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Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

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ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Specters of Communism: Contemporary Russian Art, The James Gallery and e-flux, New York

SPECTERS OF COMMUNISM: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN ART, THE JAMES GALLERY AND E-FLUX, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 7-MARCH 28, 2015

In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev famously announced that communism would be achieved in the Soviet Union by 1980. As a result, the nation lived in a perpetual state of the future-perfect tense, aiming for an expected or planned event that was to happen before a certain point in time. Unfortunately, Khrushchev never lived to see that day—nor did anyone else. The realization of true communism was a failure, and because it was abandoned as incomplete, its potentiality still remains, thus making it a tempting … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

In Memoriam – Piotr Piotrowski (June 14, 1952 – May 3, 2015)

It was with great shock and sadness that we learned of the passing of our dear friend, colleague, and collaborator Piotr Piotrowski. His groundbreaking contributions to the study of art from Eastern Europe, boundless energy, willingness to challenge entrenched views, desire to provoke discussion (no matter how uncomfortable), and his commitment to democracy and social justice distinguished him among his peers within the region and beyond. Piotr belonged to a post-war generation of Eastern European intellectuals who experienced life under communism first-hand and who later observed and participated in the often painful and unsteady transition to capitalism and democracy. His … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale

Fundamentals, the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, June 7 – November 23, 2014.

Fundamentals, the title of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (June 7 – November 23, 2014), experimented with new approaches. First, it ran longer than past exhibitions, for almost six months instead of three. Secondly, it was organized according to a tripartite formula, with the first section, Monditalia, highlighting Italy, and occupying one third of the conceptual component of the exhibition that also included other media, such as dance and theater. The second, Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014, was held in the Giardini’s … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Paulo Bruscky & Robert Rehfeldt’s Mail Art Exchanges at Chert Gallery, Berlin

Cold War Domestics—Home Archives: Paulo Bruscky & Robert Rehfeldt’s Mail Art Exchanges from East Berlin to South America and Signs Fiction: Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt at Chert gallery, Berlin, January 10 – March 28, 2015.

Over sixteen years of a committed artistic collaboration organized and almost entirely mediated by the mail, Brazilian artist Paulo Bruscky (b. 1949) and East German artist Robert Rehfeldt (1931-1993) exchanged materially modest, if conceptually bold, artworks to overcome immense physical and political obstacles. Crossing 5,000 miles and two repressive Cold War-era regimes, their mail art often trucked in slogans and icons that were at once immediately identifiable … Read more

20th / ARTMargins Online: Interviews

To be Partisan, Unsettled, and Alert: Conversation with Geeta Kapur

Preface written by Geeta Kapoor (New Delhi)

This interview, conducted as part of a book project on Marx in Malayalam, is strongly contextual. The southern state of Kerala has the distinction of being the site for the first elected Communist ministry in the world. This was in 1957. The subsequent dismissal of the Communists remains a stain on the otherwise progressive politics of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Generations of political activists in Kerala have tested the full spectrum of radical politics including elected governments and extreme left-wing positions that call for direct (revolutionary) action. Kerala intellectuals and artists are … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Cyberfest 2014

CYBERFEST 2014, KUNSTQUARTIER BETHANIEN, BERLIN, DECEMBER 12-15, 2014; PLATOON KUNSTHALLE, BERLIN

One evening last December, an exhibition hall of the Art Center at Kunstquartier Bethanien, a handsome 19th-century building on Berlin’s Mariannenplatz, was bustling. It was a usual opening night – with food, wine, crowds of people young and old getting together and talking about art. What could have caught a local by surprise was that most of the visitors spoke Russian. Cyberfest, a yearly festival of new media, which originated in St. Petersburg in 2007, was making its second appearance in Berlin, following its debut in the German capital … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

A Way to Follow: Interview with Piotr Piotrowski

It is with great sadness and a sense of enormous loss that we learnt of the recent death of Piotr Piotrowski. Piotrowski was a professor in the Art History Department of Adam Mickiewicz University, Pozna?, and a research fellow at the Graduate School for East and South-East European Studies at the universities of Munich and Regensburg. He is the author of several books, including: Meanings of Modernism (2009, 2011), In the Shadow of Yalta (2009), Art after Politics (2007), Critical Museum (2011), and Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (2012). Between 2009 and 2010, he was the director of the … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

Interview with Moritz Pankok (Berlin) About Ceija Stojka and the Re-Evaluation of Roma Art

Moritz Pankok is a German scenographer, director, curator and fine artist living in Berlin. A great-nephew of expressionist artist Otto Pankok, who documented Sinti life in late Weimar-era Germany and was labelled a degenerate artist by the Nazis, he is interested in socially engaged art projects. Pankok is the art director of Galerie Kai Dikhas, a private gallery in Berlin dedicated to Roma contemporary art. He was curator of the recent exhibition of work by the Austrian-Romani painter Ceija Stojka, which ran until October 6 at Gallery8, Budapest, the nonprofit counterpart of Kai Dikhas.(We Were Ashamed, Gallery8, Budapest, Hungary, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

Interview with Katalin Cseh and Adam Czirak About the Second Public Sphere in the former Eastern Bloc

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

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Mladen Miljanović: At the Edge

Mladen Miljanovi?: At the Edge, acb Gallery, Budapest, June 6 – July 17, 2014

At the beginning of his career, Bosnian artist Mladen Miljanovi? prepared ironically toned, but rather serious, plans of attack (Artattack series, 2007) for occupying the great museums of the world. Actually, he painted military symbols on the maps of contemporary art museums and galleries representing how he could occupy their spaces. Of his targets, ironically, Budapest was the last “captured” city, as the artist showcased works in the exhibition spaces of New York, London and Venice before showing in the contemporary art institutions of neighboring … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

Zsófia Bán and Hedvig Turai, eds., “Exposed Memories: Family Pictures in Private and Collective Memory” (Book Review)

EXPOSED MEMORIES: FAMILY PICTURES IN PRIVATE AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY. ZSÓFIA BÁN AND HEDVIG TURAI, EDS. BUDAPEST: INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ART CRITICS, HUNGARIAN SECTION, 2010, 193 PP.

