ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Author: ARTMargins

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Matej Vakula ·

Manuals for Public Space: An Investigation and Intervention into Public Space

Since 2006, Matej Vakula has researched and documented the increased surveillance and politicization of public space throughout the globe, from Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic to Boston and New York City. Observing how public space serves the interests of the public less and less, and how spaces that were once public are now claimed and held by private and government factions, Vakula was inspired to create Manuals for Public Space (MfPS). Rooted in open-source philosophy, MfPS is a participatory multi-platform project (based in Brooklyn and Slovakia) that includes interventions, an interactive blog and website, and printed manuals that outline … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Janeil Engelstad ·

Early Ecological Impulses: An Interview with Rudolf Sikora

In May 2013, I met with Rudolf Sikora in his studio and home in Bratislava, Slovakia.(Also taking part in the conversation was the Slovak artist Matej Vakula who translated and assisted with video documentation.) Our conversation, one of many we have had since we first worked together on my project “Voices From the Center” in 2009, centered on his work from the early 1970s that addressed ecological themes. Sikora was one of a handful of Czechsolovak artists who were, at this time, exploring the interconnectedness between art, ecology and inner consciousness.(Other Czechoslovak artists that were working on … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Janeil Engelstad ·

Politics, the Environment and Art Across a Changing Political Landscape: Interview with Maja and Reuben Fowkes

Maja and Reuben Fowkes’s essay, “Green Critique in a Red Environment: East European Art and Ecology under Socialism” can be found in ARTMargins print journal (#3.2. 2014) as part of this online/offline project. In the following interview, they reflect upon contemporary artists that are addressing environmental and sustainability concerns, as well as larger issues connected to these themes.

Janeil Engelstad: Taking a broad look at Central European artists working today in ecology and with sustainability, do you sense that there is a collective art/environmental scene? And if so, do you see this work as strengthening the larger Environmental Movement?

Maja … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Andres Kurg (Tallinn) ·

Interview with Alexei Yurchak

Alexei Yurchak is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty member in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, Yurchak published a groundbreaking study of the late-Soviet period, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton University Press), which earned him widespread recognition. Analyzing a variety of major shifts in political representation and meaning after the middle 1950s, and ensuing changes in late Soviet everyday practices—from Soviet ideological language to the fascination with Western rock music, the spread of popular jokes and anecdotes, among others—the book … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Éva Forgács (Los Angeles) ·

György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., “Artpool: The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe” (Book Review)

ARTPOOL THE EXPERIMENTAL ART ARCHIVE OF EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE, GYÖRGY GALÁNTAI AND JÚLIA KLANICZAY, EDS., BUDAPEST: ARTPOOL, 2013, 536 PP.(The PDF version of the publication can be downloaded free from: http://www.artpool.hu/2013/Artpool_book_en.html.)

The importance of this long overdue autobiographical volume by Artpool, the Budapest “Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe” is hard to overestimate. Archivists György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, who double as the book’s authors and editors, account for both a Hungarian and widely international presence in and around Artpool’s orbit. Art historian Kristine Stiles strikes a personal and professional chord in her pithy and … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Ksenia Nouril (New York) ·

Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module and Paweł Althamer: The Neighbors at The New Museum, New York

Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module, THE NEW MUSEUM, NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 2014 – APRIL 13, 2014

PAWE? ALTHAMER: THE NEIGHBORS, THE NEW MUSEUM, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 12, 2014 – APRIL 13, 2014

Two exhibitions of Central and Eastern European art were recently on view at the New Museum in New York. The first, Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module, was part of the Museum as Hub series, a New Museum initiative supporting exhibitions, residencies, and public programsfocused on promoting international contemporary art. It was guest curated for the New Museum by a multinational team … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Biljana Purić (Belgrade) ·

The 54th October Salon in Belgrade

ZEPTER EXPO, BELGRADE, 11 OCTOBER-17 NOVEMBER, 2013

The 54th installment of the October Salon in Belgrade focused on feminist and queer interventions in the dominant narratives of knowledge production within patriarchal post-socialist and neoliberal realities. It boldly introduced a variety of artistic expressions within the “Living Archive” framework proposed by the Red Min(e)d curatorial team (Danijela Dugandži? Živanovi?, Katja Kobolt, Dunja Kukovec and Jelena Petrovi?). The concept of “Living Archive” derives from theoretical elaborations of a new, feminist archive in lieu of the standard, conventional systems of archivization and of the traditional archive as a site for normative meaning production. … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Frantisek Zachoval ·

