Caterina Preda | University of Bucharest (original) (raw)

Books by Caterina Preda

Uniunea artistilor plastici si artistul socialist de stat, 2023

Acest volum analizează rolul jucat de Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici din RPR / RSR în perioada 1950-... more Acest volum analizează rolul jucat de Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici din RPR / RSR în perioada 1950-1990 în consacrarea artistului socialist de stat din perspectiva relaţiei dintre artă și politică, așa cum este ea mediată de arhivele instituţionale ale domeniului artelor plastice. Volumul folosește un corpus important de documente de arhive care privesc UAP (ANIC, ACFP, CNSAS, Ministerul Culturii, MAE, revista Arta plastică / Arta) și propune o analiză detaliată a organizaţiei create de regimul comunist pentru a gestiona domeniul artelor plastice. Printre problemele analizate s-au aflat natura acestei organizaţii, componenta sa sindicală, dar și caracterul său de asociaţie profesională. O a doua arie de interes a vizat situarea UAP în cadrul instituţional cultural comunist și al relaţiei sale cu Ministerul Culturii în ceea ce privește rolul jucat de diferite instituţii subordonate (în principal Fondul Plastic), dar și legat de diverse chestiuni financiare (surse de finanţare, venituri și cheltuieli). Aparent, UAP a fost o instituţie centralizatoare cu rol de intermediar sau de mediator între stat (Ministerul Culturii și PMR /PCR) și artiștii profesioniști. Studiul detaliat al Uniunii ne arată că UAP a coordonat structurile subiacente sau, uneori, paralele ale Fondului Plastic (FP) și Combinatului Fondului Plastic (CFP), dar că relaţia sa cu acestea și cu Ministerul Culturii a variat în cele patru decenii. În timp ce FP avea un rol sindical și de executor, ministerele erau comanditari, iar Uniunea avea doar o autonomie controlată de Ministerul Culturii. Cartea analizează Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici ca instituţie centralizatoare, ideologică și examinează rolul acesteia în sistemul de comenzi de stat, dar și relaţiile sale cu străinătatea și cu Securitatea. În fine, volumul se încheie cu o privire de ansamblu asupra principalelor transformări instituţionale de după 1990.

This book analyzes the relationship between art and politics in two contrasting modern dictatorsh... more This book analyzes the relationship between art and politics in two contrasting modern dictatorships. Through a detailed look at the Chilean and Romanian dictatorships, it compares the different ways in which political regimes convey their view of the world through artistic means. It examines how artists help convey a new understanding of politics and political action during repressive regimes that are inspired by either communism or anti-communism (neoliberalism, traditionalist, conservative). This book demonstrates how artistic renderings of life during dictatorships are similar in more than one respect, and how art can help better grasp the similarities of these regimes. It reveals how dictatorships use art to symbolically construct their power, which artists can consolidate by lending their support, or deconstruct through different forms of artistic resistance.

Art and Politics under Modern Dictatorships,, 2017

Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici (UAP) din România a fost înființată de autoritățile comuniste în 1950... more Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici (UAP) din România a fost înființată de autoritățile comuniste în 1950 prin preluarea patrimoniului Sindicatului de Arte Frumoase (1921) și beneficiind de sprijinul Fondului Plastic fondat în 1949. Această instituție a jucat un rol central în articularea unui model cultural bazat pe implicarea statului în creația artistică. Cu toate acestea, ea nu a beneficiat aproape deloc de atenția cercetătorilor din științele sociale.
Acest volum are menirea să servească drept instrument de lucru cercetătorilor preoocupați de problematica artelor plastice în general, și a UAP în particular, propunându-și să le ofere acestora documentele necesare înțelegerii cât mai complete a dinamicii ideologice și instituționale a acesteia.

Are there any lessons Romania can teach transitional justice scholars and practitioners? This boo... more Are there any lessons Romania can teach transitional justice scholars and practitioners? This book argues that important insights emerge when analyzing a country with a moderate record of coming to terms with its communist past. Taking a broad definition of transitional justice as their starting point, contributors provide fresh assessments of the history commission, court trials, public identifications of former communist perpetrators, commemorations, and unofficial artistic projects that seek to address and redress the legacies of communist human rights violations. Theoretical and practical questions regarding the continuity of state agencies, the sequencing of initiatives, their advantages and limitations, the reasons why some reckoning programs are enacted and others are not, and these measures’ efficacy in promoting truth and justice are answered throughout the volume. Contributors include seasoned scholars from Romania, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and current and former leaders of key Romanian transitional justice institutions.

Chapters in books by Caterina Preda

Introduction to the volume I edited The State Artist in Romanian and Eastern Europe The Role of ... more Introduction to the volume I edited The State Artist in Romanian and Eastern Europe The Role of the Creative Unions

Un i v e r s i t a t e a d i n B u c u r e ș t i F a c u l t a t e a d e Ș t i i n ț e P o l i t ... more Un i v e r s i t a t e a d i n B u c u r e ș t i F a c u l t a t e a d e Ș t i i n ț e P o l i t i c e www. e e a g r a n t s. o r g | www. f o n d u r i-d i v e r s i t a t e. r o | www. f s p u b. u n i b u c. r o |

This article introduces the comparison of the relationship between art and politics in ten dictat... more This article introduces the comparison of the relationship between art and politics in ten dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania), and South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay). The specific analysis concentrates on the 1970s and the 1980s when the two regions were ruled by dictatorships, either inspired by communism or anti‑communism (Doctrine of National Security). The article provides an overview of the main theoretical issues in studying such diverse regimes by focusing on their institutional frameworks. The tentative conclusion is that these regimes are not only comparable, but also similar in several respects.

