzkopf. 3rd row: Max Burchartz, Harry Scheibe, Theo van Doesburg (with paper hat), Hans Vogel, Peter Röhl. 4th row: Alexa Röhl, Nelly van Doesburg, Tristan Tzara, Sophie Taeuber, Hans Arp. 5th row: Werner Graeff and Hans Richter. Stedelijk.

• Second Spring Exhibition of OBMOKhU in Moscow, May-June 1921. Several weeks earlier, in March 1921, five of the exhibiting artists (Rodchenko, Ioganson, Stenberg brothers, Medunetsky) formed together with Stepanova and Gan the First Working Group of Constructivists at the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK).

• Constructivists [Конструктивисты] exhibition in Moscow, January 1922. Stenberg brothers and Medunetsky show 61 constructivist works and publish a catalogue with manifesto. [7]
• The Congress of International Progressive Artists [Kongress der Union Internationaler Fortschrittlicher Künstler] in Düsseldorf on 29-31 May 1922. Formation of the International Faction of Constructivists was organised by van Doesburg (representing the journal De Stijl), Richter (representing 'the Constructivist groups of Romania, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Germany') and Lissitzky (representing the editorial board of Veshch'-Gegenstand-Objet). The faction's declaration was later published in De Stijl (no. 4, 1922).
• Congress of the Constructivists and Dadaists, Weimar, 25-26 September 1922.
• The First Russian Art Exhibition [Erste russische Kunstausstellung] opened at Galerie van Diemen in Berlin on 15 October 1922, with over 1,000 objects by c180 artists: 237 paintings, more than 500 graphic works, sculptures, as well as designs for theater, architectural models, and porcelain. The exhibition's official host was the Russian Ministry for Information, and it was put together by the artists Gabo, David Sterenberg, and Nathan Altman. Version of the exhibition later travelled to Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in April-May 1923.
• New Art Exhibition [Wystawa Nowej Sztuki], organised by Strzemiński and Kairiūkštis in Vilnius on May-June 1923. The works included painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, scenography, and print; cubist, constructivist, and suprematist compositions predominated. The 7 exhibiting artists went on to form the Blok collective.
• The Block of Cubists, Constructivists and Supermatists [Blok Kubistów, Suprematystów i Konstruktywistów], an exhibition of Blok at the Laurin & Clement car dealer's shop in Warsaw, March 1924. Works by 9 artists.
• First Zenit International Exhibition of New Art [Прва Зенитова међународна изложба нове уметности], organised by Micić in April 1924 in Belgrade. Featured one hundred works advertised as "futurism, cubism, expressionism, ornamental cubism, suprematism, constructivism, neoclassicism and the like".
• The First Contimporanul International Exhibition organised by Contimporanul magazine in November 1924 in Bucharest brought together the Romanian avant-garde along with international artists.
• The a.r. International Collection of Modern Art, donated by a.r. group to the Municipal Museum of History and Art (now Museum of Art; Museum Sztuki) in Łódź, opened to the public in February 1931. It included 111 works and represented - as no other contemporary European collection had done - the main movements of avant-garde art, from Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, through Purism and Surrealism, to Neo-Plasticism, Unism and Formism.
• The Constructivists [Die Konstruktivisten] exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, Jan-Feb 1937. Poster. Review.

Retrospective exhibitions

• Constructivism in Poland 1923-1936: BLOK, Praesens, a.r., Museum Folkwang, Essen, May-Jun 1973. Also shown in Otterlo/NL 1973; Stockholm 1975-76, New York 1976 [8], Detroit 1976, Buffalo 1976, Montreal 1977, Rome 1979, Genoa 1979, Venice 1979, Belgrade 1979, Zagreb 1979, Cambridge 1984, London 1984, Oxford 1984, Budapest 1990, Washington 1993. [9]
• Konstruktywizm w Polsce 1923-1936, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, May 1978, Catalogue.
• The Planar Dimension: Europe, 1912-1932, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1979. Curated by Margit Rowell. Catalogue published.
• Europa, Europa. Das Jahrhundert der Avantgarde in Mittel- und Osteuropa, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 27 May - 16 October 1994. Large-scale exhibition with constructivist section. 4-volume catalogue published.
• Central European Avant-Gardes, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2002. Curated by Timothy O. Benson. Large-scale exhibition with constructivist section. Catalogue published: TOC.
• Von Kandinsky bis Tatlin: Konstruktivismus in Europa/From Kandinsky to Tatlin: Constructivism in Europe, Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, and Kunstmuseum, Bonn, 2006. Catalogue published.

Literature

Catalogues

• Europa, Europa. Das Jahrhundert der Avantgarde in Mittel- und Osteuropa, eds. Ryszard Stanislawski and Christoph Brockhaus, Bonn, 1994. Contributions from c150 authors. Four volumes: Vol I (five introductory essays followed by 73 short texts on the work of specific artists) 479 pp. incl. 247 col. pls. and 116 b&w ills.; Vol II (36 essays on aspects of architecture, literature, theatre, film and music) 239 pp. incl. 251 b&w ills.; Vol III, compiled by Hubertus Gassner (354 short texts of the period 1894-1994 by artists, critics etc., in German translation), 367 pp.; Vol IV (biographies; selected bibliography; list of exhibited works; index) 99 pp. [10] [11] (German)
• Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930, ed. Timothy O. Benson, forew. Péter Nádas, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, 447 pp. Publisher. Review: Zusi (SEEJ). (English)
• Von Kandinsky bis Tatlin: Konstruktivismus in Europa/From Kandinsky to Tatlin: Constructivism in Europe, Schwerin: Staatliches Museum; and Bonn: Kunstmuseum, 2006. (German)/(English)
• Vzplanutí. Expresionistické tendence ve Střední Evropě 1903-1936, ed. Ladislav Daněk, Olomouc: Muzeum umění Olomouc, 2008, 200 pp. [12] (Czech)

Anthologies

• The Tradition of Constructivism, ed. & intro. Stephen Bann, New York: Viking Press, 1974, xlix+334 pp, PDF. Fifty-one texts from 1920-65 in 7 sections. Review: Compton (SR 1975). (English)
• Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930, eds. Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, 736 pp. Review: Zusi (SEEJ), Glanc (ArtMargins). (English)

Books

• George Rickey, Constructivism: Origins and Evolution, New York: G. Braziller, 1967, xi+306 pp, OL; rev.ed., 1995, xi+306 pp. (English)
• Willy Rotzler, Konstruktive Konzepte: eine Geschichte der konstruktiven Kunst vom Kubismus bis heute, Zurich: ABC, 1977, 299 pp; new ed., 1988, 332 pp; 3rd ed., 1995, 332 pp. (German)
• Krisztina Passuth, Les avant-gardes de l'Europe Centrale, 1907-1927, Paris: Flammarion, 1988, 327 pp. (French)
  • Avantgarde kapcsolatok Prágától Bukarestig 1907-1930, Budapest: Balassi, 1998, 381 pp. (Hungarian)
  • Treffpunkte der Avantgarden: Ostmitteleuropa 1907–1930, trans. Aniko Harmath, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2003, 337 pp. Review: Dmitrieva-Einhorn (H-Soz-Kult 2006). (German)
• Lothar Lang, Konstruktivismus und Buchkunst, Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1990, 208 pp. TOC. (German)
• S.A. Mansbach, Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890-1939, Cambridge University Press, 1999, 384 pp, IA. (English)
• Dubravka Djurić, Miško Šuvaković (eds.), Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918-1991, MIT Press, 2003, xviii+605 pp. (English)
• Vojtěch Lahoda (ed.), Local Strategies, International Ambitions: Modern Art and Central Europe 1918-1968, Prague: Artefactum, 2006, 243 pp. Papers from the international conference, Prague, 11-14 Jun 2003. TOC. Papers: Anna Brzynski, Maria Elena Versari. [13] [14]
• Elizabeth Clegg, Art, Design, and Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1920, Yale University Press, 2006, 356 pp. [15] (English)
• Sascha Bru, et al. (eds.), Europa! Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, 1, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. (English)
• Günter Berghaus (ed.), Futurism in Eastern and Central Europe, De Gruyter (International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 1), 2011. (English)
• Sarah Posman, Anne Reverseau, David Ayers, Sascha Bru, Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), The Aesthetics of Matter: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and Material Exchange, De Gruyter, 2013. (English)
• Beata Hock, Klara Kemp-Welch, Jonathan Owen (eds.), A Reader in East-Central European Modernism, 1918-1956, London: Courtauld Books Online, 2019, 432 pp, PDFs, HTML. Review: Drobe (Craace). (English)
• Beate Störtkuhl, Rafał Makała (eds.), Nicht nur Bauhaus – Netzwerke der Moderne in Mitteleuropa / Not Just Bauhaus – Networks of Modernity in Central Europe, Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2020, 400 pp. Publisher. Review: Secklehner (Art East Central). (German),(English)

Journal issues

• Art Journal 49(1): "From Leningrad to Ljubljana: The Suppressed Avant-Gardes of East-Central and Eastern Europe during the Early Twentieth Century" (Spring 1990). [16] (English)
• Centropa 3(1): "Central European Architectural Students at the Bauhaus", New York: Centropa, Jan 2003. [17] (English)
• Centropa 6(2): "Central European Artists and Paris: 1920s-1930s", ed. Irena Kossowska, New York: Centropa, May 2006. [18] (English)
• Centropa 11(1): "Central European Art Groups, 1880-1914", ed. Anna Brzyski, New York: Centropa, Jan 2011. [19] (English)

Articles, talks

• Folke Dietzsch, "Zu einigen Aspekten der Internationalität des Bauhauses und seiner Studentenschaft", Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift / A // Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen 33:4/6 (1987). (German)
• Esther Levinger, "The Second Narrative, Constructivism in East-Central Europe", Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass, 2002. Colloquium talk. (English)

See also

Section on Constructivism. Avant-garde in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Further bibliography.

