SEMINAR NO.9: NETWORKS AND SOCIABILTY IN EAST EUROPEAN ART
call for papers

Courtauld Institute of Art
23 October 2010

The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art provides a forum for the presentation of new research into practices of informal exchange and patterns of alternative communication between experimental artists in the Eastern Bloc. This seminar explores the ways in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic collaboration that flew in the face of an official culture of isolationism, censorship and political control. It focuses on processes of artistic exchange that took shape at a grass-roots level, inventive strategies to surmount bureaucratic obstacles, and the specific meaning of ‘networking’ in the context of communist Eastern Europe. The seminar also considers the degree to which state-sponsored artistic events, held for Cold War propaganda reasons, could become spaces for unofficial exchange, the roles available to exiled artists and intellectuals in facilitating international communication, collaboration and the circulation of materials, as well as the contribution of curators and intellectuals from the far side of the Iron Curtain in creating informal networks.

Further details and booking information to follow.