08 Oct 2010

SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art

Speaking at the symposium will be artists Zofia Kulik, Petr Stembera and Goran Trbuljak, along with theorists, curators and art historians Miško Šuvaković, Dorota Monkiewicz, Sarah Wilson, Angelika Richter, Beata Hock, Anda Kļaviņa, Jutta Vinzent, Jasmina Tumbas, Ewa Borysiewicz and Maria Matuszkiewicz and Anthony Gardner.

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. The symposium 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. Presentations focus 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 SocialEast Forum is a platform for innovative, transnational research on the art and visual culture of Eastern Europe initiated by Dr.Reuben Fowkes. Based on active collaboration with institutes of art history across Europe and the involvement of prominent academics, curators and artists, SocialEast is an innovative generator of research into East European art history. The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability at the Courtauld Institute is organised in collaboration with Dr. Klara Kemp-Welch, and is the ninth in a series of international symposia organised at prominent art institutions in the UK and Central Europe.

For abstracts, speaker biographies and booking details please see: www.socialeast.org