Category: Interviews

The three-day conference Performing Arts in the Second Public Sphere (org. by Katalin Cseh and Adam Czirak, Free University Berlin, May 9 -11, 2014) focused on the second public sphere as a space belonging to unofficial, event-based activities in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc between the 1960s and ’80s. The organizers’ idea was to redefine the borderline between the official and the unofficial cultural realms by examining underrepresented artistic practices located in the often invisible niches of the state-socialist cultural apparatus. The topics addressed by conference participants ranged from subversive artistic practices and the role of gender in … Read more

In 1996, Nina Czegledy co-conceived the multiplatform Aurora Project, which has brought together a range of specialists working within the arts and sciences. Under the umbrella of the Aurora Project several exhibitions and programs have been produced, including the Aurora Feast Public Art Project and Aura/Aurora. The project partners and contributors include artists interested in addressing mythological, aesthetic and cosmological readings of the Aurora Borealis, scientific researchers measuring electromagnetic frequencies and the social and psychological effects of spectacle, and computer scientists exploring how amorphous information is represented.

Janeil Engelstad: Your collaborative project Aura/Aurora interprets and explores the natural phenomena … Read more

Tamás Kaszás was born in 1976 in Dunaújváros, Hungary. He is a graduate of the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest. Inspired by theoretical research, Kaszás’ projects are based on social questions and spiritual science. He mixes poetic images with practical “inventions,” creating large installations the artist calls “visual aid constructions.” Kaszás aspires to an economic and ecological art practice, designing easy-to-make structures from inexpensive and recycled materials using techniques readily available to anyone. The artist has exhibited his work at the 12th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); Open Space, Vienna; SMAK, Gent; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Storm … Read more

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

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

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

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 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 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

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

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

Matei Bejenaru is a visual artist who lives and works in Iasi, Romania. He teaches photography and video art at “George Enescu” University of Arts. He is founding member of Vector Association in Iasi and director of the Periferic Contemporary Art Biennial (1997-2008). He has participated in several group exhibitions, including those at Level 2 Gallery, Tate Modern, London (2007) and the Taipei Biennial (2008). Between November 2010 and July 2011, his experimental project for choral music Songs for a better future was shown at The Drawing Room and Tate Modern (Turbine Hall) in London, at Western Front in Vancouver, … Read more

Suzana Milevska is an art and visual culture theorist and curator based in Skopje, Macedonia. Her research and curatorial interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power in art, complex relationships between gender theory and feminism(s) in art practices, and socially engaged and participatory projects. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College in London, where she taught from 2003 to 2005. She was the Director of the Center for Visual and Cultural Research at the Euro-Balkan Institute in Skopje (2006 to 2008), and taught History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje (2010 … Read more

Polish-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist Joanna Malinowska works mainly in sculpture, video, and performance art. Her projects are often inspired by interest in cultural anthropology and cultural clashes – she traveled to the American Far North to make a video documentary on Jimmy Ekho aka Arctic Elvis – an Inuit folk singer and Elvis Presley impersonator. In one of her early video explorations, Malinowska impersonated a stereotypical Polish cleaning lady and cleaned apartments of New York intellectuals in exchange for private lessons in philosophy. Malinowska’s work has been presented in many solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe, … Read more

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