Katalin Cseh-Varga | Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (original) (raw)

Papers by Katalin Cseh-Varga

The present document, the Joint Review Report (JRR), concludes the first stage of COST Action 162... more The present document, the Joint Review Report (JRR), concludes the first stage of COST Action 16213, New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent (NEP4DISSENT), which is aimed at leveraging the power of an international, multidisciplinary, and technology-conscious research network to survey the state of the art and chart new directions in scholarship. The JRR builds on and deepens the shared framework for the understanding of the methodological and conceptual challenges to the state of the art in this domain of research (described in Section 1), which has brought together a large and diverse group of scholars, curators, and digital humanities practitioners (see further in Section 2). This group grew into a robust and integrated research network through the process of the State of the Art Review (SotAR), whose outcome the JRR now presents to a wider audience. The SotAR process (described in Section 3) was designed to pool together research agendas and to ide...

New Narratives of Russian and East European Art: Between Traditions and Revolutions, 2019

Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Culture in Cold War Hungary, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Aktionskunst jenseits des Eisernen Vorhangs. Künstlerische Kritik in Zeiten politischer Repression, 2019

ARTMargins Online, Feb 20, 2017

Samizdat und die kommunikative Herstellung von Oppositionskulturen in Ostmitteleuropa, Mar 2016

Most theoretical reflections on East-Central-European samizdat focus only on textuality and mater... more Most theoretical reflections on East-Central-European samizdat focus only on textuality and materiality whereupon they exclude to read illegal publishing practices as oral phenomena. In the context of a “second public sphere” József Havasréti was the first who recognized orality as the existential precondition of a parallel culture. Artistic and intellectual subcultures sought for creative strategies to keep their information and exchange network alive through avoiding authoritarian control – the oral production and reception of samizdat texts seemed to be an ideal solution.
The aim of the paper is to investigate the oral practices of the Hungarian samizdat mostly from media and performance studies´ point of view. Before a historically differentiated background the analysis of the phenomenon disposed into three categories of orality: oral performance (as the embodied representation of clandestine content), oral tradition or exchange (oral transmission of written information) and oral media (remediated form of samizdat). Three different case studies – attached to the categories mentioned above – from the Hungarian samizdat landscape and their medial layering are in the focal point: the verbal art journal Lélegzet [Intake of Breath], the discussion environment of László Rajk´s “samizdat boutique” and an illegally circulated audio tape (or magnitizdat) of the 1956 revolution from 1982.
Besides a media theoretical and methodological approach the paper elaborates intensely on the ability of illegal publishing to create an alternative forum for public opinion sharing and discussion.

2005 the artist duo Little Warsaw organised a re-enactment of Tamás Szentjóby`s performance. The ... more 2005 the artist duo Little Warsaw organised a re-enactment of Tamás Szentjóby`s performance. The action (Exclusion Practise. Punishment-Preventive Autotherapy) was first performed in the Chapel Studio of Balatonboglár, 1972 as an interactive artwork with a radical criticism of the authoritarianism of “Goulash Communism”. With the re-positioning of the performance in space and time but leaving the enacting person constant, a controversial situation appears. The body of Tamás Szentjóby functions as an archive and as a document, which is true for the whole transitory event – these factors function as a kind of documentary approach to preserve the history of event-based art in the Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde. The event re-thinks the notion of document as an unquestionable fact too.
Little Warsaw concentrates in their work on a performative interaction with the Communist past. Their art pieces are rather positioned in fine arts but with a visible performative and theatrical dimension. The playful exposure to the monuments of the Socialist era is in the focal point of their installations. By provoking and confronting generations with symbols of a past they have never experienced and by building up their installations in public spaces a new attitude towards Communism is produced – maybe a “forced remembrance”. The moving and acting body of the spectator that is put in between the reality of his/her own and the artificial reality of a monument that represents something that is gone, is the basis of Little Warsaw´s concept. The body of the spectator is (performatively) filled with information, transformed into a “living” document – this is the way how an actual relation to past events should occur and how postmodern historiography shall function.

The topic of the three-day conference Performing Arts in the Second Public Sphere (org. by Katali... more The topic of the three-day conference Performing Arts in the Second Public Sphere (org. by Katalin Cseh and Adam Czirak, Free University Berlin, May 9 -11, 2014) focused on the second public sphere as a space belonging to unofficial, event-based activities in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc between the 1960s and '80s. The organizers' idea was to redefine the borderline between the official and the unofficial cultural realms by examining underrepresented artistic practices located in the often invisible niches of the state-socialist cultural apparatus. The topics addressed by conference participants ranged from subversive artistic practices and the role of gender in them to anti-politics, dissident life, the formation of networks as conduits for nonconformist activities, and the micro- and macro mechanisms of cultural agency in the official social state apparatuses.

