[ Call for Papers - Call for Entries ]

SocialEast Forum on the Art and Visual Culture of Eastern Europe announces a series of international seminars that will be held during 2006-7 to address issues of Art and Ideology, Art and Documentary, Art and Revolution, and Art and Memory in the context of East European art and visual culture. The seminars will be accompanied by contemporary art events, including exhibitions, artists’ presentations and film screenings.
Proposals for papers are invited from art historians, curators and artists that examine the art and visual culture of Eastern Europe during the socialist period. Please send a 200 word proposal and biographical note to
Dr. Reuben Fowkes by email to r.fowkes@mmu.ac.uk. Please indicate which of the four thematic areas your paper seeks to address, as proposals are sought for all four of the SocialEast Seminars.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 31 July 2006.


1. Art and Ideology

Manchester Metropolitan University, Friday 6 October 2006

The focus of the first seminar will be the relationship between art and ideology in the context of the recent history of East European art. Specific issues that will be addressed include: the writing and rewriting of East European art history; the role of exhibition strategy, museology and curating in the reconstruction and reappraisal of the history of art in East Central Europe; contemporary artists’ projects dealing with the legacy of the art of the socialist period from conceptualism to socialist realism; and theorising the contradictions between national, regional and international accounts of East European art, both historical and contemporary.


2. Art and Documentary

Open Society Archives Budapest, 10 November 2006

The second seminar will coincide with the celebration of the 50 th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest, and will include coverage of issues such as: the role of contemporary art in commemorating historical events from the socialist period, both revolutions and counter-revolutions; the history and treatment of public monuments in Eastern Europe; relics of socialism in contemporary visual culture, and the use of photographic and film archives of the socialism in visual research.


3. Art and Revolution

Venue and date to be confirmed

The third seminar takes as its primary focus the legacy of political, social and cultural revolutions for art and visual culture in Eastern Europe. This would include discussion of the role of the historical avant-garde, the specific trajectory of Conceptual Art in Central Europe, and the reevaluation of Socialist Realism as an art historical problem in the context of modernism, post-modernism and the polarised aesthetics of the Cold War.


4. Art and Memory

Venue and date to be confirmed

The fourth seminar focuses on the role of artists in excavating memories of the socialist period. It considers the role of artists, curators and researchers in analysing and processing public memories and consciousness, as well as the role of visual representations in our understanding and recoding of Eastern Europe’s socialist past. The widespread concern with the endangered memories of socialism takes place against the backdrop of rapid social and cultural change on the path to trans-national integration, and the seminar will also touch on the search for alternative models in art and society.


A paper version of the Call for Papers can be downloaded here.