Monthly Archive: October 2012

Interview with Bjorn Geldhof (PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv)

Since he began working at the PinchukArtCentre  in 2009, artistic manager and curator Bjorn Geldhof’s curatorial intelligence has caught the attention of local artists and viewers. As curator of the past few annual Future Generation Art Prize exhibitions (as well as the solo shows of Candice Breitz, Damian Ortega, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Wall, Gary Hume and Anish Kapoor, among others), Geldhof has played an important role in shaping the institution’s mode of mediating the encounter between artworks by both international and Ukrainian artists and the PAC’s vast audience. The PinchukArtCentre remains Ukraine’s most visited institution devoted exclusively to contemporary art, … Read more

Queering Yerevan (eds.) “Queered: What’s to be done with Xcentric art?”

Queering Yerevan (eds.) Queered: What’s to be done with Xcentric art? Queering Yerevan Collective, 2011, Yerevan (Armenia), 336 pp.

The notion of identity, being it ethnic, religious, politic or sexual, marks a key feature of the public reality of post-communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Queer theory brings a radical political discourse that disrupts the comfortable public arena, employing the means of contemporary art and performativity throughout their actions. Queering Yerevan is a group of female artists, writers, performers, critics and translators active in Yerevan and in the Armenian diaspora. Their recently published book, Queered: What’s to be done Read more

From Biopolitics to Necropolitics: Marina Gržinić in conversation with Maja and Reuben Fowkes


Marina Gržinić is a philosopher, artist and theoretician, and a research director at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is also a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute of Fine Arts, Conceptual Art, in Austria. Gržinić was in Budapest recently to give a lecture “A Passion for History in the Depoliticized and Castrated European Union Regime,” as part of the Ludwig Museum’s lecture series, Theoretical and Critical Problems of the Margins Today. Maja and Reuben Fowkes met with her to discuss … Read more

Provincializing the West: Interview with Piotr Piotrowski

Piotr Piotrowski teaches at Adam Mickiewitz University, Pozna?. As a professor of art history, he has served as a mentor for a new generation of art historians seeking fresh, critical approaches to the historical and contemporary art of the region. He was the director of the National Museum in Warsaw (2009-2010). He is the author of In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (Reaktion, 2009), and Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (Reaktion, 2012). He received the Igor Zabel international award in 2010. This interview was conducted by Edit András on the occasion of … Read more

Theoretical and Critical Problems of the Margins Today

Lecture series at the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, April 2012 & February 2013

How can the margins be viewed in art, in the new world order, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the new era of globalization, when the cultural canons seem to have disappeared, when there is no longer a master narrative nor a distinct center? Can we still speak about margins at all? Or have they been shifted to another geopolitical sphere? This lecture series, Theoretical and Critical Problems of the Margins Today, takes a look at the theoretical presuppositions and implications … Read more

Sounding the Body Electric: A Conversation

From May 25–August 19, 2012, an exhibition titled Sounding the Body Electric, Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe, 1957–1984, at the Muzeum Sztuki in ?ód? explored the relations of the visual arts and experimental music. The exhibit featured graphic scores, installations, artists’ films and documents of happenings produced across Eastern Europe during the "thaw years" and after. The starting point of the exhibition is the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio founded in Warsaw in 1957 by Józef Patkowski. It was not only a symbol of the change in attitude of the Communist authorities toward electro-acoustic music, but also an … Read more