“What is to be Done? Methodological Challenges to Art Historical Research in Central and Eastern Europe” is an International Conference organized by ICMA, UNAGE in Iasi, RO, in October 12 – 13, 2023.
Conference Program
Thursday, October 12
9.45 – 10.00 – Introduction
10.00 – 12.00
Panel 1: Revisiting socialist art: state-supported institutions, exhibitions, and cultural diplomacy
Tomasz Zaluski – Introduction: In Search of New Agendas. Potential Histories of Art & Modernization Under Socialism
Maja and Reuben Fowkes – Thirty Victorious Years: an exhibition of engaged realist art from ten socialist states that didn’t shake the world
Irina Cărăbaș – Mexican Art and Cultural Diplomacy in Romania
Ljiljana Kolešnik – Yugoslav practices of cultural exchange in visual arts and politics of non-alignment
12.00 – 13.00 – Lunch break
13.00 – 15.00
Panel 2: Revisiting socialist art: artists’ networks and exhibition histories
Pavlína Morganová – Introduction – The Society of Exhibition under Socialism: what we learnt and what is there to discover in exhibition histories
Mădălina Brașoveanu – State-supported subversion or acts of deterritorialization? How to describe “the alternative” in the art exhibitions from the 1980s in Romania?
Joanna Matuszak – The Nostalgic Lens: Exhibiting Art of the Global East in the West after 1989
Daniel Grúň – From (An)Archival to Decolonial: Research into Politics of Memory in Contemporary Art
15.00 – 15.30 – Coffee break
15.30 – 16.30
Keynote lecture
Edit András – Procrustean Bed or Freudian Couch. Which is the better fit for writing East-Central European Art History?
Friday, October 13
9.00 – 10.00 – Keynote lecture
Jérôme Bazin – How to exhibit socialist realism and (post-)modernism together?
10.00 – 10. 15 – Coffee break
10.15 – 12.15
Panel 3: Social art history and Marxism in a socialist and post-socialist context.
Cristian Nae – Introduction: Marxism and Socialism: An Unavoidable Connection?
Andrea Bátorova – Art history and its narratives in former Czechoslovakia before and after 1989
Jitka Šosová – Revisiting socialist art history: the intention and reality of post-socialist turn
Emese Kürti – The Anarchist and the Alchemist. Tamás Szentjóby’s (dis)position in Marxism
12.15 – 13.30 – Lunch break
13.30 – 15.30
Panel 4: Critical art history in Eastern Europe: race and visual culture
Zsuzsa László – Introduction: The Regional Origins of Situated and Critical Art History: What We Can Learn from it Today
Jakub Banasiak – Re-enchanting 1989. How to get beyond Critical Art History and Touch the Magic of the Postcommunist Transformation?
Alexei Markin – Images of black people in Soviet Union
Uschi Klein – Photography during Romania’s communist period: a missed opportunity or just a past time?
15.30 – 16.00 – Coffee break
16.00 – 18.00
Panel 5: Critical art history in Eastern Europe: gender, labor, and decoloniality
Karolina Wilczyńska – Radical Care as Practice of Female Artists in East-Central Europe after 1989
Karolina Majewska Güde – Integrating Artistic Research in Art History: Exploring Artistic Labor under Socialism from a Transgenerational Feminist Perspective
Daryna Skrynnyk-Myska – Decolonization in the optics of Ukrainian socio-critical art after the full-scale invasion of Russia
Radek Przedpełski – Post-artistic Geomedia. Reclaiming Jerzy Ludwiński’s Environmental Art History
Location: UNAGE, Studio Hall, Costache Negruzzi 7-9, Iasi (Google Maps)
Organized by: ICMA – The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in the Arts, UNAGE, Iasi, Romania
In collaboration with: Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, KEMKI-Central European Research Institute for Art History, Budapest and the University of Lodz
The conference is funded by CNFIS (The National Council for Financing Higher Education in Romania) through a Fund for Institutional Development, CNFIS-FDI-2023-F-0142.
