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  • CFP: Society of Architectural Historians 2017 Annual International Conference

    CFP: Society of Architectural Historians 2017 Annual International Conference
    www.sah.org/2017/cfp
    SAH 2017 Annual International Conference
    Glasgow, Scotland, June 7-11

    The Society of Architectural Historians is now accepting abstracts for its 70th Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, June 7–11. Please submit an abstract no later than June 6, 2016, to one of the 33 thematic sessions, the Graduate Student Lightning Talks or the open sessions. The thematic sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of SAH chapters and partner organizations.

    Thematic sessions and Graduate Student Lightning Talks are listed below. Please note that those submitting papers for the Graduate Student Lightning Talks must be graduate students at the time the talk is being delivered (June 7–11, 2017). Open sessions are available for those whose research does not match any of the themed sessions. Instructions and deadlines for submitting to themed sessions and open sessions are the same.

    Submission Guidelines:

    Abstracts must be under 300 words.
    The title cannot exceed 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation.
    Abstracts and titles must follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
    Only one abstract per conference by author or co-author may be submitted.
    A maximum of two (2) authors per abstract will be accepted.

    LIST OF PAPER SESSIONS
    ‘A Narrow Place’: Architecture and the Scottish Diaspora
    Architectural Ghosts
    Architecture and Carbon
    Architecture and Immigration in the Twentieth Century
    Chinese Architecture and Gardens in a Global Context
    City Models: Making and Remaking Urban Space
    Colour and Light in Venetian Architecture
    Culture, Leisure and the Post-War City: Renewal and Identity
    Evidence and Narrative in Architectural History
    Graduate Student Lightning Talks
    Heritage and History in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Landscape and Garden Exchanges between Scotland and America
    Mass Housing ‘Elsewhere’
    Medieval Vernacular Architecture
    Mediterranean Cities in Transition
    National, International: Counterculture as a Global Enterprise
    Natural Disasters and the Rebuilding of Cities
    On Style
    Penetrable Walls: Architecture at the Edges of the Roman Empire
    Piranesi at 300
    Preserving and Repurposing Social Housing: Pitfalls and Promises
    Publicly Postmo / dern: Government Agency and 1980s Architecture
    Questions of Scale: Micro-architecture in the Global Middle Ages
    Reading the Walls: From Tombstones to Public Screens
    Reinserting Latin America in the History of Modernism: 1965–1990
    Reopening the Open Plan
    Rethinking Medieval Rome: Architecture and Urbanism
    Spaces of Displacement
    The Architecture of Ancient Spectacle
    The Architecture of Coal and Other Energies
    The Global and the Local in Vernacular Architecture Studies
    The Poetics of Roman Architecture
    The Politics of Memory, Territory, and Heritage in Iraq and Syria
    The Tenement: Collective City Dwelling Before Modernism

  • CFP: Art and Social Practice in Eastern Europe after Socialism

    CFP: Art and Social Practice in Eastern Europe after Socialism

    We are pleased to announce call for paper proposals for the panel “Art and Social Practice in Eastern Europe after Socialism”, which will be a part of the 2016 Conference of the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC). The conference will take place on 27–30 OCT. 2016 UQÀM, Montréal http://www.uaac-aauc.org/montreal-2016

    The deadline for paper proposals is June 24, 2016

    After the collapse of Communism in 1989, former Soviet-bloc countries faced the urge to reintegrate art practice into the international art scene in order to revive national traditions as well as to reassess the Communist past. Nowadays, artists explore art as social practice, commenting on political and post-colonial activism, gender, and environmental issues, and addressing their concerns to a global audience. Eastern European artists deliberately or implicitly reframe the historical experience of former Socialist societies that had been developed under the Marxist ideas of a non-hierarchical society, social order in culture, and politically engaged art. How is the concept of socially significant, class-specific art now implemented and/or contested by artists and audience? We encourage scholars and art practitioners to reflect on how Socialist cultures influenced the contemporary cultural exchange. We invite prospective panelists to link the contemporary social agenda in art to the Socialist ideological background and intellectual legacy of post- Socialist countries. The organizers expect to bring together diverse approaches to the Socialist/social agenda of the past and its influence on visual culture of post-Socialist societies in a global perspective.