Memory, Conflict & New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States, 2013

"Description Terror, dread, and violence against civilian populations constitute a true predic... more "Description

Terror, dread, and violence against civilian populations constitute a true predicament of our contemporary political world. Authoritarian governments develop methods to capitalize on the arts in support of terror, where violence and trauma provoke more of the same in a vicious circle. This book argues that the arts—from film and literature to painting and comics—offers qualitatively different readings of terror and trauma, readings that endeavor to resist the exploitation and perpetuation of violence. The contributors suggest that political inquiry into the phenomenon of terror may benefit profoundly by developing non-reductive ways of reading the arts.

Author Bio

Matti Hyvärinen is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Tampere

Lisa Muszynski is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Science History, University of Helsinki.

Praise for Terror and the Arts

“Terror and the Arts vividly explores the fractures and paradoxes of contemporary politics from the viewpoint of aesthetic experience. Be it visual, literary, poetic or musical, art allows us an insight into the terrorized present that can perhaps help in framing it differently, criticizing and avoiding the automatic response of aggression and retaliation. Whoever thinks that the present confronts us with the need to re-think and re-name contemporary violence must read this challenging collection of essays.”--Adriana Cavarero, author of Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence

“Terror mobilizes the arts, visual and narrative, as well as their scholarly study. Not only, as can be expected, for the struggle against terrorism or for working through the trauma. In surveying the spaces between general human response to terror and defined political engagement, the insightful and often controversial chapters of this volume also raise more disconcerting questions: about complexities of judgment in the artistic processing of terror, about the possible competition between the arts and the acts that raise the threshold for subversion and shock, about the ways in which the arts can slide or be coerced into normalizing terror or furthering the issues promoted by terrorist groups or regimes, about the arts’ entrapment in the cultural circulation under the sign of terror, and about the ways in which the arts, politicized by terror, inevitably implicate their audience. The book opens new intellectual vistas, rejecting comfortable attitudes.”—Leona Toker, Professor of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“How can cataclysmic traumas such as 9/11 or appalling spectacles such as Abu Ghraib be made the objects of art, and what political value might they have? By ‘reading the arts politically,’ Terror and the Arts demonstrates with great clarity and insight the vitally important role of the arts in imaginatively ‘working through’ the unspeakable violence of our age.”--Mark Freeman, College of the Holy Cross and author of Rewriting the Self"

The nation states in the Black Sea area have initiated many co-operative policies but the area al... more The nation states in the Black Sea area have initiated many co-operative policies but the area also sees numerous tensions between neighboring states. The conflict-co-operation paradox, along with ethnic fragmentation and shared culture, are two of the most salient features of the Black Sea Area. These paradoxes are not the only force in the evolution of the region though. There are also issues such as ethnic and national identity, the failure of democratization, energy and resources, as well as the influence of other powers such as Russia, the EU and the USA.

The key questions asked by the authors in this book are: to what extent is there an emerging regionalism in the Black Sea area? Is the Black Sea a region? What are the common interests shared by the former USSR states, the three EU member states neighboring the Black Sea - Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, and a NATO country - Turkey? Are the fault-lines dividing them more pervasive than the incentives for cooperation? Can we speak of a shared identity?

The first part of the book places the Black Sea problematique in a wider historical and spatial context. The authors then take a closer look at the region and examine further the structure of the Black Sea area. They offer a perspective on smaller actors with great ambitions, such as Azerbaijan and Romania, and go on to make a comparison between the emerging regionalism in the Black Sea area and regionalisms in other parts of the world.
Contents: Introduction, Ruxandra Ivan; Part I Identities, Space and History: Fluid histories: culture, community, and the longue durée of the Black Sea world, Alexander A. Bauer and Owen P. Doonan; Two axes, three seas: a geopolitical assessment of the wider Black Sea area, Nicolas Bárdos-Féltoronyi. Part II Structural Evolutions after the Cold War: Black Sea Cooperation and the Great Powers: The Black Sea area within the international system: the struggle for influence between the United States and Russia, Baptiste Chatré and Stéphane Delory; Energy politics in the Black Sea region, Radu Dudau and Armando Marques Guedes; Normative narratives of EU foreign policy in the Black Sea region, Cristian Nitoiu; The Russian factor in the wider Black Sea region: inconclusive status quo or a neo-imperial strategy?, Octavian Milevschi. Part III Regionalism in National Perspectives: New regionalization for a new regional leader? The role of Azerbaijan in the southern Caucasus, Samuel Lussac; Black Sea regional leadership in Romanian foreign policy discourse, Ruxandra Ivan. Part IV A Regionalism like No Other? The Black Sea in Comparative Perspective: Regionalism at the margins: East Central European and Black Sea regional cooperation initiatives in comparative perspective, Luciana Alexandra Ghica; A comparison of Caribbean and Black Sea regionalisms, Caterina Preda; Index.About the Editor: Ruxandra Ivan is a Lecturer at the University of Bucharest, Fellow, Romanian Academy, Romania and Associate Researcher, Université Libre de Bruxelles, BelgiumReviews: 'This is an exceptionally broad-ranging account of the significance of the Black Sea region. It covers everything from ancient history to comparative perspectives in the modern world, yet its clear focus on the nature of regionalism gives the work both coherence and relevance for the study of politics and international relations as a whole.'
Karen Henderson, University of Leicester, UK