Talks by Katalin Cseh-Varga

Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische Kunst, 2021

Im Vortrag wird der Dialog zwischen Künstler_innen, Kunsttheoretiker_innen und „reisenden“ philos... more Im Vortrag wird der Dialog zwischen Künstler_innen, Kunsttheoretiker_innen und „reisenden“ philosophischen Strömungen in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren erkundet. Grenzüberschreitende intellektuelle Debatten und Einflüsse sind Gegenstand der Untersuchung mit Stationen im sozialistischen Polen, Rumänien, in der Tschechoslowakei und in Ungarn. Die zu behandelnden Fallbeispiele reichen von der Wirkung des Zen-Buddhismus auf die tschechoslowakische Aktionskunst bis zur Etablierung von Künstler_innen als selbsternannte Theoretiker_innen in Rumänien.

This paper explores the performative dimension of an unrealized curatorial concept. This concept ... more This paper explores the performative dimension of an unrealized curatorial concept. This concept of László Beke, called Hungarian Foot Art Club (1972) based on the draft by László Lakner (1970), reached far beyond the typical borders of the Cold War era. Besides an exhibition sketch, the project proposed a football game between Hungarian contemporary artists and the 11 best international artists. Hungarian Foot Art Club should have been realized at documenta 5 curated by Harald Szeemann. The focus is on the ephemerality and de-materialized aspects of the artist’s and the curator’s concept with all its possible sources of inspiration. The fact of ‘unfulfilledness’ enhances the importance of the planning’s performative observation.

During the course of my extensive research on the terminology of alternative culture I encountere... more During the course of my extensive research on the terminology of alternative culture I encountered an interesting finding. A 1976 issue of the literary journal Helikon was almost completely devoted to the topic of deviating fields of living, acting and communicating appearing globally – even in Soviet-type systems, such as Hungary. The issue itself contained a great number of texts that were dealing with, the mostly US-American, phenomenon of counterculture: e.g. excerpts from Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture (1969), an article on underground art written by art historian, theorist, curator and mediator László Beke, a book review of Abbie Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of it (1968) as well as Jerry Rubin’s DO IT! Scenarios of the Revolution (1970) both authored by polyartist Tibor Hajas.
Roszak and Co.’s thoughts on countercultural activities could have served as an inspiration for the Hungarian dissent to join the “Great Refusal” Roszak was talking about, although forms of resistance and counter-opinion were less radical in late-socialist Hungary.
In my paper I would like to address the question of what the self-perception of Hungarian (aesthetic) dissent was like in the 1960s and 70s? What kind of attributes did artists and art thinkers identify with? It is especially relevant to look at information reaching Hungary from the outside (both from beyond and within the Iron Curtain) and mechanisms of how this information was processed.

When asked about his general attitude towards art making, György Galántai, founder of the Balaton... more When asked about his general attitude towards art making, György Galántai, founder of the Balatonboglár Chapel Studio and the Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest, turns out to be a self-taught personality who had wandered in both the Hungarian and the international art world with intellectual thirst to discover and to understand his mission as a poly-artist. Galántai’s notebooks and diaries from the early to mid-1970s reveal a person who was in continuous search for an intellectual forum for discussion (and encouragement!) and who reflected on what he had seen and read recently. The range of topics he touched upon in those very notes reached from semiotics, conceptual art, organic structures, Marxism and Leninism to communication theory. The (self-)reflexive researcher attitude is clearly visible when one looks at Galántai’s exhibition drafts and book excerpts in the notebooks and diaries.
Already in the early years of his artistic career Galántai was looking for the purpose of art and the artist keeping an eye on the ‘greater picture’. Conversations with Galántai had shown that he was always in search for the work of theorists and scientists who provided an explanation to him about human purposefulness pointing towards a Gesamtkunstwerk similar to the Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár.
The aim of my paper is to reach back to the very sources of the Artpool Art Research Center and the conception of the ‘active archive’ through its intellectual history. At the vantage point of this history stands György Galántai and his reception and interpretation of comprehensive theoretical works. With my paper I invite the audience on a tour with stops that include János Selye’s From Dream to Discovery, Vilém Flusser’s works on the philosophy of communication and of artistic production and Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine. What I would like to point out are the interconnectedness between these ‘networked’ personalities, their highly complex world view and Galántai’s (self-)reflexive, thought-through concept of the archive.

