Events
International conference

Scars of the nineties

Scars:
Reflections on Art
and Society in
Central-East Europe
in the 1990s

Zagreb, 9th and 10th July 2021

Organizers
Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Institute of Art History, Zagreb

Scientific Committee
Konstantin Akinsha, PhD, independent researcher and curator, USA/Ukraine
Michal Koleček, PhD, Faculty of Art and Design, Jan Evangelista Purkyně
University, Ústí nad Labem
Ljiljana Kolešnik, PhD, Institute of Art History, Zagreb
Ivana Mance, PhD, Institute of Art History, Zagreb
Ksenia Nouril, The Print Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Organizing Committee
Sanja Sekelj, Institute of Art History, Zagreb
Janka Vukmir, Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Jadranka Vinterhalter, Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Darko Šimičić, Tomislav Gotovac Institute, Zagreb
Ana Ćurić, Institute of Art History, Zagreb

Keynote speakers:
Konstantin Akinsha, Andreas Broeckmann

Participants:
John Blackwood, Sandra Bradvić, Miha Colner, Milena Dragićević-Šešić, Barbora Hájková, Bojan Ivanov, Jasna Jakšić, Kaja Kraner, Cristina Moraru, Christian Nae, Stella Pelše, Anne Pfautsch, Dijana Protić, Tihana Puc, Keiko Sei, Sanja Sekelj, Anya Smirnova, Darko Šimičić, Željka Tonković, Jadranka Vinterhalter

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The aim of the conference Scars: Reflections on Art and Society in Central-East Europe in the 1990s, organized by the Institute of Art History and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Zagreb, is to initiate further interest in the research of the period, as well as to engage in a dialogue with researchers who deal with the countries that share similar or comparable political histories and cultural backgrounds.

The conference addresses a wide array of topics, ranging from the challenges of defining the Central-East European region and the accompanying terminological issues, networks of power relations after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the interrelationship between the national, international and transnational social and cultural spaces in the new countries, as well as the self-organisational and self-institutionalising strategies of the actors in the cultural field. In addition to the examination of the interfaces between art and political activism, the conference also touches upon the role of the new networks that emerged in the 1990s, such as the Syndicate mailing list or the network of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art, as well as the artistic phenomena that originated or gained greater prominence in the 1990s, like socially engaged art, net art or public art. With the wide range of topics and approaches and a number of distinctive spatial perspectives, we hope that this conference will serve as a contribution to a horizontal interpretation of the art of the region, while simultaneously offering new insights and perspectives that will contribute to our understanding of the changes in the cultural field and its relation to the wider socio-political frameworks in the decades that followed.

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The conference is held online. In order to register and receive the ZOOM link, please send an email with your name and surname before Wednesday, July 7th to ssekelj@ipu.hr. The conference will also be live streamed on the Facebook Pages of the Institute of Art History and the Institute of Contemporary Art.

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The conference is organized within the research project “History of Artistic Institutions in Croatia” (PU-IPU-2019-6), conducted at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb.

The conference was originally organized in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka to accompany the exhibition 90s: Scars, within the project Rijeka2020: European Capital of Culture.

The conference is financially supported by Goethe Institut Zagreb, City of Rijeka, Rijeka2020: European Capital of Culture.

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