Literature, literary theory, aesthetics

Terms

structuralism (1920s, Prague Linguistic Circle), linguistic functionalism (1920s, Prague Linguistic Circle), proletkult (1920s, international), Poetism (1920s, Teige and Nezval), factography (1920s, LEF), aesthetic object (1930s, Ingarden), phoneme (Jakobson), morphophonology (Trubetzkoy), genetic structuralism (1960s, Goldmann), communicative functions (1960s, Jakobson)

Poets, writers, theorists

• 1910s-30s: Vladimir Mayakovsky (Moscow), Josip Brik (St. Petersburg/Moscow), Nikolai Trubetzkoy (Moscow/Vienna), Viktor Shklovsky (St. Petersburg/Berlin), Petr Bogatyrev (Moscow/Prague), Roman Jakobson (Moscow/Prague), Jan Mukařovský (Prague), Karel Teige (Prague), Vítězslav Nezval (Prague), Jaroslav Seifert (Prague), Bedřich Václavek (Prague), Roman Ingarden (Lwow), György Lukács (Berlin/Moscow/Budapest)
• 1960s: Lucien Goldmann (Bucharest/Paris), Felix Vodička (Prague)

Networks

• Russian Formalists, Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOYEZ in St. Petersburg, 1910s-20s
• Prague Linguistic Circle, 1920s-30s
• Devětsil, Prague, 1920s
• LEF, Moscow, 1920s

Photography

Terms

photogram, photo-eye, photomontage, photogenism (1922, Funke), heliography (1928, Hiller)

Artists

• 1920s: László Moholy-Nagy (photograms, Berlin/London), Alexander Rodchenko (Moscow), Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina (photomontages, Riga/Moscow), Franciszka and Stefan Themerson (Warsaw), Mieczysław Szczuka (photomontage, Warsaw), Vane Bor (surrealist, Belgrade/Paris), Jaromír Funke (Prague/Bratislava), Karel Teige (theory, Prague), Jindřich Štyrský (surrealist, Prague), Jaroslav Rössler (Prague/Paris), Karol Hiller (heliography, Łódź)
• 1930s: Eugen Wiškovský (Prague), Irena Blühová (social photography, Bratislava), Lubomír Linhart (theory, Prague)

See also

Photography in Czech Republic, Slovakia.

Light art

Artists

• 1920s-30s: Naum Gabo (Moscow/Berlin), László Moholy-Nagy (Hungary/Berlin/London), István Sebök (Budapest/Vienna/Dessau), El Lissitzky (Moscow/St. Petersburg/Vitebsk), Nikolas Braun (Berlin), Zdeněk Pešánek (Prague)
• 1970s: Antoni Mikołajczyk (Łódź), Stanislav Zippe (Prague)

Experimental film

Terms

montage (1920s, Eisenstein), Kino-Pravda (1922, Vertov), Cine-Eye (1920s, Vertov), cinema club, Open Form (1950s-60s, Hansen), antifilm (1962, Pansini)

Filmmakers

• 1920s-40s: Sergei Eisenstein (Moscow), Dziga Vertov (Moscow), Alexander Hammid (Prague), Otakar Vávra (Prague), Franciszka and Stefan Themerson (Warsaw)
• 1960s: Radúz Činčera (Prague), Vladimir Petek (Zagreb), Mihovil Pansini (Zagreb), Tomislav Gotovac (Zagreb), Ivan Martinac (Split), Živojin Pavlović (Belgrade), Karpo Godina (Ljubljana), Ivica Matić (Sarajevo)
• 1970s-80s: Gábor Bódy (Budapest/Berlin), Józef Robakowski (Łódź), Zbigniew Rybczynski (Łódź), Miklós Erdély (Budapest), Wojciech Bruszewski (Łódź), Vladimír Havrilla (Bratislava), Petr Skala (Prague)

Events

GEFF festival (Zagreb, 1963-70), MAFAF festival (Pula, 1965-90), 8 mm (Novi Sad), Alternative Film Festival (Split), April Meetings festival (Belgrade, 1972-77), Alternative Film & Video Festival (Belgrade, *1982), xfilm festival and series of lectures / screenings (Sofia, since 2005), This Is All Film! Experimental Film in Yugoslavia 1951-1991 exhibition (Ljubljana, 2010)

Networks

• Zagreb Cinema Club, Zagreb, 1930s and 1950s-60s
• Start film club and SAF film co-operative, Warsaw, 1930s
• Split Cinema Club, Split, 1950s-60s and 1980s
• Balázs Béla Studio, Budapest, 1960s-1980s
• Open Form, Łódź and Warsaw, 1960s-70s
• Sarajevo Cinema Club, Sarajevo, 1960s
• Workshop of Film Form, Łódź, 1970s
• Belgrade Cinema Club and Academic Film Center Belgrade, Belgrade, 1960s-70s; Black Wave, Belgrade, 1970s
• Kinema Ikon, Arad, 1975-1990
• Sigma group, Timisoara, 1970s
• Parallel Cinema (necrorealist movement), St. Petersburg and Moscow, mid 1980s

Literature

Books, catalogues

• Łukasz Ronduda, Florian Zeyfang (eds.), 1,2,3... Avant-Gardes: Film/Art between Experiment and Archive, Warsaw: Centre for Contemporary Art, and Berlin/New York: Sternberg, 2007, 224 pp. Publisher. (English)/(German)
• Ana Janevski (ed.), As Soon as I Open My Eyes I See a Film. Experiment in the Art of Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2010, 344 pp. Publisher. Distributor. Exhibition.
  • Kiedy rano otwieram oczy, widzę film. Eksperyment w sztuce Jugoslawii w latach 60. i 70., Warsaw: Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, 2011. Excerpt. (Polish)
• Bojana Piškur, et al. (eds.), This Is All Film: Experimental Film in Yugoslavia 1951-1991 / Vse to je film: Eksperimentalni film v Jugoslaviji 1951-1991, Ljubljana: Museum of Modern Art, 2010, 154 pp. (English)/(Slovenian)
• Pavle Levi, Cinema by Other Means, Oxford University Press, 2012, 224 pp.
• Ksenya Gurshtein, Sonja Simonyi (eds.), Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022, 334 pp. Publisher. TOC. [20]

Journal issues

• Studies in Eastern European Cinema 7(1): "Experimental Cinema in State Socialist Eastern Europe", eds. Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi, 2016. [21] (English)

Resources

• Artists, Amateurs, Alternative Spaces: Experimental Cinema in Eastern Europe, 1960–1990, eds. Joanna Raczynska and Ksenya Gurshtein, Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2014. (English)

See also

Experimental film in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania. Further bibliography.

Art and architecture

Artists

Oskar Hansen, Karel Honzík, Vjenceslav Richter, Jerzy Rosołowicz, VAL, Sigma

Literature

• "The Conference East-European Art and Architecture in the 20th Century (MIT, 5-6 October, 2001)", ArtMargins, 2002-2003. [22] [23] [24]
• Nikolaos Drosos, Modernism with a Human Face: Synthesis of Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe, 1954-1958, New York: CUNY Graduate Center, 2016, 241 pp, PDF. (English)

Action art, Happening, Performance, Body art

Artists

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-90 Kraków), Alina Szapocznikow (1926-73 Poland/Paris), Geta Brătescu (1926 Bucharest), Włodzimierz Borowski (1930-2008 Warsaw), Jerzy Bereś (1930-2012 Kraków), Ilija Šoškić (1934 Montenegro/Rome), Tomislav Gotovac (1937 Zagreb), Natalia LL (1937 Wrocław), Zbigniew Warpechowski (1938 Kraków), Milan Knížák (1940 Prague), Karel Miler (1940 Prague), György Galántai (1941 Budapest), Jana Želibská (1941 Bratislava), Zorka Ságlová (1942-2003 Prague), Katalin Ladik (1942 Novi Sad/Budapest), Grzegorz Kowalski (1942 Warsaw), Tamás Szentjóby (1944 Budapest), Petr Štembera (1945 Prague), Raša Todosijević (1945 Belgrade), Ion Grigorescu (1945 Bucharest), Zofia Kulik (1947 Warsaw) & Przemyslaw Kwiek (1945 Warsaw), Ewa Partum (1945 Warsaw), Marina Abramović (1946 Novi Sad/Amsterdam/New York), Sándor Pinczehelyi (1946 Pécs/Budapest), Tibor Hajas (1946-80 Budapest), Ľubomír Ďurček (1948 Bratislava), Sanja Iveković (1949 Zagreb), Ján Budaj (1952 Bratislava), Jan Mlčoch (1953 Prague), Jiří Kovanda (1953 Prague), Vladimír Havlík (1959 Olomouc), Łódź Kaliska (1979-, Łódź), Orange Alternative (1983-, Wrocław), Autoperforationsartistik (1980s, Dresden).