Interview: Katarina Ševic and Gergely László

I met with artists Katarina Ševic and Gergely László at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin to talk about their project House Museum (2006), developed after being able to return to Ševic’s summer cottage in Žuljana, a small village on the Pelješac Peninsula (Croatia) after the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia (1991-2001). The ethnic conflicts prohibited Ševic, a Serbian citizen, and her family to enter Croatian territory and, therefore, inhabit the house. Thirteen years later, the artist returned and, working collectively with Gergely László, cleaned and repaired the house, left ravaged by war and occupied in her family’s absence. The artists gathered … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Jana Beránková (Prague) ·

Any Construction is a Socially Responsible Act: Interview with Igor Kovačevič

Igor Kova?evi? is an architect and a founding member of the Center for Central European Architecture (CCEA), a nonprofit organization in the Czech Republic devoted to the research and promotion of contemporary architecture (www.ccea.cz). The CCEA formulates a theory of architecture that takes into account the Central European experience and organizes projects, publications, lectures and workshops. Many of its projects deal with the social and political context of the urban environment, for instance Vision for the Prague Magistrala studies the history of Prague’s main arterial road and tries to create pressure on local politicians in order to alleviate car traffic … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Letters

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Letter to the Editor

Letter to the editor regarding Professor Caroline A. Jones’s article “Anthropophagy in São Paulo’s Cold War”, published in ARTMargins,  2:1 and the author’s response. 

Mr. Sven Spieker
Editor
ARTmargins

Dear Mr. Spieker,

I am writing regarding Professor Caroline Jones’s article “Anthropophagy in São Paulo’s Cold War”, published in ARTmargins, volume 2, number 1. As a scholar working on the history of art in Brazil, I read the article with interest, and found it problematic in several ways.

The author argues that she does not “question existing periodizations or canons of Brazilian art.” This is legitimate enough; the problem, … Read more

20th / ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Adriana Oprea (Bucharest) ·

Interview with Geta Brătescu (Adriana Oprea)

For most of her career Geta Bratescu worked under communism in Romania. Bratescu studied at the Faculty of Letters and the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where her master teacher was Camil Ressu. Her body of work comprises drawing, collage, engraving, tapestry, objects, photography, experimental film, video and performance. She is also the author of several books — documents of daily studio notes, reflections about art and travel experiences. Already an established artist in 1989 when the communist regime ended in Romania, Bratescu continued to work and participate in important local exhibitions such as The Gender of Mozart (Artexpo, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Frantisek Zachoval ·

Profile: Alexander Peroutka

Alexander Peroutka is an artist, curator and writer who graduated in 2006 from the Academy of Fine Arts Prague and received his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Technical University in Brno. In 2005, Peroutka was a fellow at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. His diploma work, Who Are We? (2006), in which a ventilator seems to react to open web texts ona PC screen, explored Czech online magazines and the way they channel discussions of identity and gender in the Czech media. Other recent projects, such as How do you like Sweden? (2007-2009), Collective … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Olga Stefan (Zurich) ·

Interview with Dan Perjovschi

I spoke with Dan Perjovschi, one of the most internationally respected artists living in Romania, about his political activities against the Rosia Montana cyanide gold mining project (headed by Gabriel Resources, a Canadian corporation). On August 27, 2013, a law was passed in a closed-door session of parliament to go forward with the project despite fifteen years of debate and opposition. In response and starting on September 1, protests against this law, the project, and the corruption linked to this project have erupted around the country and internationally, with tens of thousands of people from different political backgrounds (including progressive … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Maria-Alina Asavei (Budapest) ·

Performative Approaches to Identity in Contemporary Roma Art

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, and for the first time in the history of the event, art works produced by Romani artists were displayed in the Roma Pavilion. The exhibition for the first Roma Pavilion, entitled Paradise Lost, was curated by cultural activist and art historian Timea Junghaus. Contemporary artists of Roma descent had the chance to engage artistically and politically with their own identity concerns. Junghaus clearly states in the exhibition catalogue: “a new generation of Roma intellectuals and artists is emerging; along with a new Roma consciousness…The Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will be the first, internationally … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Greg de Cuir, Jr. (Belgrade) ·

