‘Eastern Europe’

… documenting and researching independent art have constituted a complex problem in Central and Eastern Europe for decades.  Retrospectively seeking and organising sources, along with maintaining and modernising digital platforms, are also often met with fundamental technical, infrastructural and funding difficulties. What is the current state of independent art archives, databases and registers in Hungary and internationally, and to what extent are they visible? Who uses them and for …

… else entirely? These questions are particularly pressing when viewed from the perspective of Eastern Europe, a region historically shaped by its position at the crossroads of Eastern and Western imperial powers, and where universalist claims have often been difficult to articulate. In this lecture, Joseph Grim Feinberg will present his current research on forms of borderlands internationalism that have emerged in Eastern European history, responding to the region’s …

Open call Endre Tót and the Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) established the TÓTalJOY prize for contemporary artists in 2021. The prize derives its name from Endre Tót’s conceptual program centred on the notion of joy, which was launched in the 1970s. His early joy pieces and the actions of the TÓTalJOY series are considered among the most important works representing the narrative of Eastern European …

… truly revolutionary, suppressed and virtually non-existent in the public debate – at least in the eastern half of Europe – such as identity, feminism or emancipation movements. At the time, these were controversial, dissident concepts. Browsing through the materials collected in Budapest and Warsaw is an extraordinary experience. Their epistolary nature, (remember that many of the documents they hold have arrived by mail), dictated the form and format of the works – they were small, …

… and cultural borders. The conference explores the motivations behind the relocation of Central and Eastern European visual artists to urban centres specifically in the interwar period. These often followed patterns: artists with formal art training included travel as part of their curriculum, financed by various funds or grants; changes in political regimes forced others to leave their home countries for shorter or longer periods; and most enjoyed the help of personal, professional or …