Literature

Books

• Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa, ed. Klaus Groh, Cologne: DuMont-Schauberg, 1972, 222 pp. One of first books to cover performance, conceptual, and mail art in Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. Short introduction by the author followed by b&w photographs, artists’ statements, and a bibliography. (German)

• Gender Check: A Reader. Art and Theory in Eastern Europe, eds. Bojana Pejić, ERSTE Foundation, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna, Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010, 416 pp. An extensive collection of texts that explicitly analyze visual arts created before and after 1989 in the 'other' Europe in terms of gender and feminist theories. Texts by Anna Alchuk, Branislava Andjelkovic, Edit András, Zdenka Badovinac, Ágnes Berecz, Lyudmila Bredikhina, Branislav Dimitrijevic, Hildtrud Ebert, Ewa Franus, Jana Geržová, Nataša Ilić, Eva Khachatryan, Katrin Kivimaa, Izabela Kowalczyk, Vjollca Krasniqi, Laima Kreivyte, Dejan Kršic, Paweł Leszkowicz, Suzana Milevska, Danica Minic, Olivia Niţiş, Aleksis Osmanis, Martina Pachmanová, Bojana Pejić, Piotr Piotrowski, Zora Rusinová, Angeli Sachs, Lydia Sklevicky, Vera Sokolová, Inga Šteimane, Maria Vassileva, Mirek Vodrážka. TOC. Project website. Publisher. [25]

• Removed From the Crowd: Unexpected Encounters 1, eds. Ivana Bago and Antonia Majača with Vesna Vuković, Zagreb: BLOK & DeLVe, 2011, 312 pp. Considers comparative, transnational, conceptual and performance art in Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Chile, Peru, Poland, and Romania. Among other essays, presents Bago and Majača on Yugoslavian experimental art of the 1960s and 1970s; Alina Serban on the Romania performance artist Geta Brătescu; Vesna Vuković on Croatian artists Sanja Iveković and Tomislav Gotovac; Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez on the Slovenian group IRWIN; and Lucian Gomoll and Lissette Olivares on Chilean conceptual and performance. (English)

• Amy Bryzgel, Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia and Poland since 1980, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013, 303 pp. Contains three chapters: one on post-Soviet Russian identity focusing on Sergei Bugaev (aka Afrika) and Oleg Kulik; a second on Starix (2000–2004), the fake media star invented by the artist Gints Gabrāns, and The Bronze Man (1987–1992), a homeless man moving from Riga to Bremen and Helsinki, constructed by Miervaldis Polis; and a third chapter on gender performances by the Polish artists Zbigniew Libera and Katarzyna Kozyra. Video talk. Publisher. Reviews: Jeschke (Slovo), Cseh-Varga (Oxford Art J). (English)

• Klara Kemp-Welch, Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule, 1956-1989, I.B. Tauris, 2014, xx+336 pp. Presents new readings of the work of Tadeusz Kantor, Július Koller, Tamas Szentjóby, Endre Tót, Jiří Kovanda and Jerzy Bereś. Publisher. Reviews: Gurshtein (ARTMargins), Bryzgel (CritCom), Cseh-Varga (Oxford Art J), Alisauskas (Critique d'art), Aulich (LSE blogs). (English)

• Amy Bryzgel, Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017, xvii+366 pp. Introduction. Presents a history and development of performance art in the former communist countries of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe since the 1960s, covering 21 countries and 250+ artists. Companion website. Publisher. Reviews: Foerschner (H-Net), Maydanchik (SEER), Blaylock (CAA), Spieker (Slavic R), Jovićević (Modern Drama). Bryzgel 2020. [26] (English)

• Katalin Cseh-Varga, Adam Czirak (eds.), Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere. Event-Based Art in Late Socialist Europe, London: Routledge, 2018, xii+263 pp. (English)

• Klara Kemp-Welch, Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981, MIT Press, 2018, xi+468 pp. (English)

• Adam Czirak (ed.), Aktionskunst jenseits des Eisernen Vorhangs. Künstlerische Kritik in Zeiten politischer Repression, Bielefeld: transcript, 2019, 242 pp. [27] (German)

• Maja Fowkes, Reuben Fowkes, Central and Eastern European art since 1950, London: Thames & Hudson, Mar 2020, 232 pp. Introduction. Publisher. Reviews: Nae (ArtMargins), Rousseva (CAA), Schultz (Art Monthly), Placáková (Artportal.hu), Placáková (Artalk.cz, CZ). (English)

• Corinna Kühn, Medialisierte Körper. Performances und Aktionen der Neoavantgarden Ostmitteleuropas in den 1970er Jahren, Vienna: Böhlau, 2020, 324 pp. Publisher. Reviews: Renz (ArtMargins), Drobe (Art East Central). (German)

• Doing Performance Art History. Perspectives of Actors and Observers, eds. Sandra Frimmel, Tomáš Glanc, Sabine Hänsgen, Katalin Krasznahorkai, Nastasia Louveau, Dorota Sajewska, and Sylvia Sasse, Apparatus, Oct 2020. (English)

Catalogues

• Body and the East: from the 1960s to the Present, ed. Zdenka Badovinac, MIT Press, 1999, 192 pp. Exh. held at Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 7 Jul-27 Sep 1998. Chronicles art, especially that of performance and body artists, in central and eastern Europe, with short artist biographies of 80 artists. Essays by Joseph Backstein, Bojana Pejić, Iara Boubnova, Jurij Krpan, Ileana Pintilie, Kristine Stiles, Branka Stipančić, László Beke, Igor Zabel, a.o. [28] (English)/(Slovenian)

• Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, ed. Bojana Pejić and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna, Cologne: Walther Koenig, 2009, 392 pp. Texts by Edit András, Keti Chukhrov, Branislav Dimitrijević, Katrin Kivimaa, Izabela Kowalczyk, Suzana Milevska, Martina Pachmanová, Bojana Pejić, Piotr Piotrowski, Zora Rusinová, Hedwig Saxenhuber, Georg Schöllhammer. Project website. Publisher. Exh. held at mumok, Vienna, 13 Nov 2009-14 Feb 2010; Zachęta, 19 Mar-13 Jun 2010. List of works. Review: Krüger (Ostblick). Symposium. [29] (English)
  • Gender Check. Rollenbilder in der Kunst Osteuropas, Vienna: mumok, 2009, 162 pp. TOC. [30] (German)

• Spoločné posedenie. Paralelné chronológie zhôd okolností vo východnej Európe / Sitting Together: Parallel Chronologies of Coincidences in Eastern Europe, eds. Petra Feriancová and Zsuzsa László, Bratislava: tranzit.sk, and Budapest: tranzit.hu, 2017, 25 pp. (Slovak)/(Hungarian)

• Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism, ed. Andrey Kovalev, intro. Marat Guelman, Boris Groys, and Andrey Kovalev, ABCdesign Studio, 2017, 255 pp, HTML. Exh. curated by Marat Guelman; held at Saatchi Gallery, London, 16 Nov-31 Dec 2017. Excerpt. [31] (English)
  • Art Riot: Postsovetskiy aktsionizm [Art Riot: Постсоветский акционизм], n.d. (Russian)

• Left Performance Histories: Recollecting Artistic Practices in Eastern Europe, eds. Judit Bodor, Adam Czirak, Astrid Hackel, Beäta Hock, Andrej Mircev, and Angelika Richter, Berlin: neue Gesellschaft für bildene Kunst (nGbK), 2018, 205 pp. Text by Kata Benedek, Judit Bodor, David Crowley, Adam Czirak, Constanze Fritzsch, Astrid Hackel, Beata Hock, Jürgen Hohmuth, Roddy Hunter, Bojana Matejić, Andrej Mirčev, Angelika Richter, Elske Rosenfeld, Heike Roms, Branka Stipančić. TOC, Introduction. Publisher. Project website. Review: Bryzgel (CAA). (German)/(English)

• Artists & Agents. Performancekunst und Geheimdienste, eds. Kata Krasznahorkai and Sylvia Sasse, Leipzig: Spector, 2019, 686 pp. [32] (German)

• Artists & Agents: Performance Art and Secret Services, eds. Inke Arns, Kata Krasznahorkai, Sylvia Sasse, and HMKV, Dortmund: Kettler, 2019, 224 pp. Review: Bátorová (ArtMargins). (German)/(English)

• Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, ed. Pavel S. Pyś, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2023, 408 pp. Introduction. TOC. Publisher. Exh. held at Walker Art Center, 11 Nov 2023-10 Mar 2024; Phoenix Art Museum, 17 Apr−15 Sep 2024; Vancouver Art Gallery, 2 Nov 2024−23 Mar 2025. Opening panel discussion (105m). Curator's talk (42m). Exh. reviews: Farago (NYT), Snodgrass (Artforum), Blaylock (ARTMargins), Plagens (WSJ), Wetzler (Apollo), Greenberger (Art in America), Duray (Observer), ArtRevue.cz. [33] [34] (English)

Journal issues

• Centropa 14(1): "Performance Art in Central and Eastern Europe", eds. Amy Bryzgel and Pavlína Morganová, Jan 2014. [35] (English)

• Revista Arta 14-15: "Performance in Eastern Europe", ed. Ileana Pintilie, Bucharest: Romanian Artists’ Union, 2015, 98 pp. (Romanian)/(English)

• post: "Fluxus Threads in Eastern Europe", eds. Magdalena Moskalewicz and Christian Rattemeyer, New York: Museum of Modern Art, Jul 2015. [36] [37] (English)

Book chapters, essays

• "Body Unbound", ch 4 in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art Since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002, pp 197-255. (English)

• Piotr Piotrowski, "The Critique of Painting: Towards the Neo-avant-garde" & "Mapping the Neo-avant-garde, c. 1970" & "The Politics of Identity: Male and Female Body Art", chs 6, 7 & 9 in Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, trans. Anna Brzyski, London: Reaktion Books, 2009, pp 178-237, 241-314 & 341-387, n454-458, n458-466 & n469-471. (English)

• Claire Bishop, "The Social Under Socialism", ch 5 in Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso, 2012, pp 129ff. (English)