Gathering information on international contemporary art was a challenge in state socialist Centra... more Gathering information on international contemporary art was a challenge in state socialist Central Europe. This was especially true for forms of expression that did not fulfil the requirements of socially engaged art and its realist-progressive aesthetics. Those artists whose conception of creation did not meet these guidelines or were not offered an official forum to present and discuss their artworks were keen to look for inspiration elsewhere and/or aimed to be regarded as part of an international art “community” crossing the frontier of the Iron Curtain.

Information travelling through this border reached the non-conformist artists mostly with a certain delay. In most of the cases smuggling tricks were involved. Due to them being located both in Austria and in Hungary, the artist couple Dóra Maurer and Tibor Gáyor, just to name one relevant example, became important practitioners of a networked art and served as transmitters from one (regulated) art zone to the (non-regulated) other. Maurer’s double Austrian-Hungarian citizenship was one of the tricky elements securing a smooth passage of information between worlds of ideological division. It was in 1975 when Maurer met media artist Peter Weibel in Vienna and she invited him to Budapest. One result of this collaboration was the first Hungarian video festival in the Józsefvárosi Galéria Gallery in Józsefváros, Budapest with Weibel showing an impressive amount of material with some explanatory remarks.

From the many travelling artefacts, persons and ideas in times of information blockades during the sixties and seventies in Central Europe I would like to focus on two: on artist sketchbooks and diaries. Both of these artistic media are often overlooked while at the same time they are essential accompanying documents of art production. The notebook is to me a physical “web of knowledge” that is not only a collection of information gathered from different international sources, but also a complex artifact of ideas as well as interpretations. And artist sketchbooks and diaries are not simple archival ephemera but a map of how the conception behind the artworks takes shape and how acquired knowledge is translated.

The notebook-networks I will be dealing with are those of Július Koller (sketchbooks on international artists, art movements) and György Galántai (diaries, notebooks) – both from the early to mid-seventies. The former is to be studied as an archive of inspirations through which modes of information gathering and structuring unfold. And the latter serves as an example of an artist having an intellectual debate with himself and developing ideas.

The link between these two cases will be the information reaching the artists through tricky channels. Galántai was involved into the mail art network, and Koller had corresponded with Klaus Groh, Bernd Löbach, Endre Tót, László Beke, Robert Rehfeldt, Zdzisław Sosnowski, Galeria Sztuki Aktualnej, Géza Perneczky, Petr Štembera, Jiří Valoch, J. H. Kocman, Clemente Padín, Jorje Glusberg and De Appel. For this paper I would like to look into these channels in order to understand Galántai’s and Koller’s procedures of intellectual work resulting in actual art.

Traveling ideas, mirrored here through the cases of the notebook and diary, are in my research used as discursive scheme that affects my historiographical and analytical methodology too.

In the countries of the former Eastern Bloc no public discourse, except that dictated by party do... more In the countries of the former Eastern Bloc no public discourse, except that dictated by party doctrine, seemed to exist. Debates in official media echoed mantras of socialist brother- and sisterhood and the leadership of a worker’s culture. Urban spaces proclaimed the dominance of socialist ideas and were home to parades praising goals and achievements of communism. But this is just a superficial impression. The public membrane of dictatorship was interwoven with almost invisible gestures of criticism and sabotage that appeared on each cultural, economic and political level. This lecture will be about the possibilities and limitations of Hungarian socialism read through the art of the sixties, seventies and eighties as this art tested the borders of Party tolerance and took advantage of favourable circumstances and loopholes in cultural politics.
Illustrated by selected case studies from the Hungary of the sixties until the eighties I will present the theoretical concept of the second public sphere as a suitable narrative to understand the event-based and intermedia art practices in the Kádár era.

The lecture will begin with an introduction to the activities of the COST Action New Exploratory Phase in Research On East European Cultures of Dissent (2017-2021). Special focus is devoted to the impact and focus areas of the Working Group Alternative Cultures chaired by Katalin Cseh-Varga and Rolf Werenskjold.

