The Handbook of Courage: Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, censorship, central europe, culture, dissent, east-central europe, eastern europe, politics, protest, southeastern europe, surveillance, underground
“The Courage Handbook ushers its reader into the world of the compellingly rich heritage of cultural opposition in Eastern Europe. It is intended primarily to further a subtle understanding of the complex and multifaceted nature of cultural opposition and its legacy from the perspective of the various collections held in public institutions or by private individuals across the region.
Through its focus on material heritage, the handbook provides new perspectives on the history of dissent and cultural non-conformism in the former socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe.
The volume is comprised of contributions by over 60 authors from a range of different academic and national backgrounds who share their insights into the topic. It offers focused discussions from comparative and transnational perspectives of the key themes and prevailing forms of opposition in the region, including non-conformist art, youth sub-cultures, intellectual dissent, religious groups, underground rock, avantgarde theater, exile, traditionalism, ethnic revivalism, censorship, and surveillance.”
Edited by Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Sándor Horváth
Publisher Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2018
ISBN 9789634161424, 9634161421
634 pages
Project website
Publisher
WorldCat
Katalin Cseh-Varga, Adam Czirak (eds.): Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere: Event-based Art in Late Socialist Europe (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · art history, censorship, communism, east-central europe, eastern europe, event, happening, mail art, nudity, performance, performance art, protest, public sphere, sexuality, socialism, southeastern europe, theatre, underground
“This is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances.
The artistic networks of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are discussed with a particular focus on the discourses that shaped artistic practice at the time, drawing on the methods of Performance Studies and Media Studies as well as more familiar reference points from art history and area studies.”
Publisher Routledge, New York & London, 2018
ISBN 9781138723276, 1138723274
xii+263 pages
Interview with editors (ARTMargins, 2014)
Comment (0)Hans Haacke: Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, censorship, environment, information, institutional critique, systems art, systems theory, time
“Hans Haacke’s art articulates the interdependence of multiple elements. An artwork is not merely an object but is also its context—the economic, social, and political conditions of the art world and the world at large. Among his best-known works are MoMA-Poll (1970), which polled museumgoers on their opinions about Nelson Rockefeller and the Nixon administration’s Indochina policy; Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile (1969), which canvassed visitors to the Howard Wise Gallery in Manhattan; and the famously canceled 1971 solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which was meant to display, among other things, works on two New York real estate empires.
This volume collects writings by Haacke that explain and document his practice. The texts, some of which have never before been published, run from straightforward descriptions to wide-ranging reflections and full-throated polemics. They include correspondence with MoMA and the Guggenheim and a letter refusing to represent the United States at the 1969 São Paulo Biennial; the title piece, “Working Conditions,” which discusses corporate influence on the art world; Haacke’s thinking about “real-time social systems”; and texts written for museum catalogs on various artworks, including GERMANIA, in the German Pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennial; DER BEVÖLKERUNG (To the Population) of 2000 at the Berlin Reichstag; Mixed Messages, an exhibition of objects from the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001); and Gift Horse, unveiled on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2015.”
Edited and with an Introduction by Alexander Alberro
Publisher MIT Press, 2016
Writing Art series
ISBN 9780262034838, 0262034832
lii+290 pages
Review: Greg Lindquist (Brooklyn Rail, 2016), Sophie Cras (Critique d’art, 2016, FR), Chelsea Weathers (CAA Reviews, 2018).
PDF (7 MB, updated on 2023-2-14)
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