[spectre] CFP: Shared Practices - the Arts in the Culture of Socialist Eastern Europe (Tallin, 22-24 Oct 15)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Anu Allas <anu.allas at ekm.ee>
Date: Dec 2, 2014
Subject: CFP: Shared Practices (Tallin, 22-24 Oct 15)

Tallinn, auditorium of the Kumu Art Museum, October 22 - 24, 2015
Deadline: Jan 30, 2015

The Kumu Art Museum’s fall conference 2015
In cooperation with the Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts

Shared Practices: The Intertwinement of the Arts in the Culture of 
Socialist Eastern Europe

Changes in the culture of socialist Eastern Europe, which started to 
take place in the late 1950s in relation to Khrushchev’s Thaw and its 
aftermath, brought about closer and more varied relationships between 
different forms of art. This process was encouraged by the idea of the 
synthesis of arts, which was promoted within the framework of the 
modernisation of official art, and by the emergence of innovative 
artistic practices, which would nowadays be referred to as 
interdisciplinary (different forms of conceptual art, installation and 
environmental art, happenings and performances, visual poetry, early 
sound art etc.).

The objective of the conference is to analyse the changes that happened 
because of contacts between various art forms and the expansion of their 
borders in the culture of post-World War II Eastern Europe. We will 
cover both the processes guided and encouraged by official ideology and 
movements that tried to distance themselves from or oppose themselves to 
the established canon. The conference organisers invite scholars to 
examine the issues of how operating in intersecting areas of different 
forms of art (visual art, theatre, music, literature, film, design, 
architecture etc.) and cooperation between artists gave rise to 
practical strategies which shaped the ideas emerging in artistic 
processes (instead of expressing existing ideas). A focus on the 
performative and material aspects of artistic practices allows us to 
view art not only as a symptom but also as a shaper of the social 
environment.

We are looking forward to theoretical presentations (dealing with the 
idea of the synthesis of arts in the official Soviet ideology, the 
manifestations of interdisciplinarity and the potential forms of its 
conceptualisation in the context of the socialist bloc etc.), as well as 
detailed examinations of specific artistic phenomena and presentations 
on changes in artists’ self-awareness and position resulting from 
innovative artistic practices. Keeping in mind the expansion of borders 
of the artistic disciplines in different cultural contexts of the second 
half of the 20th century, the conference poses the question: what were 
the specifics of this process in socialist Eastern Europe?

Conference board: Anu Allas (Kumu Art Museum), Andres Kurg (Institute of 
Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts), Lolita Jablonskiene (National 
Art Gallery, Vilnius), Klara Kemp-Welch (Courtauld Institute of Art, 
London).

Please send your paper proposals (up to 300 words) by 30 January 2015 to 
the e-mail address anu.allas at ekm.ee.

Additional information:
Anu Allas
anu.allas at ekm.ee
Tel. +3726026056
Mob. +37253403356

Kumu kunstimuuseum / Kumu Art Museum
Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1
10127 Tallinn

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Shared Practices (Tallin, 22-24 Oct 15). In: H-ArtHist, Dec 2, 
2014. <http://arthist.net/archive/9039>.