The well-known publication of Body and the East (1999) contains a narrow chapter on Hungarian per... more The well-known publication of Body and the East (1999) contains a narrow chapter on Hungarian performance art in which László Beke argues as follows: “To gain an understanding of Hungarian performance art, we can refer to three periods which can be defined according to the activities of Tibor Hajas.” Although Hajas is no question an important reference for process-based activities in Hungary, I agree with Maja Fowkes that “[…] performative practices in Hungarian neo-avant-garde art began earlier [than the 1978 Warsaw performance of Tibor Hajas – K. Cs-V.], and entailed a more fluid understanding of the genre.”
In my doctoral thesis I have offered a reading of event-based art through the discursive lens of the “second public sphere”, that I still consider to be an important influential factor in forming the action/performance art scene of the Kádár era. There are indeed much more circumstances which had shaped performative practices before, during and after neo-avantgardism and that are only rarely included into comprehensive essays on what Beke used to call “the Hungarian performance” and that tend to linger on a superficial level.
In my lecture, first of all, I will attempt to clarify terminology and will argue why I think it is more adequate to talk about “performative tendencies” or “processual art” when considering Hungarian body- and event-related activities between 1956 and 1989. I am not claiming to
know the “recipe” of how to write the history of process-based art in a (rather) posttotalitarian condition, but would like to draw the audience’s attention to nuances, possible analytical frameworks that have been not emphasized yet in international debates on Eastern, Central and Southeast European processual art.
The mental walk I invite my audience to follow me through will go through stages of performative activities that reach from conceptually inspired actions, static body art, the fusion of different art media, photo-actions, carefully constructed performances, events inspired by experimental theatre, fluxus-like games and danger-centered performances – all presented in their adequate contexts.

New Narratives of Russian and East European Art: Between Traditions and Revolutions, 2019

Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Culture in Cold War Hungary, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Aktionskunst jenseits des Eisernen Vorhangs. Künstlerische Kritik in Zeiten politischer Repression, 2019

ARTMargins Online, Feb 20, 2017

Samizdat und die kommunikative Herstellung von Oppositionskulturen in Ostmitteleuropa, Mar 2016

Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische Kunst, 2021

Traveling ideas, mirrored here through the cases of the notebook and diary, are in my research used as discursive scheme that affects my historiographical and analytical methodology too.

“This was an event with the aim to turn football into art. As some kind of elementary insanity wo... more “This was an event with the aim to turn football into art. As some kind of elementary insanity would have obsessed us, we had run all around, kicked the ball back and forth, it was a real artist game, an absolute anti-football.” (1) This is the way how one participant of the football action of 1972, namely Gábor Attalai, remembered an event-based art piece conceived by László Lakner and organized by László Beke.
As a unique example of a “conceptual performance” combined with a complex exhibition proposal, Beke submitted a draft to Harald Szeemann on an anti-football game to be played between a team of leading figures of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde and a team formed by the eleven most important international artists to be realized at the Documenta 5.
In our paper, by presenting and analyzing ephemeral materials linked to this fluxus-like anti-football action, we aim to approach the project through the relationship between a national collective of “progressive” artists and the international art world of the seventies. We would like to understand the performative and de-materialized nature of this project as the emergence of an international language being present at both sides of the Iron Curtain. Beyond this our paper will focus on the self-positioning idea of setting up a Hungarian national team and challenging the leading international artists in the context of the Documenta, that was not only the core of the art world but also an institution of the Cold War divided Europe. Therefore we aim to examine the internal tensions between the anti-football project’s de-materialization that correlated with the international trends and its self-proclaimed Hungarianness that referred to a national artistic paradigm.

(1)Gábor Attalai quoted in Fehér, Dávid. „”Nem hiszek a túl direkt dolgokban...” Beszélgetés Attalai Gáborral.” [Interview with Gábor Attalai] Ars Hungarica. 2011/3. pp. 110-122, here p. 118.

Charles Tamko Sirato, when reporting about the birth of the Manifeste Dimentionste (1936), rememb... more Charles Tamko Sirato, when reporting about the birth of the Manifeste Dimentionste (1936), remembers Marcel Duchamp as an artist who already around 1913 added a new element to the arts, namely the motion, circulation, which was integrated into an art of fixation and stasis. But this is only one aspect of the revolutionary and performative perspective Duchamp´s creation brought into being through the re-invention of the visual and fine arts.
In my paper I am interested in the detection of performative moments in Duchamp´s art philosophy and practice which could have influenced Hungarian experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s. I would like to outline how important the French “master´s” approaches were to later avant-gardists, like e.g. Miklós Erdély and György Galántai, in order to promote a performative/immaterial turn in the unofficial art scene beyond the Iron Curtain.

