Feeding off Contradiction: Self Managed Socialism in Focus
This symposium brings together leading artists and academics in an exploration of the core themes that underpin the Monuments Should Not Be Trusted exhibition. The conference centres the principle of self-management (autogestion), an economic and political system which was central to Yugoslav socialism, placing a certain amount of decision making in the hands of the workers themselves. The conference asks how self-management could have been (and whether it was) applied to artistic practice, and what were its potentialities and its failures.
Can some of the working methods of self-management be applied to artistic practice today, in a different political system, in a different geography, over thirty years later? What would such initiatives entail?
The symposium also explores different forms of critique of Yugoslav self-management. Presentations include a close reading of Black Wave films, a discussion of the student protests in 1968, as well a closer look at New Art Practice and the emergence of punk communities as forms of resistance.
Speakers include: Milica Tomić, David Crowley, Zoran Popović, Sanja Iveković, Branislav Dimitrijević, Antonia Majaca, Lina Džuverović and Zoran Pantelić.
The Symposium will be followed by the Film Screening of Zoran Popović's Struggle in New York at 7pm, and by the music performance Eastern Bloc Disco with UrBororo curated by Wayne Burrows at 8.30pm in the Cafe Bar.
Antonia Majaca is a researcher and curator engaged in discursive, exhibition and publishing projects developing at the intersection of academic research, political and cultural theory and the sphere of art production. She is currently the Visiting Professor at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art at the Graz University of Technology, where her work focuses on the epistemology of art in the age of algorithmic autonomization. She recently curated ‘Memorial For(u)ms – Histories of Possibility’ for DAAD and HAU, Berlin and ‘Knowledge Forms and Forming Knowledge - Limits and Horizons of Transdisciplinary Art-Based Research’ at the Halle fürKunst&Medien, Graz. Between 2004 and 2011 she was the artistic director of Zagreb based non-profit GalerijaMiroslavKraljevic, and was the founder (with IvanaBago) of Delve - Institute for Duration, Location and Variables. She is based in Berlin.
Branislav Dimitrijević is Professor of History and Theory of Art at the School for Art and Design in Belgrade. As a writer, researcher and curator he mainly explores visual art, popular culture and film in socialist Yugoslavia, and also he writes on contemporary cultural and political issue mainly for http://pescanik.net/author/branislav-dimitrijevic/. His publications include On Normality: Art in Serbia 1989-2001 (MOCA Belgrade, 2005) and Against Art - Goran Djordjević, Copies, 1989-1985 (MOCA, Belgrade, 2014). His curatorial projects include No Network (Atomic bunker, Konjic, BH, 2011) and Good Life (Geozavod, Belgrade RS, 2012). Dimitrijević holds an MA degree in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent (UK), and in 2012 has received his PhD in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies from the University of Arts in Belgrade for the thesis on the emergence of consumer culture in the socialist Yugoslavia. For selected texts and a comprehensive biography see: https://independent.academia.edu/BranislavDimitrijevic
Sanja Iveković was born in 1949, in Zagreb, where she currently lives and works. She studied at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1971 and her early practice was associated with ‘Nova Umjetnicˇka Praksa’ (New Art Practice) in the 1970s, a generation of artists in Yugoslavia who questioned the role of art in society and strove to democratise artistic space by abandoning galleries and taking to the streets through performances and the use of cheap, accessible materials. Living and working in a turbulent political context for many years brought forth questions regarding social structures, gender, politics and identity.
Zoran Pantelic is an artist, producer and researcher, a member of the Centre kuda.org in Novi Sad, Serbia.
He founded the art association APSOLUTNO in 1993 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (www.apsolutno.net), which dealt with conceptually and politically oriented interdisciplinary art work and media pluralism. The work of APSOLUTNO was shown internationally during the 1990s and early 2000s at festivals, galleries and site-specific locations. In 2000 Zoran Pantelic founded kuda.org_new media center, in Novi Sad (www.kuda.org), a collective dedicated to new technologies, art, activism and politics. Kuda.org engages in a variety of activities and projects, using lectures, discussions, workshops, exhibitions and other formats to question current issues in culture and society. kuda.org acts as a platform which gathers artists, scientists, activists and practitioners around its projects. He participated in the founding of the Youth Social Center CK13, Novi Sad (www.ck13.org), in 2007. Currently kuda.org is participating in the international project 'Aesthetic Education Expanded' (AEE) with partners from Croatia, Germany, Macedonia and UK. At the same time, kuda.org is engaged in a local community project 'Local Politics and Urban Self-management', which focuses on activism and participation in local community development in relation to the housing policy in a local community (www.detelinara.org).
David Crowley runs the Critical Writing in Art & Design MA at the Royal College of Art, London. He has a specialist interest in modernism in art and design, often with a focus on the histories of Eastern Europe under communist rule. His books include Warsaw (2003) and three edited volumes: Socialism and Style. Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe (2000); Socialist Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (2003); and Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (2010). Crowley also curates exhibitions (including ‘Cold War Modern’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008–9; ‘The Power of Fantasy. Modern and Contemporary Art from Poland’ at BOZAR, Brussels, 2011; and Sounding the Body Electric. Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe at MuzeumSztuki, Łódź, 2012 and Calvert 22, London, 2013). He is currently preparing an exhibition entitled ‘Notes from the Underground - Alternative Art and Music in Eastern Europe after 1968’ which will open at the MuzeumSztuki in Łódźin late 2016.
Milica Tomić is an artist based between Serbia, Berlin and Graz. She was formerly a professor at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art/NTNU in Norway. She currently works as a professor and director of the IZK Institute of Contemporary Art, Graz University of Technology, Austria. She is a founding member of the New Yugoslav art & theory group Grupa Spomenik [Monument Group].
Zoran Popović (Yugoslavia, b. 1944), an Eastern European artist working since the late 1960s in film, performance, and conceptual art. He was particularly known for his conceptual work Axioms (1971-73), a section of which included a performance in 1972 that was among the early actions realized before an audience in the former Yugoslavia. Popović’s participation in the leftist politics of The Fox was, he remembered, "of direct use to them, for the self-evaluation of their own thinking and knowledge of the social and political role of art," a perspective that only someone who had "dropped in from a Communist system" might offer.
Event:
Feeding off Contradiction: Self Managed Socialism in FocusDates:
16 Jan 2016, 1pm–6pmSupported by:
