Izabel Galliera: Socially Engaged Art After Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (2017)

“Reclaiming public life from the ideologies of both communist regimes and neoliberalism, their projects have harnessed the politically subversive potential of social relations based on trust, reciprocity and solidarity. Drawing on archival material and exclusive interviews, in this book Izabel Galliera traces the development of socially engaged art from the early 1990s to the present in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. She demonstrates that, in the early 1990s, projects were primarily created for exhibitions organized and funded by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art. In the early 2000s, prior to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania entering into the European Union, EU institutions likewise funded socially-conscious public art in the region. Today, socially engaged art is characterised by the proliferation of independent and often self-funded artists’ initiatives in cities such as Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest.

Focusing on the relationships between art, social capital and civil society, Galliera employs sociological and political theories to reveal that, while social capital is generally considered a mechanism of exclusion in the West, in post-socialist contexts it has been leveraged by artists and curators as a vital means of communication and action.”

Publisher I.B. Tauris, London/New York, 2017
ISBN 9781784537135, 1784537136
xx+361 pages

Review: Denisa Tomkova (ARTMargins, 2018).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (41 MB)
EPUB (12 MB)

Keiko Sei (ed.): Von der Bürokratie zur Telekratie. Rumänien im Fernsehen. Ein Symposion aus Budapest (1990) [German]

The publication resulting from the symposium The Media Are With Us!: The Role of Television in the Romanian Revolution which took place at Mücsarnok, Budapest, on 6-7 April 1990.

Contributions by Paolino Accolla, László Beke, Magda Cârneci, Mihaela Cristea, Serge Daney, Jean-Paul Fargier, Vilém Flusser, Ingo Günther, Veijo Hietala, Ari Honka-Hallila, Erkki Huhtamo, Derrick de Kerckhove, Richard Kriesche, Geert Lovink, Margaret Morse, Morgan Russel, Jeffrey Shaw, Tjebbe van Tijen, Paul Virilio, and Peter Weibel.

Translated by Almuth Carstens, Birger Ollrogge and Monika Rauschenbach
Publisher Merve, Berlin, 1990
Internationaler Merve-Diskurs series, 157
ISBN 3883960772, 9783883960777
165 pages
via Neda Genova

Review: Eveline Lubbers (Mediamatic, 1991).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (8 MB)

See also video documentary from the event.

Kinema Ikon catalogue (2005) [English/Romanian]

Kinema Ikon is the oldest active experimental art group in Romania. Founded in 1970 as a multimedia atelier at the art school in Arad it is currently hosted by the Arad’s History Museum and Art Museum. Coming from the various fields (art, literature, architecture, photography, music, programming), its members created in over four decades an astonishing variety of works ranging from experimental film, video art, through hypermedia to interactive installations.

The catalogue accompanied the Kinema Ikon retrospective exhibition held at the MNAC, Bucharest in October-December 2005, curated by Raluca Velisar and Stefan Tiron. The first volume covers the experimental films and videos produced by the group, the second volume features hypermedia works, and the third volume is dedicated to Intermedia magazine published since 1994.

Editor Kinema Ikon
Concept and design by Calin Man
Publisher MNAC – The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Museum Arad; Centrul Cultural Judetean Arad
102 / 104 / 48 pages

authors
Kinema Ikon on the Monoskop wiki

PDF (Volume 1)
PDF (Volume 2)
PDF (Volume 3)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 1)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 2)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 3)