While a written, manipulative and mechanic language dominated the bureaucratic regime of late soc... more While a written, manipulative and mechanic language dominated the bureaucratic regime of late socialist Hungary, the intention of the neo-avant-garde art scene was to look for and to find a different, often subverted form of expression in order to break with the dominance of a ruling sign system. The language of clandestine art circles was mostly a visual one that opposed the official expectations of Hungarian cultural politics in the 1960s and 1970s. In my talk I would like to approach the medium of photography, as a mode of production and documentation, in its role of seeking for an alternative visual language that compared to the cultural/art project of actually existing communism was mostly understood as de-constructive. In order to demonstrate the more or less disregarded role of photography in the Hungarian neo-avant-garde as a mode of genetic quest I chose three different approaches that will be the empirical milestones of my investigation:
- photographic documentation resulting in the formation of an “active archive” (the Artpool Art Research Center and its prehistory as an avant-garde life project of György Galántai)
- photographic montage as a core element of conceptual tendencies (focusing first and foremost on the intermedia undertakings of Miklós Erdély)
- photographic “glimpse” as a strategic part of performative artworks and performances (Gábor Attalai´s conceptual actions staged for the camera and the visual remnants of the Budapest-based experimental theatre Kassák Ház Stúdió)

Strategic self-documentation and a challenging approach towards keeping some documentary fragment... more Strategic self-documentation and a challenging approach towards keeping some documentary fragments on experimental art in late socialist Hungary were central to an avant-garde lifestyle developed under repressive conditions. In different practices of self-historicizing Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez locates the purpose “[…] to record the parallel histories that are subjectively preserved and exist as the fragments of memories and semi-forgotten oral traditions.” There are many sources and origins of why East-Central-European artists have chosen creative documentary formats like photography and film in order to go their own independent way. The Hungarian punk musician László Najmányi claims when looking back to the sixties and seventies that an intense communication and diary culture was essential in order to document that parallel culture existed. The aim of documentation was not only to be seen as an act of rebellion against the authoritarian regime, it sometimes took the shape of a life project. A good example for this way of thinking/acting is György Galántai´s concept of the “active archive”. The artist and founder of the experimental archive Artpool Art Research Center neglects the exclusively collecting task of the archive and sees one of its main functions in the process of co-creation. In his view the archive is not a body of dead items, but a lively process.
In my talk I will look at specific examples of Hungarian event-based art from the late socialist period and will examine them thoroughly through the lens of performance documentation. I will put the emphasis on the tension between holdup and flow in photographs of action pieces that depict minimalistic gestures and body poses while not missing the link to the overall context of “Goulash Communism”. My interest is in the visually documented works of Gábor Attalai and actions performed at the Chapel Studio of Balatonboglár that were primarily intended for the camera. Holdup and flow will be discussed in a wider framework of documenting performing arts, which should clarify the interrelation between artistic intention and socio-political circumstances.

Art historical research focusing on the geopolitical region of East, Central and Southeast Europe... more Art historical research focusing on the geopolitical region of East, Central and Southeast Europe during late socialism in the last decades points into the direction of reflexive and relational thinking. This statement is getting more clear if e.g. Piotr Piotrowski´s “horizontal history of modern art”, Klara Kemp-Welch´s Networking the Bloc, Alexei Yurchak´s Everything Was Forever, Until it Was No More or Miško Šuvaković´s and Dietmar Unterkofler´s use of the terminology of “internationalism” crosses our mind. All of these more or less well-known examples prove the tendency towards a “block-free” and border-crossing approach, which doesn´t rely any longer on hierarchies and hegemonies. This particular way of thinking is one in concrete and abstract networks with a multiplicity of perspectives, critical reflection, dynamism and flexibility that (in most of the cases) doesn´t disregard historical, political, social and cultural circumstances neither on the global nor on the local level. I suspect that the next generation of art historian and future scholars of visual studies would like to realize these factors in their upcoming academic theory and practice.
In my talk I will present the outlines and necessity of a meta-narrative , which could serve as a theoretical respectively methodological tool to understand the specificity of event-based and intermedia art in East-Central-Europe in the post-totalitarian condition. Reaching back to the considerations of Mikhail M. Bakhtin I will demonstrate that dia/polylogism, chronotopes, polyphony and heteroglossia are useful categories to understand the cohesion between the performing and intermedia arts and the phenomenon of the second public sphere. Without loosing sight of the Cold War situation I will test my access on case studies from Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

(The methodological model was first developed by the author within the framework and for the purposes of the Budapest-based research group A hatvanas-hetvenes évek magyar művészetének komplex kutatási programja (2014-2017; project convener Edit Sasvári) in May 2015.)