'A valuable contribution to the literature on the international politics of the Black Sea region. The chapters in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the divergent positions of the different actors in the Black Sea region…an excellent starting place for anyone wanting to understand the complexities and contradictions of Black Sea regionalism in the twenty-first century.'
Andrew Cottey, University College Cork, Republic of Ireland

'At a crossroad between the former Soviet Union Southern Republics and the EU Eastern member states and Turkey, the Black Sea region is a controversial reality and remains underdeveloped and understudied. As such, Ruxandra's book provides a welcomed coherent collection of substantial chapters comparatively addressing the history, structure, and policies of this region. Both the multiple endogenous and exogenous factors of regional cooperation and conflict, notably US, EU and Russia, are taken into consideration and critically evaluated. The result is a well-focused and insightful contribution to the knowledge of progresses and shortcomings of a relevant part of regionalist comparative studies.'
Mario Telo, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences

'This is a welcome and excellent addition to the literature on regionalism. An interdisciplinary team of scholars cover various aspects of Black Sea area regionalism and its limitations. Some chapters in this informative book also give valuable comparative perspectives that can contribute to conceptual and theoretical advances in regionalism studies.'
Finn Laursen, European Union Centre of Excellence, Dalhousie University, Canada

This chapter presents a comparison of the regional integration pattern followed by Caribbean stat... more This chapter presents a comparison of the regional integration pattern followed by Caribbean states and the model pursued by the countries of the Black Sea region after 1990. The purpose of this comparison is to detect if there is a common model of integration in maritime regions.

Special issues of journals by Caterina Preda

Special issue of Studia Politica, Nr 3/2017

Uniunea artistilor plastici si artistul socialist de stat, 2023

Art and Politics under Modern Dictatorships,, 2017

Memory, Conflict & New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States, 2013

"Description Terror, dread, and violence against civilian populations constitute a true predic... more "Description

Author Bio

Matti Hyvärinen is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Tampere

Lisa Muszynski is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Science History, University of Helsinki.

Praise for Terror and the Arts

Special issue of Studia Politica, Nr 3/2017

East European Politics and Societies and Culture, 2024

This article discusses the uses and functions of visual representations in the articulation of a ... more This article discusses the uses and functions of visual representations in the articulation of a comprehensive memory of dissent against the Communist regime in Romania. Through qualitative research using the interdisciplinary study of the art and politics of memory, the study answers the question of how artistic renditions of the past differ from official discourse on dissent and how these representations are used politically. This article argues that these artistic representations enrich the understanding of dissent against the Romanian Communist regime and thus play a political role in consolidating a missing or limited memorialization of diverse forms of opposition to the Communist regime, thus disrupting the narrative of perfect control. Artistic discourses about the Communist past include at least three types of portraits of dissenters: (1) anti-Communist heroes who participated in the armed resistance of the 1940s and 1950s; (2) Communist prisoners who are recalled either as victims or "prison saints"; and (3) (extra)ordinary citizens who had nonconforming ideas either through their political activity or through their cultural choices. The latter are recalled as participating in workers' strikes, as exercising a form of personal opposition through their refusal to comply with the regime's natalist policies (dissenting women), or as taking part in broader cultural opposition forms, such as watching Western films on videocassettes. These artistic discourses vary from heroization to politicization, serve to build legitimacy for the democratic regime, explain how dissent had a role in the change of regime, and accentuate individuals' agency.

Southeastern Europe, 2024

This article explains the role played by contemporary art evocations of the communist past in the... more This article explains the role played by contemporary art evocations of the communist past in the establishment of a more comprehensive memory of the communist regime in Romania. The analysis delineates the three memory frameworks of the communist regime in Romania (official memory, activist memory, and a nostalgic outlook) and contraposes them to the five artistic memory frameworks (Ceaușescu's portraits, the 1989 revolution, the victims of communism, the portraits of the members of the Securitate, and the communist nostalgia) that have crystallized in the period 2000-2020. Theoretically, the article uses the art and politics of memory focus, which is found at the intersection of the studies of cultural/artistic memory and the role of art in Transitional Justice studies, to propose a critical perspective on contemporary artistic discourses of the communist past in Romania.