    Please, submit your paper proposals (150 words) and short one-page bios/CV to the session chairs:
    Hanna Chuchvaha, Sessional Instructor/Independent scholar, University of Alberta
    Maria Silina, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Université du Québec à Montréal

  • CFP: REPRESENTING ART HISTORY IN THE BALTIC COUNTRIES: EXPERIENCES AND PROSPECTS

    CFP: REPRESENTING ART HISTORY IN THE BALTIC COUNTRIES: EXPERIENCES AND PROSPECTS
    3rd Conference of Baltic Art Historians

    Art History Department of the Art Academy of Latvia
    and the Latvian National Museum of Art
    Riga, 6–8 October 2016

    The Art History Department of the Art Academy of Latvia in collaboration with the Institute of Art History of the same institution and the Latvian National Museum of Art restarts the series of conferences of Baltic art historians, initiated by two meetings of the previous years – The Geographies of Art History in the Baltic Region in 2009, hosted by the Estonian Academy of Art together with the Estonian Association of Art Historians in Tallinn, and (Un)blocked Memory: Writing Art History in Baltic Countries in 2011, co-organized by the Vytautas Magnus University and the Vilnius Academy of Arts in Kaunas.

    The agenda of art historians in the three countries during the five years since the last of these events has seen certain changes. New volumes of national art histories are published and being prepared, new opportunities of the digital era are tested to learn the benefits and shortcomings of virtual reconstructions and internet-based resources. New museum spaces for art are being created in theory and practice. Already these and many other steps made give ground for critical self-reflection and discussion, going back from the present developments and future prospects to the lessons of the past and vice versa. Much more important transformations, however, have taken place during twenty-five years since the re-establishment of Baltic independence. In 2001, after the first decade of this span of time, Latvian art historian Eduards Kļaviņš wrote that our art history “is still climbing out of the ruins of the previous methodological barracks, trying both to preserve something of the old and at the same time to find better materials and technologies for more solid buildings”. What and how has been built ever since on this post-socialist construction site? Or perhaps the site with its ruins has been also used as a shipyard for building vessels able to navigate in unexplored waters? If so where have these journeys lead and how have they changed the pre-existing maps of art history? How do the active fleets function and how and the ‘maritime museums’ or ‘cemeteries of ships’ look like?

    Swedish art historian Dan Karlholm, in his book Art of Illusion: The Representation of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Beyond (Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2004; 2nd ed. 2006), extended “the concept of historiography to include not just textual or institutional endeavours, but a host of different images as well”, dealing with “practices of representing art history in various media”. The organizers hope that the perspective of this extended critical historiography can provide a broader look at art history as a practice and product, a process and its result at the same time.

    Suggested topics and their combinations include (but are not limited to):
    • Construction site on the ruins or a shipyard?: Art history as a discipline during twenty-five years of Baltic independence
    • The changing discourse and idiomatic varieties: Baltic art history(-ies) since the inception of the discipline
    • Mapping space and time: Areas and segments of the regional art histories, their state of research and representation
    • Parallel efforts towards an integrated art history: Established elements, ‘new’ components and remaining boundaries
    • Written, published, illustrated, collected, exhibited, musealised, digitalised: The media-based aspect of art history throughout times
    • Identity, visibility and interaction: Baltic art history(-ies) in the interdisciplinary and international cultural context

    Both general surveys and case studies focused on contemporary or historical issues are welcome. Contributions are expected from Baltic and foreign scholars including graduate / PhD students researching the visual arts, architecture, design and related areas.

    Working language of the conference is English. Presentations should be 20 minutes long. Abstracts (max. 2500 characters incl. spaces / 400 words) with a short CV should be sent to Kristiāna Ābele by 15 May 2016. Accepted papers will be notified by 1 June 2016.

    Participation in the conference is free of charge. Organizers will provide participants with accommodation in Riga. Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

    All recipients and readers of this CFP are invited to share it to all possibly interested colleagues both in the Baltic States and abroad.

    Academic board
    Kristiāna Ābele (Art Academy of Latvia – Institute of Art History)
    Ginta Gerharde-Upeniece (Latvian National Museum of Art)
    Silvija Grosa (Art Academy of Latvia – Art History Department)
    Giedrė Jankevičiūtė (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute)
    Dalia Klajumienė (Vilnius Academy of Arts – Institute of Art Research)
    Krista Kodres (Estonian Academy of Arts – Institute of Art History)
    Tiina-Mall Kreem (Art Museum of Estonia)

    Convenors
    Silvija Grosa (project director), Kristiāna Ābele and Ginta Gerharde-Upeniece

    Information
    Silvija Grosa, Kristiana Abele

    The conference is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation (Latvia), the State Research Programme Letonika (Latvia), the Art Academy of Latvia and the Latvian National Museum of Art.