In 1970 at the self-sponsored exhibition of István Nádler and György Jovánovics in the Adolf ... more In 1970 at the self-sponsored exhibition of István Nádler and György Jovánovics in the Adolf Fényes Hall (Budapest) a popular program of the Kossuth Radio introduced and advertised the semi-official show at the venue itself. The surprise among the participants of the exhibition was enormous because nobody expected that a neo- avant-garde show will ever catch the positive attention of official media. As it turned out shortly after, the voice of the radio was a mock tape created by Jovánovics himself to signalize the marginal and discriminated position of Hungarian progressive art within the late socialist system. As art historian Dávid Fehér (2011) puts it, the fake recording was much more than a “pop art gag”, Jovánovics regarded it as a “pataphysical art work” that stands for “an anonymous activity, which’s goal is not the solution of the situation or to remediate a failure. In contrast, it should reflect on problems with the help of small modifications”.
It was not only György Jovánovics who reflected on the absurdity of cultural politics and everyday life, artists like Gyula Pauer and Miklós Erdély followed a similar aim. In my talk I will approach mainly conceptional artworks of the mentioned figures through their own philosophical statements. I will present and analyze Jovánovics’s, Pauer’s and Erdély’s constructed art realities before the background of Hungary’s “socialism with a human face”.

Die neue Generation von ungarischen Avantgarden erlebte bis zur Entstehung des Films Agitátorok v... more Die neue Generation von ungarischen Avantgarden erlebte bis zur Entstehung des Films Agitátorok von Dezső Magyar bereits zwei verlorene Revolutionen: den eigenen Volksaufstand von 1956 und die Revolte von 1968 in der Tschechoslowakei. Die experimentelle Kunst wurde durch diese Ereignisse traumatisiert, die Restriktionen der sozialistischen Regime zogen einen Beziehungsaufbau zur Parteiideologie nach sich, der durch eine überwiegende Skepsis gekennzeichnet war. Individuelle Historiographien (wie bspw. Verfolgungen und Einschränkungen in der künstlerischen Autonomie) und die Oszillation zwischen strenger Diktatur und Sonderfrieden drängten die intellektuelle und Kunstszene dazu die eigene gesellschaftliche und politische Rolle neu zu denken.
Um diesen Prozess adäquat aushandeln und darstellen zu können, lag der Vergleich zur revolutionären und hoffnungsvollen Euphorie der Räterepublik an der Hand. Der Film setzt historische/historisierende Bilder ein, verarbeitet aber sehr wohl eine Aktualgeschichte von Avantgardebewegungen und fungiert als ein Kanal alternativen Meinungstransfers.
Neben einer umfangreichen Deutung und Kontextualisierung von Agitátorok, möchte ich auf die „rebellierende“ Dimension im Schaffen des Fluxus-Künstlers Tamás Szentjóby detaillierter eingehen. Die ihm zugewiesene Rolle des „Szentesi“ ist eine Figur des nie schweigenden und ruhenden Revolutionärs, die mit der tatsächlichen künstlerischen Tätigkeit von Szentjóby ab der zweiten Hälfte der 1960er Jahre korrespondiert.
Der Film verweist auf verschiedenen Ebenen auf die Bedeutung einer Gegenmeinung in der Formierung von autonomen Öffentlichkeiten, die leider weit weg von einer tatsächlichen Umsetzung auch 1969 in der sog. „zweiten Kultur“ verweilen müssen.

The main hypothesis of the dissertation project is that in order to exist Central-Eastern-Europea... more The main hypothesis of the dissertation project is that in order to exist Central-Eastern-European artistic subcultures needed specific venues. These spaces were part of a parallel culture, which was located on the borderline of official and underground phenomena. On the one hand nonconformist artists and artist communities used available spaces creatively, on the other hand interventions generated alternative places that largely eluded the communist regime’s control. I am very much interested in performative and (inter)medial actions within spaces of the Hungarian unofficial art scene and how these spaces are linked to each other in the form of an (invisible) network. To understand and to reconstruct the network of the “second public sphere” in Hungary of the late 1960s until the end of the 1980s, I will have a closer look on the information channels, media and other communication mechanisms that characterized the so called underground. To conclude my research it is also indispensable to ask for the presence and legitimation of artistic countercultures in the XXI. century.
The aim of my research is to develop an adequate definition of the “second public sphere” for the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde from performance and media studies point of view. And therefore it is extremely important to use theoretical tools that have their origin in the geopolitical region and time under consideration here. (In my presentation I will elaborate on the distinction between e.g. public sphere-theories of the “West” and the “East” in detail.) It is also crucial to reflect on the practical side of parallel culture’s art too (oral history, dialogue with artists) and the reliability of sources such as secret service files.

