ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Monthly Archive: May 2007

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Augustin Ioan (Bucharest) ·

Romanian Modernism

Luminita Machedon and Ernie Scoffham (eds). Romanian Modernism: The Architecture of Bucharest, 1920-1940. MIT Press, 1999.

Currently a reprint from MIT Press, Romanian Modernism/The Architecture of Bucharest, 1920-1940 made its first appearance in 1999. Although the book was welcomed by the cultural press and received a positive review from the Times Literary Supplement, it went completely unnoticed in Romania. This is not the book’s fault; it is rather a symptom of a larger malaise; for example, none of the major recent histories of modern architecture (Curtis, Frampton, Jencks) ever mention the architecture of Central and Eastern Europe, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Yulia Tikhonova (New York) ·

Footnotes to Discontent

2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 1-April 1, 2007

The 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art was themed FOOTNOTES on Geopolitics, Market and Amnesia and added its own measure of discontent to the excess of world biennales. Now that this short-lived event is over, its outcome appears clear: the Biennale has only served to highlight the level of political uncertainty, profligate corruption, and social disparity that defines its context. In a social landscape rife with political intrigue, tightening censorship, and some 40 percent of the population living in poverty, the government’s spending of over US $2 million … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Allan Siegel (Budapest) ·

Curatorship, Culture and the Public: Curatorial Practice in the Post-Soviet Age, Part II

In this second part of the discussion “Curatorial Practices, Culture and the Public,” the focus is on the funding and financial processes that form the basis for institutional survival and development, as well as how and where curatorial practices are formulated and implemented. The two areas are intrinsically related; sources of funding and monetary support maintain financial infrastructures, while curatorial (and exhibition) practices substantiate and define the conceptual and ideological foundations upon which the art museum exists.

The museum – in all its forms – is a place for the representation of a society’s cultural wealth. It is a form … Read more

ARTMargins Online: New Media & Film

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 by Holt Meyer (Erfurt) and Chris GoGwilt (New York) ·

Film Philology: A conversation between Holt Meyer and Chris GoGwilt (Part I)

Why do literary critics turn to film? Why do films turn to literary texts? The dialogue that follows is preoccupied by this double-fold question of film and philology. As part of an ongoing conversation about the responsibilities of our respective academic fields—English studies and Slavic studies—this dialogue considers the relation between film and philology comparatively, historically, and theoretically. Comparatively: what does the relation of film to philology tell us about the interrelation between the fields of English studies and Slavic studies? Historically: can we track a relation between the eclipse of philology and the birth of cinema (and then again, … Read more