• Amy Bryzgel, "Continuity and Change: Performance Art in Eastern Europe since the 1960s", Idea 45, Cluj, Nov 2014. [38] (English)
  • "Continuitate și schimbare: arta performance în Europa de Est începînd cu anii 1960", trans. Alexandru Polgár, Idea 45, Cluj, Nov 2014. (Romanian)

• Amy Bryzgel, "Полът и неговите изпълнения в Източна Европа" / "Performing Gender in Eastern Europe", in София Куиър Форум 2014 / Sofia Queer Forum 2014, ed. Stefka Tsaneva, Sofia, 2014, pp 14-25 & 26-35. (Bulgarian)/(English)

• Amy Bryzgel, "Performance Art in East-Central Europe: 1960s to the Post-Communist Era", PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 42:3, Sep 2020, pp 95-105. [39] (English)

• Kathleen Reinhardt, "Persons and Objects Are to Be Removed from the Balcony: Artists Performing in Public and Private Spaces of Control during the Cold War", in Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, ed. Pavel S. Pyś, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2023. Exhibition. (English)

• Sven Spieker, "Taking It to the Street: Eastern European Art Demonstrations (Milan Knížák, Jiří Kovanda, Endre Tót, Mladen Miljanović, Ciprian Homorodean)", in Spieker, Art and Demonstration: A Revolutionary Recasting of Knowledge, MIT Press, Feb 2024. [40] (English)

Interviews

• Andrea Bátorová, "Interview with Katalin Cseh and Adam Czirak About the Second Public Sphere in the former Eastern Bloc", ArtMargins, 23 Oct 2014. (English)

Conceptual art

Artists

Groups

• Gorgona, 1959-1966, Zagreb. Josip Vaništa, painters Julije Knifer, Đuro Seder, and Marijan Jevšovar, sculptor Ivan Kožarić, architect Miljenko Horvat, art theoreticians Matko Meštrović, Radoslav Putar, and Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos.
• Red Peristyle [Crveni Peristil], 1966-1968, Split. Pavao Dulčić, Tomo Čaleta, Vladimir Dodig-Trokut, Slaven Sumić, Nenad Đapić, Radovan Kogej, Srđan Blažević, Denis Dokić.
• OHO Group, 1966-1971, Ljubljana. Marko Pogačnik, David Nez, Milenko Matanović, Andraž Šalamun.
• Kôd Group, 1960s-1970s, Novi Sad. Mirko Radojčić, Slobodan Tišma, Miroslav Mandić, Slavko Bogdanović, Peđa Vranešević.
• E Group, Novi Sad. Ana Raković, Čedomir Drča, Vladimir Kopicl, Miša Živanović.
• Bosch+Bosch, 1969-1976, Subotica. Slavko Matković, Edit Basch, István Krekovics, Zoltán Magyar, László Szalma, Bálint Szombathy, Slobodan Tomanović, a.o.
• Group 143, 1975-1980, Belgrade. Miško Šuvaković, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković, Neša Paripović, Maja Savić.
• Group of Six Artists, 1975-1981, Zagreb. Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Fedor Vučemilović.
• ZzIP Group, 1983-1989, int'l. Marko Pogačnik, Mirko Radojčić, Miško Šuvaković, Dubravka Đurić, Zoran Belić Weiss, Nenad Petrović.

Artists

• Dalibor Chatrný, 1925-2012, Brno
• Miklós Erdély, 1928-1986, Budapest
• Włodzimierz Borowski, 1930-2008, Warsaw
• Vladan Radovanović, 1932, Belgrade
• Alex Mlynárčik, 1934, Bratislava/Prague/Paris
• Gábor Attalai, 1934, Budapest
• László Lakner, 1936, Budapest/Berlin
• Marek Konieczny, 1936, Warsaw
• Dóra Maurer, 1937, Budapest
• Endre Tót, 1937, Budapest/Cologne
• Stano Filko, 1937-2015, Bratislava
• Peter Bartoš, 1938, Bratislava
• Július Koller, 1939, Bratislava
• György Jovánovics, 1939, Budapest
• Milan Knížák, 1940, Prague
• Gyula Pauer, 1941, Budapest
• Krzysztof Wodiczko, 1943, Warsaw/New York/Boston
• Tamás Szentjóby, 1944, Budapest
• Jarosław Kozłowski, 1945, Poznań
• Jiří Valoch, 1946, Brno
• J.H. Kocman, 1947, Brno
• Braco Dimitrijević, 1948, Sarajevo/Zagreb/Paris
• Goran Trbuljak, 1948, Zagreb
• Goran Đorđević, 1950, Belgrade/New York

Resources

• Forgotten Heritage, 8,000 works of selected artists of the Polish, Croatian, Estonian, Belgian and French postwar avant-gardes. Launched 2018.

Literature

• Klaus Groh (ed.), Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa, Cologne: DuMont-Schauberg, 1972, 222 pp. One of first books to cover performance, conceptual, and mail art in Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. Short introduction by the author followed by b&w photographs, artists’ statements, and a bibliography. Archive. (German)

• Vision 2: "Eastern Europe", ed. Tom Marioni, San Francisco: Crown Point Press, Jan 1976. [41] (English)

• The New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, 1966-1978, ed. Marijan Susovski, Zagreb: Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1978, 148 pp. Exh. cat. (English)/(Serbo-Croatian)

• Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, London: Phaidon, 1998, pp 264-275, IA. (English)

• László Beke, "Conceptualist Tendencies in Eastern European Art", in Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950-1980s, eds. Jane Ferver, Luis Camnitzer and Rachel Weiss, New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999, pp 41-51. TOC. Exh. held at Queens Museum, New York, 28 Apr-29 Aug 1999; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 19 Dec 1999–5 Mar 2000; Hayden Hall MIT, 24 Oct-31 Dec 2000. Exh. review: Meyer (Artforum), Johnson (NYT). (English)

• Desa Philippi, "Matter of Words: Translations in East European Conceptualism", in Rewriting Conceptual Art, eds. Michael Newman and Jon Bird, London: Reaktion Books, Dec 1999, pp 152-168. (English)

• "Conceptual Art and Times of Transition", ch. 3 in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art Since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl, New York: Museum of Modern Art, Dec 2002, pp 122-195. (English)

• in Conceptual Art, ed. Peter Osborne, London: Phaidon, 2002. (English)

• Miško Šuvaković, "Konceptualna umjetnost", in Šuvaković, Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb: Horetzky, 2005. (Croatian)

• IRWIN (ed.), East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe, London: Afterall, 2006, 527 pp, IA. (English)

• Miško Šuvaković, Konceptualna umetnost, Novi Sad: MSUV, 2007, 862 pp; new ed., Belgrade: Orion Art, 2012, 862 pp. [42] [43] (Serbian)

• Novine Galerije Nova 18: "Nevidljiva povijest izložbi / Invisible History of Exhibitions", eds. What, How & for Whom/WHW, Zagreb: What, How & for Whom/WHW, and Zagreb: AGM, Dec 2008, 58 pp. Exh. cat. (Croatian)/(English)

• Novine Galerije Nova 19/20: "Nevidljiva povijest izložbi 2: paralelne kronologije / The Invisible History of Exhibitions 2: Parallel Chronologies", eds. Dóra Hegyi, Zsuzsa László, and What, How & for Whom/WHW, Zagreb: What, How & for Whom/WHW, and Zagreb: AGM, Jul 2009, 43 pp. Exh. cat. Publisher. (Croatian)/(English)

• Piotr Piotrowski, "The Critique of Painting: Towards the Neo-avant-garde", "Mapping the Neo-avant-garde, c. 1970", "Conceptual Art between Theory of Art and Critique of the System", chs. 6, 7 & 8 in Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, trans. Anna Brzyski, London: Reaktion Books, 2009, pp 178-237, n454-458, 241-314, n458-466, 315-340, n467-469. (English)

• Art Always Has Its Consequences, eds. WHW, tranzit.hu, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, and kuda.org, Zagreb: WHW, 2010, 265 pp. (English)

• Removed From the Crowd: Unexpected Encounters 1, eds. Ivana Bago and Antonia Majača with Vesna Vuković, Zagreb: BLOK & DeLVe, 2011, 312 pp. (English)

• Ksenya A. Gurshtein, TransStates: Conceptual Art in Eastern Europe and the Limits of Utopia, University of Michigan, 2011, 323 pp. PhD thesis. [44] (English)

• ARTMargins 1(2-3): "Artists' Networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe", eds. Klara Kemp-Welch and Cristina Freire, 2012. (English)

• Zdenka Badovinac, Eda Čufer, Cristina Freire, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, Vít Havránek, Piotr Piotrowski, Branka Stipančić, "Conceptual Art and Eastern Europe: Part I", e-flux 40, Dec 2012; Part 2, e-flux 41, Jan 2013. Based on a conference organised by Zdenka Badovinac in Ljubljana, 2007. (English)

• Maja Fowkes, The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde Art and Ecology under Socialism, Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, Jul 2015, viii+299 pp. Publisher. Reviews: Cseh-Varga (Springerin), Debeusscher (Critique d'art), Filipovic (AM J), Laki (Flash Art CS). (English)

• Revista Arta 6(20-21): "Conceptualismul în Europa Centrală și de Est / Conceptualism in Eastern and Central Europe", ed. Cristian Nae, Bucharest, Sep 2016, 191 pp. [45] (Romanian)/(English)

• My Sweet Little Lamb (Everything We See Could Also Be Otherwise), eds. What, How & for Whom/WHW and Kathrin Rhomberg, Zagreb: What, How & for Whom/WHW, 2017, 167 pp; new ed., exp., eds. Emily Pethick, Kathrin Rhomberg, What, How & for Whom/WHW, and Jill Winder, Berlin: Sternberg Press, and Vienna: Kontakt Collection, Mar 2023, 456 pp. Based on a series of exhibition episodes based on the Kontakt Collection and dedicated to the artist Mladen Stilinović, held in Zagreb, 4 Nov 2016–8 May 2017, and The Show Room, London, Jun 2017. Texts in exp. ed. by Branislav Dimitrijević, Miguel A. López, Oxana Timofeeva, Marina Vishmidt. Publisher. (English)

• Klara Kemp-Welch, Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981, MIT Press, Feb 2019, xi+468 pp. Publisher. Reviews: Nae (ARTMargins), Tomkova (H-Net), Hughes (Critique d'art). (English)

• Maja Fowkes, Reuben Fowkes, Central and Eastern European art since 1950, London: Thames & Hudson, Mar 2020, 232 pp. Introduction. Publisher. Reviews: Nae (ARTMargins), Rousseva (CAA), Schultz (Art Monthly), Placáková (Artportal.hu), Placáková (Artalk.cz, CZ).