"The well-known essay of André Lepecki “The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives ... more "The well-known essay of André Lepecki “The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances” provided (amongst others) an inspiring insight into the human body as a creative container of re-producing and re-inventing the past. Theories about re-enacting performances and action pieces are going beyond an investigation of the purely visual material and are attached to corpo-reality and an intense interaction with the recipient´s senses.
The proposed paper should draw attention to the special circumstances in Central-Eastern-European action art´s archiving processes. I would like to focus on archiving processes that are manifested in the re-enactment itself and in the original´s and “re-production´s” documentation. Regarding the division of the paper into these two understandings of archiving, the first part will focus on the analysis of Janez Janša´s, Janez Janša´s and Janez Janša´s Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav (2007). This particular re-enactment captured multiple stratifications of history and identity in a creative format that Zdenka Badovinac and Nataša Petrešin-Bachalez would call “self-archiving” or “self-historicization”. This complex performance will function as a case study to explain the idea of “the body as archive”.
In the second part of the presentation I would like to outline general problems of archiving a transitory event like a performance as well as approaches to contribute to an archive of Central-Eastern-European performing arts. The latter is to be examined through the project Parallel Chronologies. An Archive of East European Exhibitions (2013) initiated by the tranzit organizations. The online archive of Parallel Chronologies functions as a database that “[…] is to give international visibility and accessibility to East European art events, and to enable cross-national research and comparisons.” Just like in the analysis of Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav my intention here too would be to incorporate the recipient´s point of view and operation possibility.
The separation of the topic pursues the aim to suggest appropriate theoretical methods investigating the live performance as an archive and the archiving of its digital reproduction. This purpose seems to be urgent especially in the field of Central-Eastern-European performance research."

"Hungary’s history was as troubled as Eric Hobsbawm stated Europe´s past in the Age of Extremes. ... more "Hungary’s history was as troubled as Eric Hobsbawm stated Europe´s past in the Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991. Dictatorships followed each other right from the end of WWI until the system change in 1989, but among all the authoritarian regimes socialism existed the longest. After the thawing atmosphere of the second half of the 1960s, critical tone was articulated in the Neo-Avant-Garde´s “second public sphere”. A form of criticism against any kind of hierarchical repression arose from performative and intermedial artworks and still hasn't disappeared even in postmodern times long after the fall of the Wall.
The paper will focus on three dimensions of hierarchical bondage: being chained through the other, trough the authorities and through history. El Kazovszkij (1948-2008) created the performance series Dshan Panoptic that consisted of 36 installed and static pieces between 1977 and 2001. Each episode reflects an alienated, artificial dreamworld that consists of personae, which are sculptures and monuments of themselves. Tradition and even human emotions like love keep individuals frozen. Kazovszkij concentrates on women-to-men relations and gendered issues in which objectification and the body as ownership are profiled.
Tamás St.Auby (1944-) became a renowned Fluxus artist not only in Avant-Garde circles of the 1960s and 1970s and was always open to experiment and networked thinking. His early works and performances are closely tied to the criticism of being chained through authorities. Symbolism and political aesthetics are inherent in his works like Movable Trench for Three (1969) that refers to a constant war-situation between the regime and the people; Exclusion Exercise. Punishment Preventive Autotherapy (1972/2005), which is a metaphor to escape from repressive control; The Sculpture of Freedome´s Soul (1991) was a moment of erasing memories on communism and release the bodies of the past from ideological burden.
As in many societies also Hungary´s tradition is covered with monuments that try to (re)build the past and tradition and keep us chained to history. Places like the Memento Park (initiated in 1993, containing an assortment of monuments from the socialist era) reminds us on an uncommented pool of subjective memories that require criticism. The art duo Little Warsaw´s most popular topic is to enforce performative interactions with their re-conceptualised monument relicts like Nefretitis Body (2003) and Deserted Memorial (2004). Little Warsaw´s purpose is to expose the synchrony in historical perspectives and to accentuate that reflection is more important, than reconstruction.
All three examples are meant to show inner relations between the body, its representation, authoritarian practices of control respectively performance and intermedia art. Justification is supported through theories of biopolitics (Foucault), psychoanalysis (Freud), statements to “bodies of alliance” (Butler), urban studies, thoughts on monuments vs. counter monuments and installation as “staging practice” (Umathum, Rebentisch)."