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latinoaméricaines et caraïbes, 2024

The objective of this article is to analyze from an interdisciplinary perspective, that uses tran... more The objective of this article is to analyze from an interdisciplinary
perspective, that uses transnational and cross-regional
cultural studies of the Second Socialist World, the unique
example of the Chilean Museum of Solidarity in the context
of its relations with the socialist countries in Eastern Europe
during the 1970s. The originality of this case study is that it
has not been previously analyzed and it helps explain the
threads uniting countries of the Second Socialist World and
the role of cultural relations as they were established during
the Cold War between socialist countries in the south and the
east. As a methodology, this article uses a qualitative “small
number” approach to analyze cultural relationships between
socialist countries. The conclusions show that, for some countries,
such as Romania, cultural relations were important in
establishing an autonomous policy from Moscow, such as
that of Nicolae Ceausescu, but the type of artistic exchanges
promoted witnessed an aesthetic paradox, supporting
a depoliticized version of art. Moreover, the path-dependency
argument for cultura

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2023

Using an approach situated at the intersection of cultural memory studies and (critical) heritage... more Using an approach situated at the intersection of cultural memory studies and (critical) heritage studies, with a focus on the ambivalent socialist heritage of socialist statues and monuments and their changing role in postsocialist public spaces, this article engages with the postcommunist strategies of reckoning with the past in Romania and Bulgaria in the period 1990-2020. Comparing the kinds of monumental memory of communism that were established in these countries, the author discusses how each dealt with their ambivalent socialist heritage through a public memory policy comprising three combined strategies: removal; preservation; and the replacement of communist heroes with anticommunist counter-monuments. The author concludes that stances toward the socialist heritage manifest various tensions in terms of the types of statues that were removed or, alternately, allowed to remain; of the opposition between local and national decisions as well as between the official approach and citizens' perspectives; and, finally, of aesthetic versus political criteria.

Nationalities Papers, 2022

After the fall of the socialist regimes in South and Eastern Europe socialist statues and monumen... more After the fall of the socialist regimes in South and Eastern Europe socialist statues and monuments were either removed, dislocated, or resignified. Several performance practices have been employed to engage with these statues and monuments. Focusing on the role played by artistic memorialization in the processes of dealing with the communist past, this article uses the concepts of "performative monuments" (Widrich) and "memory events" (Etkind) to analyze several examples of what can be called "performative monuments events." As many statues were removed, the statues witnessed performative practices in the process of their elimination. The monuments that were conserved were dislocated and exhibited as part of "sculpture park museums" and observed nostalgic, ironic practices of tourists that perform the memory of communism by interacting with the monuments. This article analyzes several examples in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania of socialist monuments that have remained in place or that have been dislocated and resignified by contemporary artists using performative practices of memory events that engage monuments. This exploratory research argues that artists, through their "performative monuments events," try to bring the people back to replace the statues with "living statues" and to question the absurd megalomaniac monuments using metaphorical, material instruments.

Third Text, 2021

This article discusses the specific case of the surveillance by the Securitate, the Romanian secr... more This article discusses the specific case of the surveillance by the Securitate, the Romanian secret police, of artists who engaged in performance art (body art, action art, live art) during the last two decades of Romanian communism. Building on Cristina Vătulescu’s concept of ‘police aesthetics’ and Mogoș and Berkers’s ‘mechanisms of control’, this article analyses the aesthetic surveillance by the Securitate and the different strategies to prevent problematic art it employed towards performance artists that ranged from control, to discouragement, and support given to complying artists. Through a close reading of the files by the Securitate of three artists, Alexandru Antik, Imre Baász, and Wanda Mihuleac, I show performance art was considered as having an ‘interpretative’ or ‘hostile content’ depending on the status inside the regime of the artist who practiced it.

ArtMargins online, 2020

During the establishment of the new socialist regime in Romania, “in order for visual artists to ... more During the establishment of the new socialist regime in Romania, “in order for visual artists to be it was felt necessary to create a new form of organization, a new organism that [would] become an active factor in the work of culturalization of the masses, and for the development of creation.”(1) This article is an adaptation of part of a forthcoming book about the role of the Romanian Artists’ Union (Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici, UAP, established in 1950), the Artistic Fund (Fondul Plastic, FP, 1949) and the Artistic Fund Production Factory (Combinatul Fondului Plastic, CFP, 1952) in the production of state art during the socialist regime in Romania (1945–1990). Using the official archives as source material, the article briefly sketches the establishment and function of the UAP, the role of the Fund and its Factory, and the concept of the “state socialist artist” in Romania.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies , 2020

This article analyses three artistic projects that contribute to a transnational artistic memoria... more This article analyses three artistic projects that contribute to a transnational artistic memorialisation of Operation Condor: João Pina’s project Condor (2005–2014), the documentary film by Pedro Chaskel, De vida y de muerte, testimonios de Operación Condor (2000–2015), and Voluspa Jarpa’s En nuestra pequeña región de por acá (2016/2017). Situated at the crossroads of the study of the role of art in Transitional Justice processes and cultural memory studies, this article conceptualises the role of art in forging a transnational memory through the lens of the “art and politics of memory”. Using Jacques Rancière’s observation of the role of art in building a new “distribution of the sensible”, this investigation argues that artistic practices of remembrance employ three strategies. In the first place, they render visible those who are still absent; secondly, they document and provide supplementary sources about human rights abuses during dictatorships, and thus give back human dignity to the victims. Finally, they also criticise the status quo of official memory. In the absence of a transnational memory of the secret cooperation that occurred within Operation Condor, artistic practices of remembrance help build this memory and create a “distribution of the possible”.