  • CFP: 10th Anniversary of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Call for Papers for a Themed Issue on “Women in Cinema”

    CFP: 10th Anniversary of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Call for Papers for a Themed Issue on “Women in Cinema”
    Deadline 1 April 2016

    Whilst we welcome regular submissions of individual papers for publication in volume 10 (2016), we wish to mark our birthday with a themed issue on “Women in Cinema”. The theme appears topical with the rise of the number of high-profile filmmakers and producers in recent years, but also numerous historical perspectives that offer themselves for investigation under this angle. Papers on actresses, female costume designers, women filmmakers and producers – past or present, are welcome. Submissions for the cluster should reach us by 1 April 2016.

    A style sheet and instructions for submission can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rrsc20&page=instructions#.Vcd2irVKawM

    Please send submissions to Birgit Beumers

    SRSC operates a rigid, anonymous double peer review system, and is indexed by Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, International Index to Film Periodicals, British Humanities Index and Film & Television Literature Index. The number of electronic library subscriptions is on the rise. All this is thanks to a wonderful team of co-editors, the fabulous support of the editorial and advisory boards, and an amazing production team at Taylor&Francis.

    ASEEES (formerly AAASS) members can claim a 30% discount on personal subscriptions to the journal. For further details follow this link and scroll to the bottom of the page: http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrsc20#.Vcd20LVKawM

    Birgit Beumers, editor SRSC

  • CFP: Nostalgia

    CFP: Nostalgia

    Birkbeck College, University of London
    Deadline: Apr 20, 2016

    The Dandelion editors seek submissions on the theme of NOSTALGIA for their forthcoming issue.

    Nostalgia is a ubiquitous presence in contemporary culture. Images and fantasies of the past permeate cultural and political discourses: from the mediated recycling of retro culture and popular history, to nostalgia as a method of political renewal (for example, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again!’ and Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ‘45).

    Nostalgia is readily apparent in the current popularity of culture that celebrates our national past, while self-styled ‘progressive’ cultural institutions are increasingly turning to the past in order to better understand the contemporary: for instance, the reproduction of Richard Hamilton’s installations ‘Man, Machine and Motion’ (1955) and ‘an Exhibit’ (1957) at the ICA, London, in 2014. As the RetroDada manifesto declares ‘why shouldn’t a .gif run backwards as well as forwards?’

    To this end we ask: why the resurgence of nostalgia? Is it merely a displacement strategy for a world convulsed by social, political, economic, and environmental crisis, or is there something salvageable in its longing for a prior wholeness, in its desire to seek out a moment when the new was still possible? Should nostalgia be condemned as an ethical and aesthetic failure? Is nostalgia a hindrance to making it new; a symptom of lateness, of a loss of the future? Or can nostalgia be a productive force that provides, both for the self and society, insights into our present?

    This journal invites submissions that address the theme of nostalgia across the spectrum of Arts and Humanities research.

    Topics may include, but are not limited to:

    • Genealogies of nostalgia: from its earliest expositions in medical science through its Romantic and now latest twenty-first century phase • Homesickness, exile and diaspora • Nostalgia, nationalism and the nation • Postcolonial nostalgia
    • Institutionalised nostalgia: heritage, memorials and/or museums • Life writing and memoirs • The restaging of exhibitions and past live art events • Nostalgia and film: remakes, mediating history through dramatic reconstruction, retro-soundtracks • Nostalgia and digital technologies • Genres of nostalgia: ranging from the Romantics to the return of the long novel and to science-fiction, steampunk, and retro-futurism • Nostalgia for the avant-garde and avant-garde nostalgia • Communist and fascist nostalgia: utopia • Temporalities of nostalgia: late time and belatedness • Scenes of nostalgia: the ruin, the country house, reconciliation with nature

    We welcome short articles of 3000-5000 words, long articles of 5000-8000 words and critical reviews of books, film, and exhibitions. We also strongly encourage submissions of artwork including visual art; creative writing; podcasts and video footage (up to 10 minutes). We would be happy to discuss ideas for submissions with interested authors prior to the submissions deadline.

    Please send all submissions to mail@dandelionjournal.org by 20th April

    Please also include a 50-word author biography and a 200-300-word abstract alongside your submission. All referencing and style is required in full MHRA format as a condition of publication and submitted articles should be academically rigorous and ready for immediate publication. Complete instructions for submissions can be found at www.dandelionjournal.org under ‘About’.