"Die Erforschung verschiedener Dimensionen der sog. "zweiten Öffentlichkeit" im ehemaligen Ostblo... more "Die Erforschung verschiedener Dimensionen der sog. "zweiten Öffentlichkeit" im ehemaligen Ostblock erforderte schon immer spezielle Strategien, da der Zugriff zu Materialien des illegalen Underground mehrfach begrenzt war/ist und sich aus verschiedenen quantitativen und qualitativen Quellen speist. Mit dem Siegeszug des digitalen Zeitalters wurden Schritt für Schritt Websites ins Leben gerufen um die bischer versiegelten Ressoucen dieser "zweiten" in die "erste Öffentlichkeit" zu transportieren und einen demokratischen Zugriff zu diesen zu gewährleisten. Dieser Zugang wird u.a. von Faktoren der Gestaltbarkeit beeinflusst: wobei auf www.artpool.hu und auf www.tranzit.org/exhibitionarchive die Archivaren (autoritär) bestimmen, welche Inhalte in den Datenbanken erscheinen, ist www.parallelarchive.org ein partizipatorisches Projekt, in dem eingescannte, fotografierte Dokumente der einzelnen ForscherInnen nach vorgegebenem Muster hochgeladen werden können. Zugänge zu den Homepages sind in allen drei Fällen uneingeschränkt, ein Passwortgeschützter Bereich wäre ein Verstoß gegen die Prinzipien der betreibenden Organisationen - Restriktionen gehören (theoretisch) nunmehr der Vergangenheit an.
Grundsätzliche Fragen des Vortrages problematisieren die veränderte Methode der wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von archivierten Beständen dieser "zweiten Öffentlichkeit" (in einer zeitlichen Periode von Mitte der 1960er bis Ende der 1980er Jahre). Auf der einen Seite soll dem nachgegangen werden welchen Effekt der digitale Zugriff auf die Untersuchungsmodi der traditionellen Archivarbeit hat. Und auf der anderen Seite sollen Auswirkungen der aktiven Teilnahme der WissenschaftlerInnen in der Gestaltung des virtuellen Archivs thematisiert werden. Beide Fragestellungen sind vor dem Hintergrund einer Parallelkultur in Osteuropa und ihrer besonderen Umstände zu analysieren. "

H-Soz-U-Kult, Nov 6, 2013

Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performanc... more Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances.

The special issue of Arta Journal (no. 20-21/2016), edited by Cristian Nae, focuses once again on... more The special issue of Arta Journal (no. 20-21/2016), edited by Cristian Nae, focuses once again on conceptual art in Central and Eastern Europe, analyzed both in its regional specificity and from a global, transnational perspective.

Edited by Cristina Cuevas-Wolf and Isotta Poggi, 2018

In the fall of 1956, Hungarians led a successful rebellion against Soviet control. However, after... more In the fall of 1956, Hungarians led a successful rebellion against Soviet control. However, after only ten days of freedom, the uprising was brutally crushed, and the Soviet-aligned minister János Kádár assumed power. Focusing on the Kádár era (1956–89), this publication explores the political reforms and artistic experimentations under the regime’s authoritarian cultural policy: promote, tolerate, ban. Artists who complied with ideological mandates were financed by the state; those who didn’t could exhibit, but they received no monetary support; other artists were forced into exile. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, posters, advertisements, mail art, and underground samizdat literature illustrate the diverse modern art forms and radical aesthetics created during this time. The book provides context for the vibrant debates behind the production of Cold War art and culture in Socialist Hungary and closes with the personal account of one of its main protagonists, the exiled Hungarian artist and critic Géza Perneczky.

Promote, Tolerate, Ban showcases art and cultural artifacts from the Getty Research Institute, the Wende Museum of the Cold War, and public and private archives in Budapest.
Cristina Cuevas-Wolf is the resident historian at the Wende Museum of the Cold War. Isotta Poggi is assistant curator of photographs at the Getty Research Institute, working on acquisitions and exhibitions of rare photographs with a focus on the documentation of cultural heritage, history, and archaeology.

Foreign Language Index , 2020

Summary of most compelling foreign-language scholarship compiled by the indexers of the Society o... more Summary of most compelling foreign-language scholarship compiled by the indexers of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH). If you would be interested in serving as an indexer for a future issue, please get in touch. See also Scahweb.org