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  1. —Research Seminars
Where the West Ends?
18—19 March 2010
Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Warsaw (PL)

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      Where the West Ends?, Research Seminar, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Warsaw, 18–19 March 2010

  2. In the frame of the Former West project, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw will hold a two-day seminar focusing on art in the former Soviet Union and its immediate zone of influence after the transition of 1991.

  3. Program
    Thursday, 18 March 2010

    • 09.45 Introduction by Joanna Mytkowska and Marta Dziewańska

    SESSION 1: WHERE THE WEST ENDS
    Chair: Claire Bishop

    SESSION 2: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: POST-SOVIET/POST-COLONIAL
    Chair: Maciej Gdula

    • 14.30 Short presentations and panel discussion:
    • 16.30 Break
    • 16.45 Olga Chernysheva, screening and discussion
    • 18.00 Close and book launch of 1968/89: Political Upheaval and Artistic Change
    • 20.30 Dinner

  4. Program
    Friday, 19 March 2010

    SESSION 3: ART PRACTICES, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS
    Chair: Claire Bishop

    • 10.00 Sarah Wilson: ‘Olga Chernysheva: Tenderness and Danger’
    • 10.30 Ilya Budraitskis: ‘To the Reversion of History: Russian Politics and Political Art in the 1990s, 2000s and After’
    • 11.00 coffee
    • 11.15 Nadim Samman: ‘Go West!’
    • 11.45 Viktor Misiano [to be confirmed]
    • 12.30 Discussion
    • 13.00 Lunch

    SESSION 4: CONNECTIONS TO EASTERN EUROPE
    Chair: Joanna Mytkowska

    • 14.15 Tomas Pospiszyl: ‘National revivals and avant-garde in Eastern Europe. An attempt at a meaningful parallel’
    • 14.45 Edit Andras: ‘Public monuments in changing societies’
    • 15.15 Inke Arns: ‘Avant-garde in the Rear-View Mirror: From Utopia under General Suspicion to a New Notion of the Utopian’
    • 15.45 Break
    • 16.00 Lucy McKenzie, Paulina Ołowska, ‘Full Moon’, 2000 (screening) (to be confirmed)
    • 17.00 Discussion
    • 17.30 Close and thanks

  5. The motivations for turning to the East (rather than to the ‘Former West’) are twofold, and tied to the specifically Polish context, where the Museum of Modern Art in based. The first concerns art critical frames of reference. Despite the West’s growing interest in art practices from this region, it is difficult adequately to map and describe these practices using Western artistic vocabularies, which seem insufficient and badly adapted to the post-socialist context. The second concerns points of identification. Since 1989, Eastern European artists have tended to adopt one of two polarised positions towards the West: on the one hand, expressing a strong affiliation or ‘natural’ adhesion to the West, and on the other hand, a complete detachment from or even denial of Western models.

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    Russian art in the post-transition period seems to be very relevant in this regard. Despite the dominant (and frequently colonial) character of Western culture, Russian art has rarely adopted Western models. As a significant but completely separate sphere of development, post-transition art of the former Soviet Union remains a somewhat unknown quantity: obscure, unclassifiable and somehow inaccesible. What are the main developments (artistically, theoretically, institutionally) in Russia since 1991? What parallels can be drawn to the Eastern European scene? Can the new critical terminologies recently developed there also speak to the situation in Eastern Europe?

    The seminar therefore aims to map the liminal zones of the West and foreground key aspects of contemporary visual art and a discourse that the ‘West’ cannot adequately describe and account for using its existing terminologies. As such, it will provide an important counterpoint to research in the ‘former’ aspects of both East and West.

  6. Video Recordings

    1. Sarah Wilson, Ilya Budraitskis and Nadim Samman: Art Practices, Exhibitions and Institutions
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    2. David Riff: Autonomy in Russian art
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    3. Inke Arns: Avant-garde in the Rear-View Mirror: From Utopia under General Suspicion to a New Notion of the Utopian
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    4. Tomáš Pospiszyl, Edit András, Inke Arns: Connections to Eastern Europe
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    5. Nadim Samman: Go West!
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    6. Joanna Mytkowska and Marta Dziewańska: Introduction
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    7. Tomáš Pospiszyl: National revivals and avant-garde in Eastern Europe. An attempt at a meaningful parallel
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    8. Sarah Wilson: Olga Chernysheva: Tenderness and Danger
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    9. Alexei Penzin, Olga Bryukhovetska, Keti Chukhrov and Olga Chernysheva: Post-Soviet/ Post-Colonial
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    10. Edit Andras: Public monuments in changing societies
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    11. Boris Groys: Repetition of Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Revisited
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    12. Boris Groys, Ekaterina Degot and David Riff: Russian art in a global context
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    13. Ekaterina Degot: Russian art: a cultural exception?
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  7. Supported by

    With the financial support by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.