Call for Papers - SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art at Courtauld Institute

CALL FOR PAPERS
Proposals for papers and presentations are invited from art
historians, curators and artists that examine the art and visual
culture of Eastern Europe in both historical and contemporary
contexts. The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East
European Art will be held at the Courtauld Institute of Art on 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.

The SocialEast Forum is a platform for
innovative, transnational research on the art and visual culture of
Eastern Europe initiated by Dr. Reuben Fowkes in 2006. Based on active
collaboration with institutes of art history across Europe and the
involvement of prominent academics, curators and artists, SocialEast
has become an internationally-recognised generator of pioneering
research into the art history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
This second SocialEast Seminar at the Courtauld Institute follows on
from the SocialEast Seminar on Art and Espionage held in February 2009
and co-organised with Dr. Sarah Wilson. Previous SocialEast Seminars
have dealt with issues of Foreign Experience, Art and Ideology, Art
and Documentary, Art and Revolution, Art and Memory, Art and Empire
and the Legacy of 1968 and were held at Manchester Art Gallery, the
Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest, Krakow University, and
Mimara Museum Zagreb.

The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European
Art is organised in collaboration with Dr. Klara Kemp-Welch of the
Courtauld Institute as part of a three year Leverhulme Trust funded
project entitled Festivals and Friendships: Networking the Soviet
‘Bloc’, examining unofficial exchange between artists from
East-Central Europe and former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s. The
seminar is supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Courtauld
Institute Research Forum.

To propose a paper for the SocialEast Seminar on Networks and
Sociability in East European Art, please send a 200 word proposal and
biographical note to info@socialeast.org

The deadline for submitting a proposal is *Monday 15 March 2010*.