  • CFP: Interdisciplinary conference: Hungary 1956 – 2016 – Reverberations of a Revolution

    CFP: Interdisciplinary conference: Hungary 1956 – 2016 – Reverberations of a Revolution

    60 years ago a student demonstration in pursuit of liberty and democratic reforms in Hungary started a chain of events that turned into a nationwide revolt against the Soviet policies and control embodied in the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic. The uprising that caught the attention and imagination of the world has been widely considered as the first major threat to Soviet control in Central Europe. Although the revolution failed at the time, its reverberations have been felt ever since, particularly in what is now considered the democratic transition in Central Europe, and the lives of diaspora communities around the world.

    This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together scholars from any discipline in the social sciences, humanities and fine arts, who are interested in exploring the general theme of Hungary 60 years after the revolution. The organizers welcome academic papers that address social, political, cultural, historical and economic issues in contemporary Hungary, in particular those that investigate how such issues have been shaped or affected by the realities and/or the collective memory of the 1956 revolution.

    Questions to consider are many; some of the suggested topics of inquiry include:

    • education and educational reform(s)
    • women and politics, the role of women in Hungarian society
    • gender and cultural politics
    • NGOs, civil society and democratization
    • minority issues, policies and politics of diversity - national identity, identity and culture, religious identity
    • national identity and the politics of memory and commemoration
    • refugee and diaspora memories
    • citizenship and identity - architecture, space and memory, remembering through space
    • street names and their meaning in national collective memory
    • Art and remembering
    • Hungarian media today, media and society, social media and civic engagement
    • political engagement of youth
    • sports
    • crime and the criminal justice system
    • international relations and Hungary’s place in the world (perceived and actual)

    We encourage presentations from all disciplines and fields of scholarship, including History, Political Science, Literature, Economics, Pedagogy, Art History, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, etc. We are inviting submissions for both individual papers and pre-constituted panels for presentations. Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words in length. In addition, please include a short biographical note (approximately 100 words). Presentations should be no more than 20 min in length. Selected papers will have the opportunity to be published. We welcome submissions from graduate students and early career scholars.

    Please note that travel and accommodation subsidies are available to participants of this conference. Please notify us of your intention to request a travel subsidy in your submission.

    Deadline for abstracts: May 1st, 2016
    Notification of acceptance: on or around June 1st, 2016

    Send in your submissions to: hungaryconference@gmail.com

    The conference will take place at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada on October 27-28, 2016. Please note the language of the conference is English and we ask that you submit your abstract and bio in English.

  • CFP: Transcultural Icons of East Central Europe

    CFP World Literature Studies

    “Transcultural Icons of East Central Europe” – a special issue of World Literature Studies (a peer-reviewed journal published by the Slovak Academy of Sciences)[i], with guest editors Matteo Colombi, Christine Gölz, Beáta Hock, and Stephan Krause

    To date, “cultural icons” have frequently been understood as representations of collective identities that tend to reify, first and foremost, discourses around national self-perception and belonging. The interdisciplinary concept of cultural icons is borrowed from (cultural) semiotics, more particularly, from North American cultural studies, where the concept has also been theorized and heuristically tested.[ii] It is usually the protagonists of national history, the fictional or fictionalized heroes and heroines of national literature or films with relevance for the politics of memory, or the protagonists of narrative genres in audiovisual and digital media that are captured by the term and whose capacity to shape identities is thus foregrounded. Alongside such figures are places and their narratives, as well as particular objects of material culture, which may also stand in for a nation and become interpreted—in academic discourses and beyond—as cultural icons.

    Our Call for Papers, however, solicits case studies for which these sorts of “national” cultural icons offer merely one possible starting point. The editors are interested in nationally canonized “icons” for the degree to which these icons also develop transcultural trajectories, or in other words, whether these icons leave their historical, sociocultural, and genre contexts of origin and witness an afterlife in fictional literature and other narrative media (such as film, graphic novels, theater, opera, radio dramas, urban legends, lyrics, etc.). This “flux/mobility” and “afterlife” may very well drift beyond original national lodgings, provided such an “origin” ever really existed. Last but not least, we also want to inquire into the untold stories of officialy sanctioned icons, ones that circulate in the counter- or subcultural practices of the respective national contexts.