See also

Conceptual art

Geometric abstraction, Neo-constructivism, Op art, Kinetic art

Artists

Groups

• Exat 51, 1950-1956, Zagreb
• Dvizhenie, 1962-1978, Moscow
• Prometei, 1962-, Kazan
• Syntéza, 1965-1969, Prague
• 111, 1966-1969, Timișoara
• Klub konkrétistů, 1967-1971, Czechoslovakia
• Sigma, 1969-1980, Timișoara

Artists

• László Moholy-Nagy, 1895-1946, worked in Budapest/Weimar/Berlin/Chicago
• Zdeněk Pešánek, 1896-1965, Prague
• Sándor Szandai, 1903-1978, Budapest
• Victor Vasarely, 1906-1997, Budapest/Paris
• Stanislaw Zamecznik, 1909-1971, Warsaw
• Nicolas Schöffer, 1912-1992, Hungary/Paris
• Vjenceslav Richter, 1917-2003, Zagreb, Exat 51 member
• Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, 1919-2005, Warsaw
• Zdeněk Sýkora, 1920-2011, Prague/Louny
• Vladislav Mirvald, 1921-2003, Louny/CZ
• Alojz Klimo, 1922-2000, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Tamara Klimová, 1922-2004, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Jiří Novák, 1922-2010, Prague
• Julije Knifer, 1924-2004, Zagreb/Paris, Gorgona member
• Magdalena Więcek, 1924-2008, Poznań
• Aleksandar Srnec, 1924-2010, Zagreb, Exat 51 member
• Gyula Kosice, 1924-2016, Košice/Buenos Aires
• Jan Chwałczyk, 1924-2018, Wroclaw
• Jarmila Čihánková, 1925-2017, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Piotr Kowalski, 1927-2004, Lwow/Boston/Paris
• Jerzy Rosołowicz, 1928-1982, Wroclaw
• Slavko Tihec, 1928-1993, Ljubljana
• Radoslav Kratina, 1928-1999, Brno/Prague, Klub konkrétistů member
• Julian Stanczak, 1928-2017, Poland/Ohio
• Juraj Dobrović, 1928, Zagreb
• Ludmila Popiel, 1929-1988, Warsaw
• Eduard Antal, 1929-2011, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Milan Dobeš, 1929, Bratislava
• Štefan Belohradský, 1930-2012, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Ştefan Bertalan, 1930-2014, Timișoara/Germany, 111 member
• Krystian Jarnuszkiewicz, 1930-2016
• Hugo Demartini, 1931-2010, Prague
• Miloš Urbásek, 1932-1988, Bratislava
• Zbigniew Gostomski, 1932-2017, Warsaw
• Vladan Radovanovic, 1932, Belgrade
• Juraj Bartusz, 1933, Košice, Klub konkrétistů member
• Koloman Novak, 1933, Belgrade/Vienna
• André Cadere, 1934-1978, Bucharest/Paris
• Roman Cotoşman, 1935-2006, Timișoara/Philadelphia, 111 member
• Pavol Binder, 1935-2009, Bratislava
• Zdeněk Kučera, 1935-2016, Ostrava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Mária Bartuszová, 1936-1996, Bratislava, Klub konkrétistů member
• Miroslav Šutej, 1936-2005, Zagreb
• Ryszard Winiarski, 1936-2006, Warsaw
• Vinko Tušek, 1936-2011, Kranj
• Anton Cepka, 1936, Klub konkrétistů member
• Constantin Flondor, 1936, Timișoara, 111 and Sigma member
• János Fajó, 1937-2018, Budapest
• Jiří Hilmar, 1937, Prague/Germany, Klub konkrétistů member
• Lev Nusberg, 1937, Moscow, Dvizheniye member
• Dušan Tršar, 1937, Ljubljana
• Paul Neagu, 1938-2004, Bucharest/London
• Tamás Hencze, 1938-2018, Budapest
• István Nádler, 1938, Budapest
• Antoni Mikolajczyk, 1939-2000, Łódź
• Imre Bak, 1939, Budapest
• Václav Jíra, 1939, Louny/CZ
• Diet Sayler, 1939, Timișoara/Nuremberg
• Bulat Galeyev, 1940-2009, Kazan, Prometei member
• Mihai Olos, 1940-2015, Bucharest/Germany
• Gyula Pauer, 1941-2012, Budapest
• Vratislav Karel Novák, 1942, Prague
• Francisco Infante, 1943, Moscow, Dvizheniye member
• Doru Tulcan, 1943, Timișoara, Sigma member
• Stanislav Zippe, 1943-2024, Prague, Syntéza member
• Jan Wojnar, 1944-2014, Třinec/CZ
• Marian Drugda, 1945, Bratislava
• András Mengyán, 1945, Budapest
• Viktor Hulík, 1949, Bratislava
• Milena Braniselj, 1951, Ljubljana
• Tomaž Kolarič, 1952, Ljubljana

Terms

visual kinetics (plastique cinétique, 1950s, Vasarely)

Literature

• Piotr Piotrowski, "Totalitarianism and Modernism: The 'Thaw' and Informel Painting in Central Europe, 1955-1965", Artium Quaestiones 10 (2000), pp 119-175. (English)
• Piotr Piotrowski, "Modernism and Totalitarianism II. Myths of Geometry: Neo-Constructivism in Central Europe 1948-1970", trans. Marek Wilczyński, Artium Quaestiones 11 (2000), pp 101-154. (English)
• Piotr Piotrowski, "The Myths of Geometry", ch. 4 in Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, trans. Anna Brzyski, London: Reaktion Books, 2009. (English)
• David Crowley, "The Art of Cybernetic Communism", in Star City: The Future under Communism, eds. Alex Farquharson, Łukasz Ronduda, and Barbara Piwowarska, Warsaw: CSW, 2011; repr., rev., in Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond, eds. Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori, and Maria Mileeva, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp 219-238, HTML. [46] (English)
• L'Internationale: Post-War Avant-Gardes Between 1957 and 1986, ed. Christian Höller, Zurich: JRP Ringer, 2012; L’Internationale Online, 2015, 416 pp. (English)
• The Other Transatlantic: Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, eds. Marta Dziewańska, Dieter Roelstraete, and Abigail Winograd, Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2017, 250 pp. Based on 2016 conference; published on the occasion of 2017 exhibition. TOC. Publisher. (English)
  • Dušan Barok, Abigail Winograd, "Timeline of Events: Between Eastern Europe and Latin America", pp 32-64.

See also

• Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia
• Further bibliography on Central and Eastern Europe
• Entry on Kinetic art

Audiovisual compositions

People

• 1960s-70s: Alois Piňos (Prague), Petr Kotík (Prague), Milan Grygar (Prague), Bulat Galeyev (Kazan)

See also

Audiovisual compositions in Czech Republic, Slovakia. Further bibliography.

Fluxus, Intermedia

Literature

• Fluxus East: Fluxus-Netzwerke in Mittelosteuropa / Fluxus East: Fluxus Networks in Central Eastern Europe, ed. Petra Stegmann, Berlin: Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, 2007, 288 pp. Exh. catalogue; exh. held at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 4 Sep-4 Nov 2007. Contains artists' biographies, an extensive illustrated chronology divided in sections, including an “Overall Survey of Fluxus Events in Central Eastern Europe (1962–1989), “Fluxus Concerts,” “Individual Exhibitions and Performances,” “Exhibitions and Festivals,” “Mieko Shiomi’s ‘Spatial Poems,’” “Nine Global Events,” and “Fluxus East and West,” and essays by Eric Andersen, Andrea Bátorová, Milan Knížák, Pavlína Morganová, Luiza Nader, Maria Anna Potocka, Tamás St. Auby, Petra Stegmann, and Emmett Williams. [47] [48] (German)/(English)

• "The Lunatics are on the Loose...": European Fluxus Festivals, 1962-1977, ed. Petra Stegmann, Potsdam: Down With Art!, 2012, 591 pp. Exh. catalogue. Extensive documentation of 32 selected European Fluxus events in Aachen, Aberystwyth, Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf, London, Madrid, Nizza, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Poznan, Rotterdam, Scheveningen, Stockholm, Vilnius, Wiesbaden, Wuppertal. [49] [50] (English)

• The Freedom of Sound: John Cage Behind the Iron Curtain, ed. Katalin Székely, Budapest: Ludwig Múzeum - Kortárs Művészeti Múzeum, 2013. Exh. catalogue. Publisher. Exhibition. Exh. brochure. (English)

• Petra Stegmann, "Fluxus and the East", Centropa 14:1, Jan 2014. (English)

• Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, ed. Pavel S. Pyś, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2023, 408 pp. Introduction. TOC. Publisher. Exh. held at Walker Art Center, 11 Nov 2023-10 Mar 2024; Phoenix Art Museum, 17 Apr−15 Sep 2024; Vancouver Art Gallery, 2 Nov 2024−23 Mar 2025. Opening panel discussion (105m). Curator's talk (42m). Exh. reviews: Farago (NYT), Snodgrass (Artforum), Blaylock (ARTMargins), Plagens (WSJ), Wetzler (Apollo), Greenberger (Art in America), Duray (Observer), ArtRevue.cz. [51] [52] (English)

Cybernetics

See Computing and cybernetics in CEE.