Cinema by Other Means at MoCA, Belgrade

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, BELGRADE, JUNE 22 – SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade recently presented the exhibition Cinema by Other Means at the ?olakovi? Gallery, their off-site exhibition space. The gallery is named after Rodoljub ?olakovi?, a high-ranking party functionary in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and a man of letters. ?olakovi? wrote the book House of Lament in 1941 under the pen name Rudi R. Bosamac. This book was banned by the royalist authorities in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia for its socially critical views and exposé on the situation of political prisoners. ?olakovi? … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Adele Eisenstein, Márton Pacsika, Hajnalka Somogyi, Eszter Szakács ·

Activated Roles of Curating in Hungary

In this interview, Eszter Szakács, a young Hungarian curator, interviews three curators, of different generations, working in Hungary: Hajnalka Somogyi, Adele Eisenstein, and Márton Pacsika. These discussions explore recent changes within the cultural policy of the Hungarian government and, more specifically, how they affect curatorial work.

Adele Eisenstein is a freelance curator based in Budapest, Hungary. She emigrated to Budapest in 1990, where she worked for the Balázs Béla Studio and Toldi Cinema. She was also a curator of the alternative art spaces “Turkish” Bath and Folyamat Galéria in Budapest. She is a former editor of the art journal Praesens… Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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Cultural Perspectives: A Wider View

In this interview, Hedvig Turai, co-editor of this update, talks with Gergely Nagy, art critic and journalist, about cultural politics. Nagy discusses the “big picture,” mapping the current political situation, and drawing a trajectory of some of the events outlined in this introduction.

Gergely Nagy is a prose writer, and freelance journalist and editor. He lives and works in Budapest. Currently he is an editor for Artportal, Hungary’s leading webzine dealing with contemporary art, cultural politics and the art market, as well as an editor for a book-marketing magazine. He has published three books and is working on a novel … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Budapest and London) ·

Activism and Artistic Strategies

In this interview, artists Csaba Nemes and Szabolcs KissPál, leading members of the Free Artists group, speak to Drs. Maja and Reuben Fowkes, of the Translocal Institute, about the challenges posed by controversial government policies towards the arts in Hungary. Nemes and Kisspál also share how they see the contemporary art scene evolving in the future.

 

 

Csaba Nemes is an artist, whose work, which includes painting, video and conceptual projects, has been shown internationally. He studied painting at the Fine Art Academy Budapest, Hungary, and received his doctorate at the same school in 2010, focusing on … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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Occupying the Ludwig Museum

In this interview, curator and critic Gyula Muskovics speaks with Dóra Hegyi, project leader of tranzit.hu, on the occasion of the occupy action that took place on the stairs of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest May 9-21, 2013. Hegyi, who took part in the action, speaks about its origins and the newly formed civic group United for Contemporary Art.

 

 

Dóra Hegyi is an art historian, curator, and critic living in Budapest. She was a curator at the Ludwig Museum Budapest from 1996 to 2003, and since 2005 she is a project leader of tranzit.hu ( http://hu.tranzit.org/en). … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Edit András (Budapest) ·

Hungary in Focus: Conservative Politics and Its Impact on the Arts. A Forum

In 2003, Hedvig Turai, Allan Siegel and I put together an overview of diverse aspects of the Hungarian art scene. What gave urgency to providing an update so soon is that within just a few years, the cultural landscape has undergone significant change. Fidesz, the conservative right-wing party, has been in power for three years now in Hungary, gradually transforming the country into an isolationist, ethno-nationalist, authoritarian state not unlike Russia.

Concerning the post-Cold War world, Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a “post-national constellation” seems to be an outcome of wishful thinking, since despite the recurring prognosis of the death … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Beti Žerovc (Ljubljana) ·

The OHO Files, Updated

In October 2011, ARTMargins Online published a block of texts on the Slovene art collective the OHO Group, including interviews with Milenko Matanovi? and David Nez. The texts were accompanied by an afterword by Ksenya Gursthein. We are now adding interviews with OHO members Marko Poga?nik and Andraž Šalamun, together with an updated preface.

The OHO Group, a Slovene artistic collective formed in the late 1960s, consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun as the permanent, core members. Other artists, for example, Tomaž Šalamun, who is well known as a poet today, often contributed or acted … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Art Workers' Self-Defense Initiative ·

Open Letter from the Art Workers’ Self-Defense Initiative to the Ukrainian and International Art Community

Open Letter from the Art Workers’ Self-Defense Initiative to the Ukrainian and International Art Community(The Art Workers’ Self-Defense Initiative was established in Kyiv in 2012 to monitor and influence common practices in Ukraine’s cultural sphere, especially regarding the transparency and legality of institution–artist relations and the fair compensation of artistic labor.)