    Our special issue has taken the historical region of East Central Europe as its geographical focus. Due to East Central Europe’s multilingual character, its many zones of ethnic interference, and its history of diverse and often conflict-ridden exchanges between nations and cultures that extend beyond political borders, this region lends itself particularly well to the kind of investigation we seek. These structural characteristics/conditions also have a heavy impact—and this is our working hypothesis—on the emergence, perpetuation, and transposition of cultural icons, which hold identification potential for both smaller and larger communities. For this special issue we therefore solicit articles with a focus on icons that are of narrative or visual relevance for discursive communities in East Central Europe and that take literature as their central medium or the medium from which and through which “re-writings” originate and traverse. The examined icons, however, do not need to originate in the region, as transculturality results not only from local icons “going international” but also from the various forms of importing, contaminating or subverting icons from another culture or from a global/ized culture. Contributions with a comparative approach or with an area of application that goes beyond individual countries are very welcome.

    The genesis of cultural icons of East Central Europe and the reception, continuity, reinterpretation, and reappropriation of these icons in and for different contexts, as well as their media (or cultural) transcoding, in short, the mobility/flux of icons, up to the current day, is expected to be discussed with a view to at least one of the following aspects:

    a) Transculturality in polyethnic/multinational/multilingual contexts;

    b) Transculturality through historical change;

    c) Transculturality between “high” and “low” and in various media;

    d) Cultural icons and their linguistic form/ation.

    The guest editor of this special issue is the BMBF-funded group project “Cultural Icons of East Central Europe—The Afterlife of Romanticism” at the Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe (Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, GWZO), an independent research institute affiliated with Leipzig University http://research.uni-leipzig.de/gwzo/.

    Please submit a 500-word abstract (English or German, also indicating the proposed language of the full manuscript) and a brief biography (max. 5 publications) in a single Word document to: kultik.ome@uni-leipzig.de by April 1, 2016. Replies will be sent out by April 15, 2016. The deadline for submitting finished articles (max. 36 000 characters) is July 31, 2016. The editors in Leipzig will provide copy editing and, if necessary, translation into English. The peer-review process takes place during September 2016. For further information, do not hesitate to contact the editorial team. Please also visit the site of World Literature Studies journal website http://www.wls.sav.sk for technical instructions.

    [i]World Literature Studies is a peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences. It publishes scholarly articles and reviews in general and comparative literary studies, translation studies, and related interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary areas. Most issues are thematic. The journal accepts previously unpublished original articles written in Slovak, Czech, English, German, French or Spanish, with an English abstract. All submissions undergo double-blind peer review. The acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee the acceptance of the full-length manuscript. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

    [ii] Cf. recent application of the concept in cultural studies Tamaselli, Keyan G./David Scott, eds. 2009. Cultural Icons. Walnut Creek, CA.; Leypoldt, Günter/Bernd Engler, eds. 2010. American Cultural Icons. The Production of Representative Lives. Tübingen. For national foci within the region, see e.g., Macura, Vladimír. 2010. The Mystifications of a Nation “The Potato Bug” and Other Essays on Czech Culture, Madison WI; or, Glanc, Tomaš. 2011. Souostroví Rusko: Ikony postsovětské kultury. Praha. For a global approach to visual representations with “iconic” status, see e.g., Haustein, Lydia. 2008. Global Icons: Globale Bildinszenierung und kulturelle Identität. Göttingen.

  • CFP: Emerging Scholars of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art

    CFP: Emerging Scholars of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art
    SHERA-sponsored session at CAA 2017 (New York, Feb 15-18)

    The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is looking to sponsor a special session at the next College Art Association Conference that highlights the scholarship of advanced Ph.D. candidates and recent graduates working on art historical topics related to Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia. Papers may discuss particular visual themes, sources, methodological perspectives, and/or historiographical issues related to the art and architecture of these regions from the Middle Ages to the present. Of particular interest are papers that also consider the state of the field and address ways in which recent scholarship on the artistic production of these regions may complement, and even provide a corrective to, current art historical narratives.

    Note: An ‘emerging scholar’ is a SHERA-member either at the dissertation stage or someone who has received a Ph.D. or M.A. since 2012.

