Parallax Views – Repositioning the East (2015 & 2016)
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Parallax Views
Repositioning the East
Conversation series and collaboration with springerin, special edition No. 2/2016
It is a good 25 years since the categories “West” and “East” underwent a decisive shift. It has taken almost as long to overcome the restrictive and patronizing terminological straitjacket of so-called “Eastern Art” or, worse still, “Art from the former Eastern Bloc.” After all, the geographical circumlocution “Art from Eastern Europe” is nothing more than a work-around that tends to conceal the deeper problematic issue—namely securing a definitive place for this work in the contemporary art canon—rather than actually contributing to shedding light on the matter. The special edition No. 2 of springerin in 2016 took a fresh look at the problem outlined above. This series of questions was explored by renowned theorists and art historians in two conversation series jointly organized by springerin and Kontakt on July 2, 2015 and January 30, 2016. The aim was to trigger a kind of “parallax” view: not in a sense locating the “East,” or rather its art, in a static fashion from fixed individual perspectives, but instead adopting “dual-perspective” views to limber up entrenched conceptual constructions.
Peter Osborne and Nataša Ilić tackled the larger geopolitical frame of involvement within which the “East” has been and remains situated today in terms of art and exhibition politics. Ekaterina Degot and Cosmin Costinaş, both devotees of practical exhibition-making, considered which operative function may be played by positively claiming the “East.” An enlightening clash of perspectives also emerged in the dialogues between Branislav Dimitrijević and Rasha Salti, and between Keti Chukhrov and Anthony Yung: in the first instance, by recalling the historical worldwide solidarity that used to span Eastern European countries and parts of the Arabic or “third” world; in the second instance, by an exploration of the continuing ramifications of the ideological legacy of the discussants’ countries of origin (Russia and China) in all their incoherency. Boris Buden and Marta Dziewańska took the changing historical constellation of the “East” as their point of departure and ponder how history and the present can be productively opened up to each other. Completing the edition, in an interview with the doyens of Czech contemporary art, Jiří Ševčík and Jana Ševčíková looked at the practical dimension of “opening up to Eastern Europe” on the basis of their own work. C.H.
For more information see: https://www.springerin.at/en/2016/2/
Repositioning the East
Conversation series and collaboration with springerin, special edition No. 2/2016
It is a good 25 years since the categories “West” and “East” underwent a decisive shift. It has taken almost as long to overcome the restrictive and patronizing terminological straitjacket of so-called “Eastern Art” or, worse still, “Art from the former Eastern Bloc.” After all, the geographical circumlocution “Art from Eastern Europe” is nothing more than a work-around that tends to conceal the deeper problematic issue—namely securing a definitive place for this work in the contemporary art canon—rather than actually contributing to shedding light on the matter. The special edition No. 2 of springerin in 2016 took a fresh look at the problem outlined above. This series of questions was explored by renowned theorists and art historians in two conversation series jointly organized by springerin and Kontakt on July 2, 2015 and January 30, 2016. The aim was to trigger a kind of “parallax” view: not in a sense locating the “East,” or rather its art, in a static fashion from fixed individual perspectives, but instead adopting “dual-perspective” views to limber up entrenched conceptual constructions.
Peter Osborne and Nataša Ilić tackled the larger geopolitical frame of involvement within which the “East” has been and remains situated today in terms of art and exhibition politics. Ekaterina Degot and Cosmin Costinaş, both devotees of practical exhibition-making, considered which operative function may be played by positively claiming the “East.” An enlightening clash of perspectives also emerged in the dialogues between Branislav Dimitrijević and Rasha Salti, and between Keti Chukhrov and Anthony Yung: in the first instance, by recalling the historical worldwide solidarity that used to span Eastern European countries and parts of the Arabic or “third” world; in the second instance, by an exploration of the continuing ramifications of the ideological legacy of the discussants’ countries of origin (Russia and China) in all their incoherency. Boris Buden and Marta Dziewańska took the changing historical constellation of the “East” as their point of departure and ponder how history and the present can be productively opened up to each other. Completing the edition, in an interview with the doyens of Czech contemporary art, Jiří Ševčík and Jana Ševčíková looked at the practical dimension of “opening up to Eastern Europe” on the basis of their own work. C.H.
For more information see: https://www.springerin.at/en/2016/2/