CFP: SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art

CALL FOR PAPERS
Proposals for papers and presentations are invited from art historians, 
curators and artists that examine the art and visual culture of Eastern 
Europe in both historical and contemporary contexts. The SocialEast 
Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art will be held at 
the Courtauld Institute of Art on 23 October 2010.

The SocialEast Seminar on *Networks and Sociability in East European Art 
*provides a forum for the presentation of new research into practices of 
informal exchange and patterns of alternative communication between 
experimental artists in the Eastern Bloc. This seminar explores the ways 
in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national 
and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic 
collaboration that flew in the face of an official culture of 
isolationism, censorship and political control. It focuses on processes 
of artistic exchange that took shape at a grass-roots level, inventive 
strategies to surmount bureaucratic obstacles, and the specific meaning 
of ‘networking’ in the context of communist Eastern Europe. The seminar 
also considers the degree to which state-sponsored artistic events, held 
for Cold War propaganda reasons, could become spaces for unofficial 
exchange, the roles available to exiled artists and intellectuals in 
facilitating international communication, collaboration and the 
circulation of materials, as well as the contribution of curators and 
intellectuals from the far side of the Iron Curtain in creating informal 
networks.

The SocialEast Forum <http://www.socialeast.org> is a platform for 
innovative, transnational research on the art and visual culture of 
Eastern Europe initiated by Dr. Reuben Fowkes in 2006. Based on active 
collaboration with institutes of art history across Europe and the 
involvement of prominent academics, curators and artists, SocialEast has 
become an internationally-recognised generator of pioneering research 
into the art history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. This second 
SocialEast Seminar at the Courtauld Institute follows on from the 
SocialEast Seminar on Art and Espionage held in February 2009 and 
co-organised with Dr. Sarah Wilson. Previous SocialEast Seminars have 
dealt with issues of Foreign Experience, Art and Ideology, Art and 
Documentary, Art and Revolution, Art and Memory, Art and Empire and the 
Legacy of 1968 and were held at Manchester Art Gallery, the Ludwig 
Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest, Krakow University, and Mimara 
Museum Zagreb.

The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art 
is organised in collaboration with Dr. Klara Kemp-Welch of the Courtauld 
Institute as part of a three year Leverhulme Trust funded project 
entitled Festivals and Friendships: Networking the Soviet ‘Bloc’, 
examining unofficial exchange between artists from East-Central Europe 
and former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s. The seminar is supported 
by the Leverhulme Trust and the Courtauld Institute Research Forum.

To propose a paper for the SocialEast Seminar on Networks and 
Sociability in East European Art, please send a 200 word proposal and 
biographical note to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

The deadline for submitting a proposal is *Monday 15 March 2010*.



_______________________________________________
Shera mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.oakland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shera