Roland Barthes’s first reflections in Camera Lucida are propelled by the pleasure of viewing the photographic image. At the end of his survey of a wide photographic landscape, Barthes comes to realize his failing as an “imperfect mediator” whose investigation of photography led only to a clearer understanding of his own desire, and not “the nature (the eidos) of Photography” (Barthes, 60).Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982). Perhaps … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Irina Botea: It is now a matter of learning hope, at threewalls, Chicago

Irina Botea: It is now a matter of learning hope, threewalls, Chicago, April 26-May 31, 2014

Throughout her practice that spans video, film, performance and installation, Irina Botea appropriates the instruments of mediation that shape the politics of memory to reconfigure the way history frames our contemporary consciousness. Employing strategies of role-playing, reenactment, and recitation, she recasts historical events, often from her native Romania, to remediate political traumas of the past while offering alternate views of reality than those produced by mainstream media.

For her recent exhibition at threewalls, It is now a matter of learning hope, the artist presented … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

Special Issue: Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe Introduction

Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe is an editorial project born from interviews and other forms of interaction with artists and cultural producers concerned, in one way or another, with the idea and the material reality of what goes by the name of the “natural environment.” In the different pieces collected within this project, the term “environment” unfolds into a broad variety of concepts and artistic practices that do not, and should not, become homogenized. A survey rather than a deep investigation, Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe covers a wide range of art and ideas connected to … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

Silesian Beskids Landscape Park: A Photographic Essay by Kasia Worpus-Wrońska

The Silesian Beskids Landscape Park lies in the Beskids Mountains, a part of the Outer Western Carpathians in Southern Silesia. The park, together with adjoining lands, has been incorporated into the Eastern Carpathians International Biosphere Reserve, which overlaps the convergent borders of Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. The area’s biodiversity includes meadows with a number of rare Eastern Carpathian plants, bear, wolf, red deer, lynx and over 150 species of birds. The native beech trees were logged in the nineteenth century, followed by the logging of spruce, which grew much faster and, thus, became preferred by the lumber industry. … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

Jana Želibská: Betrothal of Spring

An important figure in contemporary Czech and Slovak Art, Jana Želibská has been creating art since the mid-1960s. Working in printmaking, drawing, painting, assembelage, installation, video and performance, Želibská is a significant representative of action art in Central Europe. Her primary themes are the exploration of female identity, the connection of feminity to nature, and humanity’s relationship to earth, including references to ecology. In 2012, a major retrospective of Želibská’s work was held at the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava.

While many female Central European artists working in the latter half of the twentieth century were creating self-reflective or autobiographical work, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

Creating Art and Meaning through Collaboration: Interview with Nina Czegledy

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

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

The Artist as Mediator: An Interview with Marjetica Potrč

Based in Ljubljana and Berlin, Marjetica Potr? deals with issues of social space and contemporary architectural practices, sustainability, and new solutions for communities. Her practice is strongly informed by her interdisciplinary collaborations in research-based, on-site projects, such as Théâtre Evolutif (Bordeaux, 2011), The Cook, the Farmer, His Wife and Their Neighbour (Stedelijk Goes West, Amsterdam, 2009), and Dry Toilet (Caracas, 2003). She translates these investigations into text-based drawings and large-scale architectural installations (“case studies”). Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe and the Americas, including the São Paulo (1996, 2006) and Venice biennials (1993, 2003, 2009). She has … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

ArtMill: Global Change Inspired from a Seed Planted in the Czech Countryside

In 2004, Barbara Benish founded the NGO Art Dialogue, which, among other things, supports programs and a farm at ArtMill, a renovated flourmill and granary from the 17th century located in the forested countryside bordering Šumava National Park (one of the largest remaining greenbelts in Europe). Positioned on a lake, ArtMill has become an international destination for artists, scientists, environmentalists, writers and students of all ages to study, collaborate and create. The rural property consists of living quarters, renovated studio structures, barns, outdoor workspaces and organic gardens. This text is adapted from conversations between Benish and Janeil Engelstad between 2012 … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

Budapest Farmer’s Hack: How to Integrate Digital Monitoring Systems in Community Gardens

Budapest Farmer’s Hack is a project developed in 2013 by Attila Nemes and Péter Eszes for OS Kantine, a media lab that focuses on open systems, open knowledge and the effort to build sustainable, community based models, while supporting other groups engaged in the same work. The trial project included the reclaiming of unused community gardens where plant needs, water, light, and nutrients were monitored by sensors that fed information into a digital network, which made the labor spent on taking care of the garden more productive. The text below is adapted from a conversation with Attila Nemes.

Through Budapest … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

Art as a Laboratory: Interview with Tamás Kaszás

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

ARTMargins Online: Articles

If I Had a River: A Commentary

If I Had a River is an exploration of what it means to live a sustainable life; in this case, on a boat that Slovak artist Oto Hudec constructed with all of the necessary provisions and a functioning garden for living independently at sea.

My thinking about this project started roughly four years ago with a simple drawing of a boat hosting a garden of edible plants. The drawing felt like the best illustration of my dream of a utopian model for living. A boat is a closed space with very defined borders. As my idea was to make life … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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