CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

Samizdat and Underground Culture in the Soviet Bloc Countries Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania April 6-7, 2006 “Samizdat and Underground Culture in the Soviet Bloc Countries” is the first scholarly gathering in the United States dedicated to the specific practice of underground anti-establishment literature and artistic activities that flourished from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. The conference brings experts in the field from both the US and abroad to offer a comparative study of the variety of dissident literary and artistic practices in the Eastern Bloc countries, and to offer a critical approach towards their national specificity and formative socio-political factors. The conference is co-sponsored by the Slavic Department and the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn.
Conference program and papers are available online http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/slavic/calendar/samizdat_cold_war.htm

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Call for contributions to the workshop: “Visions after the Fall: Museums, Archives, and Cinema in the reshaping of popular perceptions of the socialist past”.
The workshop will analyze the use of audio-visual material - including archival footage, documentary and feature films, exhibition catalogues, memorials, and other traces of historical remembrance - in the process of 'reshaping' the memory of the socialist past in Eastern Europe. The aim of the workshop is to contribute to the understanding of the ways in which historical revisionism uses both familiar and recently discovered audio-visual material ? from popular cinematographic imagery to previously classified information. The principles of exhibiting these materials and other ways of making them available to the broad public will be in the focus of the workshop discussions.
Please send a short presentation abstract (ca. 500 words) and your CV by April 10, 2006 to Oksana Sarkisova at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
More information is available at http://www.osa.ceu.hu/2006/2006-03-10.shtml

EXHIBITION REVIEW

'Interrupted Histories'
Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
14 March 2006 - 28 May 2006
Exhibition "Interrupted Histories" focused on the works of East and Central European artists. It includes some works of artists from the Middle East, but they are remaining in minority. The show curated by Zdenka Bodovinac, the director of the gallery and one of the most respected curators of contemporary art in Central Europe, is exploring the notion of the history of contemporary art in the countries situated on the margins of the capitalist West - Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Russia, Iran, Turke, etc. Political changes of the end of the 20th century not only redrafted the map of Europe but also transformed lives of many artists - yesterday residents of the underground found themselves claimed by the Western institutions and art market. The question asked by the curator is what did happened as to their personals histories as to the history of art of the "marginal countries" in general. Impressive exhibition display is not limited to art works - the curator included in it impressive quantities of "samizdat" - artists publications of the period before political changes. Bodovinac found the way to exhibit self-published materials - brochures, books, leaflets in very interesting way. Documentation is playing a role of the "background" for the exhibited art works. Thank to this the exhibition is becoming a kind of archive of contemporary art. However this archive could take different shapes from yellowish pamphlets "published" by the Polish artist Zofia Kulik to a smart computer presentation of the archive of Moscow conceptualism created by Vadim Zakharov.
Artists: Huseyin Alptekin, Artpool, Chto delat, Amit Goren, Ivan Grubanov, Dmitry Gutov, Dejan Habicht & Tanja Lazetic, Edi Hila, IRWIN, Komar & Melamid, Ziga Kariz, Zofia Kulik, David Maljkovic, Anja Medved & Nadja Veluscek, Pages, Lia Perjovschi & CAA, Borut Peterlin, Alenka Pirman, Tadej Pogacar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art, Marjetica Potrc, Luka Princic, Marija Mojca Pungercar, Khalil Rabah, Erzen Shkololli /Alban Hajdinaj, Anri Sala, Gentian Shkurti/, Mladen Stilinovic, Saso Vrabic, Vadim Zakharov.