Electroacoustic music, Sound art

Trivia

• Lev Termen, the patriarch of musical electronics, a talented physicist, created Aetherophone (later called the Theremin or Thereminovox) in 1920 - unsurpassed till now in the family of performing electronic instruments (owing to its keen sound control options).
• Other early instruments include Sonchromatoskop by Sándor László (1920), Sonar by N.Anan'yev (c1930), Ekvodin by V.A.Gurov (1931), Emiriton by A.Ivanov and A.Rimsky-Korsakov (1932). While in the United States, Termen also created Theremin Cello (electric Cello with no strings and no bow, using a plastic fingerboard, a handle for volume and two knobs for sound shaping, c1930), Theremin keyboard (a piano-like device, c1930), Rhythmicon (world's first drum machine, 1931), and Terpsitone (platform that converts dance movements into tones, 1932). In the 1930s, professor E.A.Sholpo established a laboratory for sound synthesis where he developed his Variophone (1932), a precursor of the synthesizers. A.A.Volodin, a scientist in the field of electronic sound synthesis, designed a whole series of new instruments.
• In Moscow, Eugene Murzin constructed one of the world's first synthesizers in 1955. He named his invention, ANS synthesizer, in honor of Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, as the ANS worked on the principle of the transformation of light waves into electronic soundings. The compositions created on the ANS in the Moscow Studio of Electronic Music since 1958 played the major role in the development of electronic music in USSR. In the 1960s, the ANS was the only synthesizer in the Union, and became the training ground of a great number of young composers, including one of the most dedicated experimenters in the field of electronic music, Edward Artemyev. Artemyev's compositions are characterized by a constant search for new sounds and by a desire to obtain maximum timbre modification from minimal sound material. In the music for A. Tarkovsky's film Solaris (1972), Artemyev discovered an entire realm of unusual (for that time) sound effects; he founded a new trend in electronic music that musicologists have named 'space music'. (In 1972 the studio acquired the module synthesizer "SYNTHI-100" of English company "Taylor".)
• Warsaw Autumn Festival initiated by Baird and Serocki presented since 1956 works by Berg, Schönberg, and Bartók; Stockhausen and Schaeffer visited. Polish Radio Experimental studio was founded by Patkowski in 1957.
• In Czechoslovakia, the first representative Seminar on Electronic Music, organized on the initiative of several Czech and Slovak composers, musicologists and sound technicians, was held at the Research Institute of Radio and Television in Pilsen in 1964. It appeared a miracle to many people interested in this kind of musical creativity. The seminar dealt seriously and manifestly with questions of electronic music, for the first time in Czechoslovak cultural context. The representative survey on electronic music written by Czech musicologist Vladimir Lebl and published in 1966 was the fundamental theoretical work, followed by his translation of the book "La Musique concrète" by Pierre Schaeffer. Several compositions by the classicists of concrete, tape and electronic music appeared in radio broadcasts in 1965 and the first LP with electronic music pieces by both inland and foreign composers was published as soon as in 1966. Followed by foundation of experimental music studios in Bratislava (1965) and Pilsen (1967).
• During 1950s-70s the number of composers visited New Music courses in Darmstadt (Kotonski, Piňos, Jeney, Sáry), studied and worked with studios WDR Cologne (Kotonski, Eötvös, Dubrovay), GRM Paris (Kotonski, Kabeláč, Piňos, Vidovszky), Munich (Piňos), STEM Utrecht (Kabeláč), or IRCAM Paris (Eötvös).
• Gorizont became known as some sort of Russian version of Kraftwerk, releasing an LP by the "Soviet State" record label Melodia.

Terms

musique concrète (1949, Schaeffer, Paris), elektronische Musik (1950, Eimert and Meyer-Eppler, Cologne), New Music, synthesizer (ANS synthesizer, 1955, Moscow; RCA Music synthesizer, 1955), white noise, vocoder, atonal music, serialism

Studios

Polish Radio Experimental Studio Warsaw (1957, Patkowski), Experimental studio of electronic music Moscow (1958, Murzin), Experimentalstudio für künstliche Klang- und Geräuscherzeugung East Berlin (1953 or 1962?), Experimental Studio of Slovak Radio Bratislava (1965, Kolman), Experimental Studio of Czech Radio Pilsen (1967-94), New Music Studio Budapest (1970), Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade (1972, Radovanović), Electro-acoustic Music Studio at Academy of Music Krakow (1973, Patkowski), Electronic music studio Sofia (1974), Electroacoustic Music Studio of the Hungarian Radio Budapest (1975, Decsényi), Studio for Electronic Music Dresden (1984, Wissmann), Audiostudio of Czechoslovak Radio Prague (1990-94), Theremin Center Moscow (1992, Smirnov), Electronic Music Studio at the Estonian Academy of Music Tallinn (1995, Sumera) more

Composers, artists, musicologists

• mid-1950s-60s: Jozef Patkowski (Warsaw), Wlodzimierz Kotonski (Warsaw), Evgeny Murzin (engineer, Moscow), Edward Artemiev (Moscow), Peter Kolman (Bratislava), Miloslav Kabeláč (Pilsen), Vladimír Lébl (musicologist, Prague), Antonín Sychra (musicologist, Prague), Milan Knížák (Prague)
• 1970s: Vladan Radovanović (Belgrade), Péter Eötvös (Budapest), Zoltán Jeney (Budapest), László Vidovszky (Budapest), László Sáry (Budapest)
• 1980s: Mindaugas Urbaitis (Kaunas)
• 1990s: Andrey Smirnov (Moscow), Lepo Sumera (Tallinn)

Events

• 1950s-60s: Warsaw Autumn Festival (Warsaw, *1956), International Seminars on New Music (Smolenice, 1968-70), Exposition of Experimental Music (Brno, 1969-70).
• 1990s: Evenings of New Music (Bratislava, *1990), IFEM and FEM festival (Bratislava, 1992-96), Exposition of New Music (Brno, *1993).
• 2000s: Next festival (Bratislava, *1999), X-Peripheria festival (Budapest, *2000)

Resources

• Unearthing The Music: Creative Sound and Experimentation under European Totalitarianism, a research project led by Out.ra association, 2017 ff. Wiki.

Literature

• Lejaren A Hiller, Report on Contemporary Music, 1961 (Technical Report no. 4), Urbana, Il.: Experimental Music Studio, University of Illinois, 1962.

• Golo Föllmer, Markus Steffens, Melanie Uerlings (eds.), Sound Exchange. Anthology of Experimental Music Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 1950-2010, Saarbrücken: PFAU, 2012, 400 pp, HTML. (English),(multiple languages)

• David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk, Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984 / Dźwięki elektrycznego ciała: Eksperymenty w sztuce i muzyce w Europie Wschodniej 1957–1984, Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2012, 222 pp. (English)/(Polish)

• Daniel Muzyczuk, David Crowley, Michał Libera, "Sounding the Body Electric: A Conversation", ArtMargins, 8 October 2012.

• UMCSEET. Unearthing The Music: Creative Sound And Experimentation under European Totalitarianism 1957-1989, OUT.RA, 2018, 75 pp. Wiki database. Project website. (English)

• Jorge Munnshe, "Electronic Music in Eastern Europe", pt 1: USSR, pt 2: Russia, pt 3: Kazakhstan, Ukraine, pt 4: Hungary, pt 5: Czechoslovakia, pt 6: Poland, East Germany, pt 7, Amazing Sounds, n.d.

See also

Electroacoustic music in East Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Further bibliography. See also Audiovisual tools and instruments, Electronic art music, The International Documentation of Electroacoustic Music and [53].

Multimedia environments

Artists and works

• 1950s-60s: Josef Svoboda's Laterna Magika, Diacran, Polyecran, and Diapolyecran (Prague), Jaroslav Frič's Polyvision and Vertical Cinemascope (Prague), Dvizheniye group's Cybertheatre (Moscow, incl. Lev Nusberg and Francisco Infante), Stano Filko's Cathedral of Humanism (Bratislava), Jerzy Rosołowicz's Neutrdrom (Wroclaw), VAL group's Heliopolis (Bratislava), Jana Želibská's The Possibility of Exposure (Bratislava).
• 1970s: Attila Kováts (Cologne/Budapest)
• 1980s: András Mengyán (Budapest)

See also

Multimedia environments in Czech Republic, Hungary. Further bibliography.