ONLINE JOURNAL MODELLING THE NEW EUROPE, 2020

This article analyses the transregional connections established by the Chilean Museum of Solidari... more This article analyses the transregional connections established by the Chilean Museum of Solidarity with socialist countries in Eastern Europe, and in particular with Romania. The analysis employs theories of the cultural Cold War, transnational and transregional studies, and especially the transnational and cross-regional analysis of cultural relations and artistic expressions, to discuss an example of “cultural transnationalism” (Dragostinova and Fidelis) of the Socialist Second World. Through a micro-history approach of the Global Cold War regarding the relationship between Romania and the Museum of Solidarity, this study aims to enhance the understanding of relations between the East and the South as being politicized by the highly bureaucratized cultural institutions. If cultural relations were important in establishing an autonomous policy such as that of Ceausescu, the type of artistic exchanges promoted were the expression of an aesthetic paradox, supporting a traditionalist, nationalist version of art.

HOLOCAUST STUDII ŞI CERCETĂRI, 2019

Although the Roma Holocaust in Romania has been documented, and there is an official policy to re... more Although the Roma Holocaust in Romania has been documented, and there is an official policy to recall this historical fact, its memory is marginal in contemporary Romanian society. This article analyzes four recent examples of art of memorialization of the Roma Holocaust in Romania and argues these artistic forms of memory play an important role in the building of a more comprehensive public memory of the Porrajmos. The analysis uses an interdisciplinary approach, which combines theoretical resources that belong to the study of cultural memory with a focus on artistic memory, and the analysis of the relationship between art, politics, and memory. The examples of artistic memorialization have two aims: to render visible the historical trauma through the use of testimonies of the survivors and to provide further documentary sources of this historical trauma.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2019

This article analyses how three types of artistic memorialization of monumental socialist public ... more This article analyses how three types of artistic memorialization of monumental socialist public works transform these into examples of socialist modernism in Eastern Europe. First, it tackles the issue of rendering socialist architecture visible through the Socialist Modernism online platform. Second, it focuses on the collection of documentary proofs by six documentary photography projects in Eastern Europe. Finally, it looks at how four contemporary artists in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic are resignifying socialist art in their artistic practices. Analysed from a perspective of transnational cultural memory practices, these three artistic endeavours contribute to a shared approach to the monumental socialist public works in the region. I argue that some of these strategies lead to a unified, depoliticized, decommunized memorialization of the socialist art of Eastern Europe.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Eastern European countries together with the Sov... more During the second half of the twentieth century, Eastern European countries together with the Soviet Union were ideologically dominated by Marxism-Leninism and experienced the establishment of socialism in all spheres of activity. The role of art during the communist regimes has been studied from an ideological point of view with a domination of Western-perspectives centered on the concept of totalitarianism or totalitarian art 1. This approach has been amended to include a different national periodization for each of the countries in the region, as well as to identify specific artistic contexts related to the pre-communist experience. In this collection of articles we propose to look at the state art realized in communism from an institutional perspective which focuses most importantly on the creative unions, which were created or reformed by the communist states based on the previous existing trade-unions structures, as well as to other cultural institutions. This institutional perspective can shed light on the state' perspective on the matter, but as well, as several studies in this issue show, on the contradictions of the official policies, on the difficult implementation of the state' projects, and on the dissenting responses by artists in different manners which also change throughout the long period of control by the communist regimes. In line with the studies about the USSR, using the archives of the creative unions allows for a more nuanced outlook on the relationship between the state and artists 2. While the " state artist " 3 is not specific to the Eastern European and Soviet countries, but can be identified in such diverse political contexts which include France 4 , the United States (especially during the New Deal), post-1

This article analyses 'Project 1990' (2010–2014) as an example of 'art of memoriali-sation'. The ... more This article analyses 'Project 1990' (2010–2014) as an example of 'art of memoriali-sation'. The project included twenty temporary artistic interventions on the empty pedestal of the former statue of Lenin in Bucharest. The author compares this example of art of me-morialisation to other memory strategies found in the Romanian public space after 1990. Building on James Young's concept of anti-monument, 'Project 1990' questioned the ways in which communism is remembered in Romania, and how the transition to democracy, in the opinion of many of the exhibiting artists, failed. This curatorial project is a good example of the aestheticisation of memory—that is the anti-nostalgic and ironic treatment of symbols of the past, among which Lenin himself. Caterina Preda is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Bucharest. In the last decade, Romania has registered an increasing number of artistic productions dealing with its communist legacy. These productions have covered different topics, various media, and a plurality of perspectives. An interesting example is 'Project 1990' curated by Ioana Ciocan between 2010 and 2014, which included twenty artistic interventions on an important site of memory in Bucharest: the empty pedestal of the former Lenin statue. The tone of these artworks was ironic and anti-nostalgic, simultaneously using and evoking an aestheticised version of the communist past. This article investigates 'Project 1990' as an anti-monument, situating it within the Romanian art of memoria-lisation. Furthermore, the article questions how Ciocan's work, including the curated installations, wanted to incite memorialisation. These works of anti-monumentality stand in an interesting contrast to other memorial strategies found in the Romanian public sphere after 1990, namely: the strategy of official forgetting; public and private initiatives to promote a history and memory of victimhood; and personal as well as socially networked nostalgia. The space occupied by 'Project 1990', which was previously physically empty but emotionally fraught, provides an interesting window into the way communism is

The European Legacy, Oct 16, 2012

Under a political dictatorship it is primarily from the margins that an artistic critique can be ... more Under a political dictatorship it is primarily from the margins that an artistic critique can be articulated, as suggested by the examples presented in this article from Romania and Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. By focusing on their threefold marginality—of the artist, the art form, and the subject of art—and by applying to them Jacques Rancière's concept of dissensus, the analysis of artistic variants of marginality sheds light on the relationship of art and politics in totalitarian regimes.

