György Galántai, Julia Klaniczay (eds.): Artpool: The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (2013)

“How could an arts initiative, called Artpool, in the 1970s, in a small corner of the world, in East-Central Europe, become a significant node, a reference point in a worldwide – initially analogue (postal) then digital (online) – network?

How has it been able to validly speak out and address issues and people again and again in the ‘storms’ of history and scientific-technological progress, for more than four decades now?

Using authentic documents, numerous photographs and illustrations Artpool’s chronological volume containing a brief presentation of events and exhibitions, a detailed bibliography and references follows the history of the Artpool art project – launched more than forty years ago by fine artist György Galántai and later jointly realized with Júlia Klaniczay – from the exhibitions of the Chapel Studio active in Balatonboglár between 1970 and 1973, through the establishment of the Artpool archive in 1979 to the opening of the Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest in 1992 and its becoming an esteemed research facility by the 2010s.

Hundreds of artists from all corners of the world sent their works to the international Artpool exhibitions, which are built on the “Active Archive” concept and explore themes inspired by our perpetually changing world, in the same way as György Galántai and Artpool also participated in the events organized in the various other nodes of the “Eternal Network”.

The information accumulated in Artpool over the forty years, the collections that were built up, and the research work based on them form the tissue of today’s institute, which beyond the developments in the art scene also informs us about the eventful forty or so years during which Artpool came into being and has continued to operate. This period can be best described by the following keywords: communism, iron curtain, secret files, tapping telephone wires, bans, “the happiest barrack”, samizdat publications, counterculture, change of the system, democratic transition, freedom of the press and speech, independent non-profit initiatives, European Union, strengthening nationalism and conservatism; 20th century, millennium, 21st century; technological and communication explosion.”

Foreword by Kristine Stiles
Publisher Artpool, Budapest, 2013
ISBN 9630872250, 9789630872256
535 pages

Reviews
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (50 MB, updated on 2019-10-29)
Flash

Marina Gržinić: Fiction Reconstructed: Eastern Europe, Post-Socialism and the Retro-Avantgarde (1997/2000)

“In this book, my point of departure is a difference between Eastern and Western Europe that I try to conceptualize philosophically, insisting on a difference – a critical difference within and not a special classification method marking the process of grounding differences, such as apartheid, as Trinh T. Minh-ha has suggested. The question of who is allowed to write about the history of art, culture and politics in the area once known as Eastern Europe must be posed alongside questions of how and when those events are marked.

The largest part of the book focuses on selected artistic projects and concepts by Mladen Stilinovic (Zagreb), Kasimir Malevich (Belgrade, 1986), and the group Irwin (NSK) (Ljubljana), which were developed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and continue to function, develop, and mutate. These projects are read via dialectic positioning (i.e., thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis) within not only countries of the former Yugoslavia, but also Eastern Europe in general. Finally, they are linked with the notion of ‘Retro-Avant-garde,’ or, as I label it, the new ‘ism’ of the East.” (from the Introduction)

First published in Slovenian as Rekonstruirana fikcija, Ljubljana, 1997.

Edited by Springerin
Publisher edition selene, Vienna, 2000
ISBN 3852661536, 9783852661537
230 pages
via Neda Genova

Review: Franco Torriani (c2005).

WorldCat

PDF (15 MB, no OCR)
PDF (8 MB, OCR’d, from MoW, added 2015-12-4)

Christian Höller (ed.): L’Internationale: Post-War Avant-Gardes Between 1957 and 1986 (2012/2015)

“L’Internationale is a trans-institutional network of five major European museums and artists’ archives (Moderna galerija Ljubljana; Július Koller Society Bratislava/Vienna, MACBA Barcelona, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, M HKA Antwerp).

Taking as its starting point these five museums and their respective collections, L’Internationale—Post-War Avant-Gardes Between 1957 and 1986 presents a wide range of case studies, historiographical and theoretical essays that reconsider a period in art history that, according to the established canon, has been almost exclusively dominated by Western Europe and North America. In questioning this canon the publication works to acknowledge the existence of and to explore a dispersed, multi-polar, and at times interconnected neo-avant-gardist field that existed (long) before it became common to think according to frameworks of globalization or trans-nationalism. In the process, this collection of compelling contributions puts many a central question on the table: To what extent has a common international language existed in art over these three decades, while at the same time local terminologies and approaches might have differed significantly? How were such dispersed forms of knowledge and experience situated in their respective social contexts? What parallels of artistic method appeared across different regions, even continents? Finally, can such local narratives be brought together in a new “rhizomatic” way, one that works to reshape our ideas of trans-localism and internationalism?”

With essays by Inke Arns, Zdenka Badovinac, Bart de Baere, Charles Esche, Daniel Grúň, Christian Höller, Bartomeu Mari, Viktor Misiano, Piotr Piotrowski, Georg Schöllhammer, Steven ten Thije, and others.

First published in print by JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2012
eBook Publisher L’Internationale Online, 2015
416 pages

Review: Natalia Smolianskaïa (Critique d’art, 2013).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (11 MB)
EPUB (12 MB)