Computer art, Dynamic objects, Cybernetic sculpture, Digital art

Terms

new materials, information aesthetics (1960s, Bense and Moles)

Artists

• 1950s: Nicolas Schöffer (cybernetic sculpture, Hungary/Paris)
• 1960s: Vladimir Bonačić (dynamic objects, Zagreb), Petar Milojević (Belgrade/Toronto)
• 1970s: Edward Ihnatowicz (cybernetic sculpture, Poland/London), Stanisław Dróżdż (concrete poetry, Poland), Zdeněk Sýkora (computer-aided painting, Prague), Jozef Jankovič (computer prints, Bratislava), Juraj Bartusz (computer-aided sculpture, Bratislava), Ryszard Winiarski (paintings and objects, Warsaw), Mihai Jalobeanu (computer graphics, Cluj), Sherban Epuré (Romania/New York City), Zoran Radović (Belgrade/Berlin), Sergej Pavlin (Ljubljana)
• 1980s: Tamás Waliczky (Budapest), Vladan Radovanović (Belgrade)
• 1990s: Zoltán Szegedy-Maszák (Budapest), Jan Pamula (Krakow), Alexandru Patatics (Timisoara)

Events, Networks

• New Tendencies, Zagreb, 1960s-mid 70s

Works

• http://monoskopram.tumblr.com/tagged/computer_art

See also

Computer art in Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria. Further bibliography.

Video

Terms

new art practices (1970s)

Artists

• 1970s: Woody Vasulka (Prague/New York City), Jozef Robakowski (Łódź), Wojciech Bruszewski (Łódź), Antoni Mikołajczyk (Łódź), Ryszard Waśko (Łódź), Nuša and Srečo Dragan (Ljubljana), Miha Vipotnik (Ljubljana), Sanja Iveković (Zagreb), Dalibor Martinis (Zagreb), Goran Trbuljak (Zagreb), Ivan Faktor (Osijek)
• 1980s: Pawel Kwiek (Warsaw), Petr Skala (Prague), Team T group, Izabella Gustowska (Poznań), Yach-Film group, Marina Abramović (Novi Sad/Belgrade/Amsterdam), Raša Todosijević (Belgrade), Krzysztof Wodiczko (Warsaw/New York City/Boston)
• 1990s: Peter Rónai (Bratislava), Cãlin Dan (Bucharest/Amsterdam), Apsolutno group (Novi Sad), Ando Keskküla (Tallinn), Jaan Toomik (Tallinn), Deimantas Narkevicius (Vilnius)

Events

April Meetings festival (Belgrade, 1972-77), Video CD biennial (Ljubljana, 1983-89), WRO Biennale (Wroclaw, since 1989), Sub Voce exhibition (Budapest, 1991), French-Baltic-Nordic Video and New Media Festival (Riga/Vilnius/Tallinn, *1992), Ex Oriente Lux exhibition (Bucharest, 1993), Videomedeja festival (Novi Sad, *1996), New Video, New Europe exhibition (Chicago, 2004), E.U. Positive exhibition (Berlin, 2004), Instant Europe (Udine, 2005)

Networks

• FAVIT, Ljubljana, 1970s
• Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, since 1970s
• Infermental, Berlin and international, 1980s
• ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 1980s
• Video Salon, Prague, late 1980s
• WRO, Wroclaw, 1990s-2000s

Archives

• Transitland archive, 1990s-2000s

Literature

• Rossen Milev, "Video in Osteuropa. Eine Untersuchung des neuen audiovisuellen Phänomens in seinem osteuropäischen Profil", Communications 17:2, 1992, pp 245-274. (German)
• Rossen Milev, Video in Osteuropa, Sofia: Balkanmedia, 1993, 164 pp. Excerpt. Based on author's dissertation written under Siegfried Zielinski. Review: Lovink (Mediamatic). [54] (German)
• Balkan Video Federation, ed. Branislav Dimitrijević, Belgrade: Center for Contemporary Art - Belgrade, 2000, [55] pp. Catalogue. (English)
• Edit András (ed.), Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989–2009, Budapest: Ludwig Museum--Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009, 319 pp. (English)
• Réka Deim, "Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009 (Interview)", ARTMargins, 30 Dec 2009. (English)
• Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989–2009 / Видеоарт Центральной и Восточной Европы после падения Берлинской стены, 1989–2009, Moscow: MediaArtLab, 2010, 137 pp. Catalogue. (English)/(Russian)
• Katarzyna Kosmala (ed.), Sexing the Border: Gender, Art and New Media in Central and Eastern Europe, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, 275 pp. Excerpt. Publisher. (English)

See also

Video in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia (2), Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania. Further bibliography.

New media art, Media culture

Terms

mailing list, discussion forum, media lab (1990s-2000s), net art (1990s), streaming, tactical media, hacker culture, audiovisual performance, digital signal processing (DSP), Pure Data, Max/MSP, vvvvv, SuperCollider, online social network

Artists, writers

• 1990s-2000s: János Sugár (Budapest), Miloš Vojtěchovský (Prague), Keiko Sei (Prague/Brno), Nina Czegledy (Budapest/Toronto), Stephen Kovats (Dessau), Silver (Prague), Alexei Shulgin (Moscow/London), Olia Lialina (Moscow), Inke Arns (Berlin), Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits (Riga), Luchezar Boyadjiev (Sofia), Cãlin Dan (Bucharest), Vuk Ćosić (Ljubljana), Marko Peljhan (Ljubljana), Igor Štromajer (Ljubljana), John Grzinich (Mooste), Ákos Maróy (Budapest/New York City), Petko Dourmana (Sofia), Ivor Diosi (Bratislava/Prague), Guy van Belle (Brussels/Bratislava), Jakub Nepraš (Prague), Rene Beekman (Amsterdam/Sofia), Krassimir Terziev (Sofia)

Events

The Media Are With Us conference (Budapest, 1990), Ostranenie (Dessau, 1993/95/97/99), Orbis Fictus exhibition (Prague, 1994), Hi-tech/Art exhibition and symposium series (Brno, 1994-97), MetaForum conferences (Budapest, 1994-96), Butterfly Effect (Budapest, 1996), Dawn of the Magicians? (Prague, 1996-97), LEAF conference (Liverpool, 1997), Beauty and the East Nettime conference (Ljubljana, 1997), Communication Front (Plovdiv, 1999-2001), Media Forum (Moscow, *2000), Enter Multimediale festival (Prague, 2000/05/07/09), Multiplace festival (Bratislava/Prague/Brno/international, *2002), FM@dia (Prague, 2004), Trans european Picnic (Novi Sad, 2004), Remake exhibition (Brno/Bratislava/Cluj, 2012).

Networks

• Soros Center of Contemporary Arts (loose) network: C3 (Budapest), Ljudmila (Ljubljana), Radio Jeleni (Prague), MediaArtLab (Moscow), mid 1990s-early 2000s
• V2_East / Syndicate, international, mid 1990s-2000
• Nettime, international, mid 1990s-2000s
• Media Research Foundation and C3, Budapest, 1990s
• Arkzin, Zagreb, 1990s
• Terminal Bar and NoD Media Lab, Prague, mid 1990s-early 2000s
• E-lab and RIXC, Riga, mid 1990s-2000s
• Kuda.org, Novi Sad, mid 1990s-2000s

Literature

Ostranenie catalogues

• Ostranenie: 1. Internationales Videofestival am Bauhaus Dessau, 4.-7.11.1993: erschütterte Mythe, neue Realitäten: Osteuropa im Focus der Videokamera / 1. Meždunarodnyj videofestival v Bauchaus Dessau: poshatnuvshiesya myfy, novaya deystvitelnost: vostochnaya Evropa v fokuse videokamery / 1. International Video Festival at the Bauhaus Dessau: Shattered Myths, New Realities: Video Focus on Eastern Europe, eds. Inke Arns and Elisabeth Tharandt, Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 1993, 499 pp. Selected texts: Erjavec, Arns, Sei, Kovats, Kuhn, Milev, Sobetzko, Czegledy, Performances, more. [55] [56] (German),(Russian),(English)
• OSTranenie '95: das internationale Video-Forum an der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / The International Video Forum at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation: Video, Installation, Performance, Workshop: 8.-12. November, eds. Mirja Rosenau, Stephen Kovats, Thomas Munz, and Tina Rehn, Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 1995, 403+14 pp. [57] [58] (German)/(English)
• Ostranenie '97: Dessau 5.-9. Dezember 1997: das internationale Forum elektronischer Medien / the International Electronic Media Forum, eds. Mirja Rosenau and Stephen Kovats, Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 1997, 553 pp. [59] [60] (German)/(English)
• Ost-West Internet: elektronische Medien im Transformationsprozess Ost- und Mitteleuropas / Media Revolution: Electronic Media in the Transformation Process of Eastern and Central Europe, ed. Stephen Kovats, Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus (Edition Bauhaus 6), 1999, 381 pp. ISBN 9783593363653. TOC, TOC. Review: Broeckmann (Leonardo). [61] [62] [63] (German)/(English)
• Ostranenie 93 95 97, ed. Stephen Kovats, Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 1999. CD-ROM, Mac & PC. ISBN 3910022308. Documents the works and impressions of over 400 artists, critics, academics and journalists from 32 countries who participated in the Ostranenie events from 1993 to 1997. Produced by the Studio Electronic Media Interpretation of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in cooperation with C3 - Soros Foundation Budapest. [64] [65]

Nettime/ZK/NK Proceedings, [66]

• ZK Proceedings 95: Net Criticism, eds. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz, Amsterdam, Jan 1996. Published on the occasion of Next 5 Minutes 2. [67] [68] [69] (English)

• ZKP2: A Portable Net Critique, eds. Diana Mc Carty, Pit Schultz, and Geert Lovink, Madrid, Jun 1996. Published on the occasion of 5Cyberconf. [70] [71] [72] [73] (English)

• ZKP3: The Metaforum III Historical Files, eds. Thomas Bass, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarty, and Pit Schulz, Budapest, Oct 1996. Published on the occasion of MetaForum 3. [74] [75] (English)