This article discusses Romania’s relationship with the communist past. It is structured around th... more This article discusses Romania’s relationship with the communist past. It is structured
around three themes: official forgetting and belated condemnation, the pervading
discourse of NGOs which focuses on the victims of communism, and the resurgence
of nostalgia in opinion polls, seen as an expression of the problems of living in a
democracy. In this context, the author examines visible forms of cultural memory
which have appeared in recent years (the 2000s), in particular the role played by the
nostalgic gaze. We find thus different types of nostalgia: social, commercial and
tourism. We can then question the role played by this nostalgic gaze in works by
Romanian contemporary artists and filmmakers who produce memory art. As a
specific form of cultural memory, memory art seeks to sketch out an image of the
past which is more comprehensive. The article describes the different forms nostalgia
has taken in Romania in recent years and juxtaposes this with the most
important works of art, following three themes: the obsessional portrait of
Ceaușescu, personal, even autobiographical memory, and the residues of communism
as depicted in Projet 1990.

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 4 Issue 1, May 2015

Little attention has been given in political science analyses of communist-era Romania to the rel... more Little attention has been given in political science analyses of communist-era Romania to the relationships between visual artists and the secret police. In this article, I attempt to address this lacuna in our understanding of the interactions between the state and artists by presenting two forms of collaboration of visual artists during the last two decades of Romanian communism: the artists’ involvement in the ideological project of the communist party and their “collaboration” with the secret police. In addition, I also examine the ways in which artists have contributed a posteriori to our understandings of the communist experience with their artworks. I offer detailed examinations of the cases of three visual artists. The approach I have adopted includes analyses of interviews with two artists who represent two opposing cases and examinations of the files that were kept on them by state surveillance organs, so as to provide a new, multifaceted perspective on the relationships between artists and the communist regime. I contend that the study of artistic artifacts can supplement traditional sources for political science analyses of the communist past and provide a more nuanced perspective on the period. The article shows that imposing artistic dogmas is not simply a top-down process, but one resulting from complex interactions between different institutional and individual actors.

This article presents the relation of East European artists with the Secret Police institutions. ... more This article presents the relation of East European artists with the Secret Police institutions. While focused on the Romanian case, several examples from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria help place the topic in a regional context. The analysis includes both the viewpoint of the Secret Police on the artistic world as such, as well as the gazes of artists on the reality of their time. The conceptualization of artistic surveillance includes three types of examples: the deconstruction of the officially fabricated reality, the focus on the details of the everyday life forbidden by official propaganda, and the reflection of artists on the secret police apparatus. The conclusions of this study show that the investigation of artistic artifacts together with the secret police archives can help bring a new perspective on the limits of domination exerted by the communist regime.

An argument is made in this article for the need to take into account in political science analys... more An argument is made in this article for the need to take into account in political science analyses of the Chilean contemporary art of memory that critically invokes matters, and issues connected to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989), and which have not been solved in democracy. Chilean art of memory– composed of those artistic expressions stemming from different artistic disciplines that problematize issues connected to the dictatorial past – questions democratic consolidation by these topics still present, advancing a new perspective on this same reality, a different outlook, otherwise absent from the official renderings that privilege consensus and democratic consolidation. In this sense, this article discusses the specific case of the disappeared of the dictatorship through the analysis of the artworks of eight Chilean contemporary visual artists, and with a focus on their distinct points of view that tackle three topics, the permanency of absence, the sites of memory, and the torturers. The conclusion of this brief article is that memory art presents perspectives absent from the institutional study preferred by political science’ analyses, and that analyzing these artistic expressions helps form a better understanding of the relation to the traumatic past.

Segunda Mesa Redonda Políticas artístico-culturales de la dictadura chilena. En la ocasión, expon... more Segunda Mesa Redonda Políticas artístico-culturales de la dictadura chilena. En la ocasión, expondrán la académica rumana Caterina Preda sobre Arte y dictaduras: comparación del caso chileno y rumano (70-90's)

Ponencia sobre el arte de memoria en Rumania, 25 anos después de la transición a la democracia. ... more Ponencia sobre el arte de memoria en Rumania, 25 anos después de la transición a la democracia.

Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales, Buenos Aires.

Presentation at the ECPR Bordeaux (4-7 September 2013) - Panel: Art as political Witness

LASA, 2025

CFP for Latin American Studies Association Congress in San Francisco (23-26 May 2025) New Authori... more CFP for Latin American Studies Association Congress in San Francisco (23-26 May 2025)
New Authoritarian Cultural Policies in the 21st century Latin America