We are calling for a boycott of Mystetskyi Arsenal and all of its affiliate organizations in response to the situation surrounding the exhibition Great and Grand, which became part of the celebration of the 1025th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus (July 26-28, 2013).(Mystetskyi … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Beti Žerovc (Ljubljana) ·

The OHO Files: Interview with Marko Pogačnik

ARTMargins Online publishes exclusive interviews with former members of the Ljubljana-based OHO Group, which formed in the late 1960’s and consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO Movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists.

Marko Poga?nik (born 1944) graduated from the sculpture department at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts in 1967. He was an active member of the OHO Movement and the OHO Group. In 1971, together with his family and friends, he founded a rural and artistic community, the “Šempas Family” in … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Beti Žerovc (Ljubljana) ·

The OHO Files: Interview with Andraž Šalamun

ARTMargins Online publishes exclusive interviews with former members of the Ljubljana-based OHO Group, which formed in the late 1960’s and consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO Movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists.

Andraž Šalamun (born 1947) graduated from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He was an active member of the OHO Group. Later on he devoted himself to painting. In the 1970s he was interested in abstract painting. In the 1980s he was influenced by the Italian Transavanguradia, and painted large … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Jana Beránková (Paris) ·

Monuments and the Haunting Past: Interview with Rostislav Švácha

Rostislav Švácha is an architecture critic and historian based in Prague. In this interview, Švácha discusses possible approaches to monuments from the Communist era and the constant re-emergence of the past in the Czech Republic.

Jana Beránková: You have extensively analyzed the work of the prominent Czechoslovak architecture critic Karel Teige and his polemics on monumentality with Le Corbusier. How does one recognize a monument?

Rostislav Švácha: I have discussed this issue at recent lectures on Louis Kahn, an architect who challenged traditional metaphors of monumentality. I tried to persuade my students that monumentality needs some intelligible metaphors guaranteeing … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Sven Spieker ·

SubREAL During the 1990s: Ironic Monuments, Tainted Blood, and Vampiric Realism in a Time of Transition

During the 1990s the subREAL group(subREAL was founded in April 1990 by Calin Dan and Dan Mih?l?ianu. Iosif Király joined the group in February 1991. In August 1993 Dan Mih?l?ianu left subREAL, which operates since as an artist-duo.) – the first of its kind from Romania to operate in an international context after 1989 – investigated the culture of late-communist Romania and the subsequent period of (post-1989) transition, with its turn to a more or less unbridled form of liberal capitalism and the establishment of democratic institutions that continued to be dominated by the old elites. In their … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Editors ·

Interview with Elena Filipovic

Elena Filipovic is Senior Curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. ARTMargins Online spoke to Filipovic about her exhibition Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972, which opened at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels and traveled to the Hammer Museum, LA; MoMA, NY; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, OH.

ARTMargins Online: What prompted you to organize an Alina Szapocznikow retrospective when you did? What aspects of the artist’s work did you feel essential to reveal to Western audiences? What is the importance of Szapocznikow’s work at this particular historical, cultural moment?

Elena Filipovic: I had been following Alina Szapocznikow’s work for … Read more

ARTMargins Online: New Media & Film

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 by Greg de Cuir, Jr. (Belgrade) ·

60th Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival

APRIL 2-6, 2013. BELGRADE YOUTH CENTER AND OTHER VENUES.

April 2013 marked the 60th year of the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, which places it among the oldest film festivals of any type in Europe. In light of this unique position within the international film festival landscape, it seems that an investigation into the history of the Belgrade Festival, or “Kratki metar,” and its connection with the unpredictable political winds in the former Socialist Yugoslavia (now post-socialist Serbia) would be a welcome addition to the annals of general film culture.

Towards that, a young researcher named Dunja Jelenkovi? has … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Malynne Sternstein (Chicago) ·

Djurdja Bartlett, “Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism”

DJURDJA BARTLETT, FASHION EAST: THE SPECTRE THAT HAUNTED SOCIALISM, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: THE MIT PRESS, 2010, 344 PP.

Impressive in its scope, beautifully illustrated, and admirable for its depth and breadth of archival research, Djurdja Bartlett’s sumptuous book Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism does not in any way disappoint the reader looking for a survey of sartorial history in the Soviet Communist bloc. Bartlett does a magisterial job in traversing the cultural space of Soviet fashion from the 1920s “avant-garde” to the late Soviet era. Extraordinary also is Bartlett’s deftness at integrating the post-WWII fashion histories and discourses from … Read more