    Session organizer and chair: Alice Isabella Sullivan (History of Art, University of Michigan) Proposals should include a paper title and abstract (up to one page, double-spaced) and a brief CV (up to two pages), and should be sent electronically as a single .pdf attachment to Alice Isabella Sullivan and to shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com

    Deadline for proposals: April 10, 2016

  • CFP: The "state artist" in Romania and Eastern Europe, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, 5 November 2016

    CFP: The “state artist” in Romania and Eastern Europe, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, 5 November 2016

    The establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought for the visual arts, the establishment of the “state artist” (Haraszti). Artworks were commissioned by the state, which offered extensive rewards for the artists, obliged to comply with the political and ideological rigors of the regime. As part of the research project “From the “state artist” to the artist dependent on the state: the case of the Union of Visual Artists (1950-2010) – the Bucharest branch”, this conference seeks to explore the different transformations that the artists underwent in order to comply with the extensive role assumed by the totalitarian state in the arts. We invite contributions on the broad topic announced, that of the state artist in Romania and Eastern Europe with a specific focus on visual arts, but we are also interested to discuss other instances of collaboration with the regimes in place (1950s-1990). The conference aims to discuss the state artist in the context of communist regimes from multiple points of views.

    The topics discussed could be, but are not limited to: -How was the new artist shaped by the communist regimes? -Were artists able to integrate Socialist Realism as a mandatory style? If not, which were the limits of this mandatory style or the national specificities? -Which were the types of resistance to the model of the state artist? -How did Socialist Realism translate in different visual practices? -What role did the Union of Visual Artists of Romania play? How does it compare to other unions in the East? -What are the transformations of the unions of artists after 1990?

    Those interested in presenting a paper should send an abstract of 500 words as well as a short CV (including a short list of publications) to Caterina Preda until the 15th of May 2016. A selection of conference presentations will be published in a volume, thus the accepted participants must send their contributions 1 month in advance (1st of October 2016). The contributions must address the topic of the state artist, and must have 8.000 words including footnotes with a separate list of references. Organizing committee: Caterina Preda, Alina Popescu, Dan Drăghia.

    Place: The Institute for Political Research, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest. The languages of the conferences are Romanian, English, French.

    Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0k4PJI0yphcSlBKUF92OUxRM2c/view?pref=2&pli=1

  • CFP: Contested Spheres: Actually Existing Artworlds under Socialism

    CALL FOR PAPERS
    Contested Spheres: Actually Existing Artworlds under Socialism

    27-28 May 2016 Kassák Múzeum – Petőfi Literary Museum and Translocal Institute, Budapest

    Deadline for proposals: 29 February 2016

    This conference aims to provide a platform for fresh research into the art history of Eastern Europe that brings to light the varied solutions that artists and cultural workers found to living and working inside the socialist system in the period of the 1960s and 1970s.

    While some took the path of direct confrontation with the authorities, leading to harassment, imprisonment or exile, and refused in principle all collaboration with state-run art institutions, others complied with the demands of the Party and freely placed their talents at the service of communist ideology, either through conviction or in exchange for public commissions, exhibition opportunities and institutional positions. There was also a wide band of artists, curators and art historians who, like the majority of citizens of ‘actually existing Socialism’, devised their own individual strategies for negotiating a haphazardly repressive system and actively participated in shaping a complex artistic landscape of alternative spaces, transitory gatherings and artist-run galleries, as well as semi-independent institutions, associations and open air symposia, which all functioned according to the unorthodox rules of the socialist art economy. Examining the art worlds of mid- to late Socialism not from the top down perspective symbolised by the notorious ‘three T’s’ of Hungarian cultural policy, which divided artists into the categories of supported, tolerated and forbidden, but rather through a bottom up approach that examines the variety of possible attitudes adopted by cultural producers to the socialist system, ranging from confrontation and withdrawal to conformity and compromise, this conference sets out to foster debate about the conditions of artistic production during the last decades of Socialism and how these affected the individual trajectories, aesthetic choices and post-communist legacies of East European artists.

    Proposals for conference papers are sought that examine how artists, curators or art historians, or even entire art scenes, responded to the demands of the socialist system, investigating, for example, prominent cases of refusal and resistance, the self-image and social role of official artists, as well as instances of disingenuousness, ambiguity and doublespeak in the machinations of late Socialist art worlds. Of equal relevance are papers that examine the workings of the artistic economy under socialism, and the different ways in which artists reacted to, suffered under, or turned to their advantage the distinctive material and economic environment established by the socialist state.

    Speakers are invited to submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a short biography (approx. 100 words) to fowkes@translocal.org by 29 February 2016.

    Papers will be selected by a conference board made up of: Dr. Klara Kemp Welch, Courtauld Institute London, Dr. Tomáš Pospiszyl, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes, Translocal Institute, Budapest and Dr. Emese Kürti, ACB Research Lab, Budapest. This conference is organised with the framework of the Kassák Museum’s long term research project into the art of the 1960s and 70s.

    For more information see: http://www.translocal.org/contestedspheres/index.html