Monthly Archive: March 2010

Dispatch from Sofia (Article)

With the gas light blinking empty the taxi headed towards Sofia. The driver offered me another cigarette after I had extinguished one to get in the cab. “Are you German?” “No American.” I replied. He wagged his finger smiling saying “Monica Lewinsky! Bill Clinton!” I laughed and thought about how wonderful it would be if cultural memory had no recollection of the Bush years. The Balkan mountain range that cradles Sofia loomed ahead.

“Everything is happening for the first time here. It’s the second time which is the challenge,” said the Russian-born Iara Boubnova, co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary … Read more

Miško Suvaković, “The Neo-Avant-Garde in Yugoslavia 1951-1973” (Podcast)

Miško Šuvakovi? is a theorist and ex-conceptual artist. He works and lives in Belgrade. Šuvakovi? was a co-founder and member of conceptual artistic Group 143 (1975 – 1980), and a co-founder and member of the informal theoretic and artistic “Community for Space Investigation” (1982–1989). He has participated in TkH – tehory platform from October 2000. From 1988 he has been a member of the Slovenian Aesthetic Society. Šuvakovi? teaches aesthetics and theory of art at the Faculty of Music and theory of art and culture at the University of Art (both Belgrade). Šuvakovi? is the co-editor of the magazines Katalog Read more

Chto delat’? The Theory and Practice of Critical Intervention: Sven Spieker in Conversation with Dmitry Vilensky (St. Petersburg) (Podcast)

 

Interview with St. Petersburg-based Dmitry Vilensky (Santa Barbara, March 2, 2010/Sven Spieker). Vilensky is a founding member of the collective Chto delat’. The collective was founded in early 2003 by a group of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. The idea was to merge political theory, art, and activism, and to politicize Russian intellectual culture. Chto delat’ publishes an English-Russian newspaper on issues central to activist culture. Chto delat‘ sees itself as a self-organizing platform for cultural workers who want to politicize the production of knowledge and develop critical autonomy outside of … Read more

Polish Conceptualism: Expanded, Politicized, Contested (Book Review)

Luiza Nader, Konceptualizm W Prl. Warsaw: Foksal Gallery Foundation, University of Warsaw Press, 2009. 429 PP.
?ukasz Ronduda, Polish Art of the 1970s. Jelenia Góra: Polski Western; Warsaw: Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, 2009. 379 PP.

The recent publication of Luiza Nader’s Konceptualizm w PRL and ?ukasz Ronduda’s Polish Art of the 1970s has served to reinvigorate a debate that has been ongoing in Poland since the 1970s. This debate centers around what it meant to be a radical artist in the 1960s and 70s. The cultural policy of the Polish authorities was among the most lenient … Read more