How do the new autocracies and hybrid regimes of the 21st century in Latin America deal with cultural policies and cultural affairs? Contemporary autocracies (Geddes 1999; Linz 2000; Gandhi 2008; Ezrow and Frantz 2011; Svolik 2012), as well as hybrid regimes/competitive authoritarianism (Ottaway 2003; Bogaards 2009; Levitsky and Way 2010), have increasingly been analyzed in the last decades. Less interest has been manifested for their cultural approach (Bonet and Zamorano 2020). This panel proposes an exploratory comparative study of the cultural policies of new autocratic and hybrid regimes of the 21st century in Latin America from a theoretical perspective focused on the relation between culture and politics (Von Beyme 2014) or art and politics (Preda 2017) and the new institutionalism of authoritarian regimes (Schedler 2009). We want to investigate if these regimes innovate in their approaches of the role of cultural actors or if there is a shared approach of dealing with artists and cultural actors in general. We propose a comparative reflection on the “New Left” or “Pink Tide” governments (Hugo Chavez (1998-2013) and Nicolas Maduro (2013-) in Venezuela, Rafael Correa (2007-2017) in Ecuador, Evo Morales (2006-2019) in Bolivia, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina (2007-2015), Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico (2018-2024)) as well as on that of the “New Right” (Jair Bolsonaro (2018-2022) in Brazil, and Nayim Bukele (2020-) in El Salvador)

, have increasingly been analyzed in the last decades, their cultural policies and cultural affai... more , have increasingly been analyzed in the last decades, their cultural policies and cultural affairs (Bonet and Zamorano 2020) have not represented a central topic for political scientists. This panel discusses the plural roles of cultural actors facing the new autocratic regimes of the XXIst century. Autocracies consider art's power as paramount to the consolidation of their authority and the examples from the XXth century are numerous. This panel invites papers that look at new approaches of contemporary authoritarian regimes in dealing with their artistic spheres from the perspective of the new institutionalism of authoritarian regimes (Schedler 2009) and the respective strategies to counter the politicization of art by non-democratic regimes. We want to investigate if these regimes innovate in their approaches of the role of cultural actors or if there is a shared approach of dealing with artists and cultural actors in general. At the same time, cultural actors can play several roles: they disrupt the unanimous discourse through a dissensus, or a rupture in the sensible (Rancière), they propose new ways of seeing the real and they create alternatives to the dominating perspective.

Panel on: Art and the transnational memory of the dictatorships in South America Artistic remembr... more Panel on: Art and the transnational memory of the dictatorships in South America Artistic remembrance is an important part of the memorialization of the dictatorial past. This panel seeks to bring together scholars working on different types of artistic renderings of the past in South America in the aftermath of dictatorships. When dictatorships end, artists continue to discuss the past and question issues that are interesting for the organization of the memory of suffering. We invite proposals that analyze specific cases of artists, different types of political art, with a focus on visual arts. We want to investigate the diversity of approaches of artistic remembrance, from the documentation of the past beyond the official gaze, to the challenging of the continuity in the public life of the perpetrators.

Creating for the state: the unions of artists and the state artists during the communist regimes ... more Creating for the state: the unions of artists and the state artists during the communist regimes in Eastern Europe An understudied topic of the establishment, functioning, and demise of the communist regimes, the (creative) unions of artists in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union represent a fascinating topic of research, which best captures the relationship between the artists and the state. This relationship was not static, but evolved in time in the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s, and was further on transformed by the change of regime at the beginning of the 1990s. The state artists, those that accepted to create for the new communist states, were one of the main effects of the establishment of the new regimes. While public orders existed prior to 1945, their importance grew extensively in the decades of communism and the forms it took transformed the public function of art. We invite contributions on the topic of the unions of artists, the state artists (especially specific cases of artists), the types of refusals the artists were able to engage in, as well as on the transformations of this context after 1990/1991. The main topics that can be touched upon, among others are: • the (creative) unions of artists (visual arts, music, theater, cinema) • relations between the unions of artists • the " state artists " – portraits of specific artists • professional artists versus amateurs • painting the leaders – the official iconography • types of public orders and types of patrons (factories, ministries, etc.) • the changing roles of the unions of artists after 1990/1991 • state exhibitions

Call for articles for a special issue of Studia Politica (Issue 3 of 2017) Editor: PhD Lecturer, ... more Call for articles for a special issue of Studia Politica (Issue 3 of 2017)
Editor: PhD Lecturer, Caterina Preda (Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest) caterina.preda@fspub.unibuc.ro
http://www.studiapolitica.eu/

Creating for the state: the unions of artists and the state artists during the communist regimes in Eastern Europe

An understudied topic of the establishment, functioning, and demise of the communist regimes, the (creative) unions of artists in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union represent a fascinating topic of research, which best captures the relationship between the artists and the state. This relationship was not static, but evolved in time in the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s, and was further on transformed by the change of regime at the beginning of the 1990s. The state artists, those that accepted to create for the new communist states, were one of the main effects of the establishment of the new regimes. While public orders existed prior to 1945, their importance grew extensively in the decades of communism and the forms it took transformed the public function of art. We invite contributions on the topic of the unions of artists, the state artists (especially specific cases of artists), the types of refusals the artists were able to engage in, as well as on the transformations of this context after 1990/1991.

The project proposes to write a monographic study of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania (UAP)... more The project proposes to write a monographic study of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania (UAP) in the period 1950-2010 in the absence of a landmark study of one of the most important communist and postcommunist organizations that administers, controls and represents visual artists. The period of analysis includes both the communist regime, as well as the first 20 years of the democratic regime (1950-2010) so as to be able to capture in detail the transformation it suffered as a consequence. The project advances an analysis at several levels of this organization: an institutional sociologic approach, an analysis in terms of members and leading teams (elites), a research of the legal statutes that UAP went through and the definition of the artist, the relation with the communist and democratic state through a case study – that of producer of public monuments in Bucharest. The analysis of the relation with the Romanian state will include several types of interactions between the state and the artists through the investigation of archive documents unexploited until now (UAP, CNSAS, ANR, etc.), of interviews with those that governed the UAP and through the use of the methods specific to the analysis of the interdisciplinary field of art and politics. The project will disseminate its results through an international conference, a database with the UAP members, an index of the monuments realized by the UAP in Bucharest, as well as the publication of a monograph of UAP, of a volume including the presentations at the international conference, and a volume with archive unpublished documents.

Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic jo... more Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic journal edited by the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest. Established in 2001, it is one of the first academic journals in the field of political science in Romania. The journal fosters the work of the first generations of Romanian political scientists permeated by a sense of critical engagement with European and American intellectual and political traditions that inspired and explained the modern notions of democracy, pluralism, political liberty, individual freedom, and civil rights.
Studia Politica. Romanian Poitical Science Review is currently indexed in the following international social science data-bases: ProQuest, CEEOL, EBSCO Political Science Complete, GESIS-SSOAR, and Scopus.
We invite original contributions in English, French, Italian, German or Romanian from scholars whose work focuses on contemporary political science, political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, international relations and European studies issues. All the texts submitted for publication are peer reviewed by at least two referees. We also welcome reviews of political science books recently published (no more than 3 years old). Contributions should be sent to info@studiapolitica.eu. The deadlines for submission in 2016 are the following:
01.02.2016 for publication in no. 1/2016
30.04.4016 for publication in no. 2/2016
01.07.2016 for publication in no. 3/2016
30.09. 2016 for publication in no. 4/2016.
For author guidelines, please refer to our site: http://www.studiapolitica.eu/Author-guidelines.

Call for Papers for the international conference: The ”state artist” in Romania and Eastern Europ... more Call for Papers for the international conference: The ”state artist” in Romania and Eastern Europe, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, 5 November 2016. Deadline: 15th of May.

Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic journal ... more Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic journal edited by the Department of Political Science,University of Bucharest. Established in 2001, it is one of the first academic journals in the field of political science in Romania. The journal fosters the work of the first generations of Romanian political scientists permeated by a sense of critical engagement with European and American intellectual and political traditions that inspired and explained the modern notions of democracy, pluralism, political liberty, individual freedom, and civil rights.
Studia Politica. Romanian Poitical Science Review is indexed in the following academic data bases: CEEOL (since 2005); SSOAR (since 2009); Scopus (since 2013); EBSCO (since 2011); ProQuest (since 2013).
We invite original contributions in English, French, Italian, German or Romanian from scholars whose work focuses on contemporary political science, political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, international relations and European studies issues. All the texts submitted for publication are peer reviewed by at least two referees. We also welcome reviews of political science books recently published (no more than 3 years old).
Please comply with the schedule of submission deadlines, as given in the list below:
Spring (1) 2016: February 1st
Summer (2) 2016: April 15th
Fall (3) 2016: August 1st
Winter (4) 2016: September 30th
Please refer to our website for author guidelineshttp://www.studiapolitica.eu/Author-guidelines.

The establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought for the visual arts, the establi... more The establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought for the visual arts, the establishment of the “state artist” (Haraszti). Artworks were commissioned by the state, which offered extensive rewards for the artists, obliged to comply with the political and ideological rigors of the regime. As part of the research project “From the “state artist” to the artist dependent on the state: the case of the Union of Visual Artists (1950-2010) – the Bucharest branch”, this conference seeks to explore the different transformations that the artists underwent in order to comply with the extensive role assumed by the totalitarian state in the arts. We invite contributions on the broad topic announced, that of the state artist in Romania and Eastern Europe with a specific focus on visual arts, but we are also interested to discuss other instances of collaboration with the regimes in place (1950s-1990). The conference aims to discuss the state artist in the context of communist regimes from multiple points of views. The topics discussed could be, but are not limited to:

− How was the new artist shaped by the communist regimes?
− Were artists able to integrate Socialist Realism as a mandatory style? If not, which were the limits of this mandatory style or the national specificities?
− Which were the types of resistance to the model of the state artist?
− How did Socialist Realism translate in different visual practices?
− What role did the Union of Visual Artists of Romania play? How does it compare to other unions in the East?
− What are the transformations of the unions of artists after 1990?

Those interested in presenting a paper should send an abstract of 500 words as well as a short CV (including a short list of publications) to caterinapreda@gmail.com until the 15th of May 2016. A selection of conference presentations will be published in a volume, thus the accepted participants must send their contributions 1 month in advance (1st of October 2016). The contributions must address the topic of the state artist, and must have 8.000 words including footnotes with a separate list of references. Organizing committee: Caterina Preda, Alina Popescu, Dan Drăghia. Place: The Institute for Political Research, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest. The languages of the conferences are Romanian, English, French.

America in the second half of the twentieth century have imagined different models of articulatio... more America in the second half of the twentieth century have imagined different models of articulation of the arts (visual arts, music, theater, cinema, literature and dance). This panel proposes a discussion of the different models of action and of the diverse roles played by artists to reflect on politics in times of political violence. When dictatorships end, artists continue to discuss the past and question issues that are interesting for the organization of the memory of suffering. We invite proposals that analyze specific cases of artists, cultural policies of the regimes, different types of political art, as well as apolitical reactions to the different demands of the dictatorships of the twentieth century.