• ZKP3.2.1, ed. Vuk Cosic, Ljubljana: Ljudmila, Nov 1996. [76] (English)

• (ZKP4) The Beauty and the East. Filtered by Nettime, eds. Pit Schultz, Diana McCarty, Geert Lovink, and Vuk Cosic, Ljubljana, May 1997. Published on the occasion of Beauty and the East. See also "The Piran Nettime Manifesto", [77]. (English)

• Netzkritik. Materialien zur Internet-Debatte, eds. Pit Schultz and Geert Lovink, trans. Bettina Seifried, Florian Rötzer and Thomas Atzert, Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997, 220 pp. [78] (German)

• (ZKP5) ReadMe! ASCII Culture & The Revenge of Knowledge. Filtered by Nettime, eds. Josephine Bosma, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Ted Byfield, Matthew Fuller, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarty, Pit Schultz, Felix Stalder, McKenzie Wark, and Faith Wilding, New York: Autonomedia, Feb 1999, 556 pp. [79] (English)

• (NKP6) Net.art Per Me. Catalogue of the Slovenian Pavillion, Venice: Venice Biennale, 2001. [80] (English)

Syndicate Publication Series

• V2_East Reader: Syndicate Meeting on Documentation and Archives of Media Art in Eastern, Central and South-Eastern Europe, eds. Inke Arns and Andreas Broeckmann, Rotterdam: V2_Organisatie (Syndicate Publication Series 000), Sep 1996. (or see the web documentation on archive.org) (English)
• Deep Europe: The 1996-97 Edition. Selected Texts from the V2_East/Syndicate Mailing List, eds. Inke Arns and Andreas Broeckmann, Berlin: V2 Organisation (Syndicate Publication Series 001), Oct 1997, 143 pp. Published on the occasion of the Ostranenie '97 festival at the Bauhaus Dessau. [81] (English)
• Junction Skopje: The 1997-1998 Edition. Selected Texts from the V2_East/Syndicate Mailing List, ed. Inke Arns, Skopje: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Skopje (Syndicate Publication Series 002), Oct 1998, 197 pp. Published on the occasion of the Junction/Syndicate Meeting, Skopje (2-4 Oct 1998) held during the Skopje Electronic Arts Fair '98: Communing. Announcement. (English)
• Deep_Europe newsletter archive, Hybrid Workspace, Kassel, 1997.

other

• Inke Arns, Andreas Broeckmann, "Small Media Normality for the East", Rewired, Jun 1997, PDF. (English)
  • "Kleine östliche Mediennormalität", diss.sense, Konstanz: University of Konstanz, May 1998. (German)
• Convergence 4(2): "New Media Cultures in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe", ed. Inke Arns, University of Luton Press, Summer 1998. (English)
• Rossitza Daskalova, "The Ground for Net.art in the Former Eastern Block (Central and Eastern Europe)", CIAC's Electronic Magazine 12, Montreal: CIAC, Jan 2001. (English)
• Rossitza Daskalova, "Web Projects", CIAC's Electronic Magazine 12, Montreal: CIAC, Jan 2001. (English)
• Slavomír Krekovič, "New Media Culture. Internet as a Tool of Cultural Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe", in Crossing Boundaries: From Syria to Slovakia, eds. S. Jakelic and J. Varsoke, Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows' Conferences, 2003. (English)
• Dušan Barok, Magdaléna Kobzová (eds.), Save Before It's Gone, Brussels, 2006. Includes interviews with Dirk Paesmans, Maja Kuzmanovic, Darko Fritz, and Andrei Smirnov. (English)
• Miklós Peternák, "The Illusion of the Initiative: An Overview of the Past Twenty Years of Media Art in Central Europe" / Die Illusion der Initiative. Über die Medienkunst der letzten zwanzig Jahre in Ost- und Mitteleuropa", in Gateways: Art and Networked Culture, eds. Sabine Himmelsbach, KUMU Art Museum Tallinn, Goethe Institut Estland and Ralf Eppeneder, Hatje Cantz, 2011. [82] [83] (English)/(German)
• 3/4 27-28: "Remake", ed. Barbora Šedivá, Bratislava: Atrakt Art, 2012. [84] (English)/(Slovak)
• Bogumiła Suwara, Mariusz Pisarski (eds.), Remediation: Crossing Discursive Boundaries: Central European Perspective, Berlin: Peter Lang, and Bratislava: Veda, 2019, 368 pp. (English)

See also

Media labs, Media art festivals, Media art conferences

Media theory

Theorists

Vilém Flusser (Prague/Germany/Brazil)

Events

The Media Are With Us (Budapest, 1990), Prague Media Symposium (Prague, 1991-98), MetaForum (Budapest, 1994-96), Mutamorphosis (Prague, 2007)

Art history, theory, and criticism

Scholars

• Jindřich Chalupecký (1910-1990, worked in Prague)
• Radislav Matuštík (1929-2006, Bratislava)
• Jerzy Ludwiński (1930-2000, Wroclaw/Poznań)
• Tomáš Štrauss (1931-2013, Bratislava/Germany)
• Ješa Denegri (1936, works in Belgrade)
• Krisztina Passuth (1937, Budapest)
• László Beke (1944-2022, Budapest)
• Jiří Valoch (1946, Prague)
• Éva Forgács (1947, Budapest/Pasadena)
• Boris Groys (1947, Moscow/Berlin)
• Bojana Pejić (1948, Belgrade/Berlin)
• Jaroslav Anděl (1949, Prague/New York)
• Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015, Poznań/Warsaw)
• Mária Orišková (1952, Bratislava)
• Branka Stipančić (1953, Zagreb)
• Barbara Borčić (1954, Ljubljana)
• Miško Šuvaković (1954, Belgrade)
• Miloš Vojtěchovský (1955, Prague)
• Miklós Peternák (1956, Budapest)
• Viktor Misiano (1957, Moscow)
• Boris Buden (1958, Zagreb)
• Ekaterina Degot (1958, Moscow/Cologne)
• Marina Gržinić (1958, Ljubljana)
• Georg Schöllhammer (1958, Vienna)
• Igor Zabel (1958-2005, Ljubljana)
• Katarína Rusnáková (1959, Bratislava)
• IRWIN (Ljubljana)
• Suzana Milevska (1961, Skopje)
• Dejan Sretenović (1962, Belgrade)
• Gerald Raunig (1963, Vienna)
• Dmitry Vilensky (1964, St Petersburg)
• David Crowley (1966, London)
• Keiko Sei (Brno/Karlsruhe/Thailand)
• Tomáš Pospiszyl (1967, Prague)
• Ivan Mečl (1968, Prague)
• Reuben Fowkes (1971, Budapest)
• Pavlína Morganová (1974, Prague)
• Emese Kürti (1976, Budapest)
• Łukasz Ronduda (1976, Warsaw)
• Daniel Grúň (1977, Bratislava)
• Mira Keratová (1977, Bratislava)
• Alina Șerban (1978, Bucharest/Ploiești)
• Klara Kemp-Welch (London)
• Beáta Hock (Budapest/Berlin)
• Ivana Bago (1979, Zagreb)
• Katarzyna Cytlak (1979, Buenos Aires/Poznań)
• Lenka Dolanová (1979, Prague/Jihlava)
• Václav Magid (1979, Prague)
• Jan Zálešák (1979, Brno)
• Antonia Majaca (Zagreb/Berlin)
• Karol Sienkiewicz (1980, Warsaw/Vancouver)
• Palo Fabuš (1983, Prague)
• Ján Kralovič (1984, Bratislava)
• Anežka Bartlová (1988, Prague)

Collectives, centres, networks

• Artpool, archive and research centre, Budapest, *1979
• Third Text, journal, *1987
• Springerin, magazine, Vienna, *1995
• Academic Research Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts (VVP AVU), Prague, *1997
• IDEA Arts+Society, magazine, Cluj, *1999
• ARTMargins, journal, *1999
• What, How & for Whom (WHW), curatorial collective, Zagreb, Vienna, Berlin, *1999
• EIPCP, and Transversal, journal, Vienna, *2000
• Prelom, magazine, Belgrade, *2001
• Tranzit, Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, *2002
• Artportal, magazine, Budapest, *2003
• Chto delat, Moscow, St Petersburg, *2003
• Artyčok TV, Prague, *2005
• Translit, magazine, St Petersburg, *2005
• Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny, journal, Prague, *2007
• Former West, int, 2008-2016
• Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory, Ljubljana, *2008
• Artalk, magazine, Brno, *2008
• Revista Arta, magazine, Bucharest, *2010
• Szum, magazine, Warsaw, *2013, Log
• Piotr Piotrowski Center for Research on East-Central European Art, Poznań, *2018
• BLOK, magazine, Warsaw, *2018

Local histories

	Countries avant-garde, modernism, experimental art, media culture, social practice
Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Central and Eastern Europe, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kosova, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

See also

• Central and Eastern Europe Bibliography

Colophon

This section was initiated as part of a project (2009-2011) supported by cOL-mE, International Visegrad Fund, and ERSTE Foundation.

Contributors include Dušan Barok, Guy van Belle, Nina Czegledy, Lenka Dolanová, Eva Krátká, Magdaléna Kobzová, Barbora Šedivá, Joanna Walewska, Darko Fritz, Miro A. Cimerman, Matko Meštrović, Paul Stubbs, Rarita Szakats, Călin Man, Raluca Velisar, Miklós Peternák, János Sugár, Pit Schultz, Diana McCarty, Barbara Huber, Maxigas, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Grzegorz Klaman, František Zachoval, Sølve N.T. Lauvås, a.o.