[artinfo] Call for papers

[Eross Nikolett]

>Call for papers
>
>CONSTRUCTED HAPPINESS
>The Domestic Environment in the Cold War Era
>
>The Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn is
>organising a conference, Constructed Happiness - The Domestic
>Environment in the Cold War Era, in 20-21 May 2004.
>
>The divided world of East and West after World War II, was constantly,
>either openly or covertly, ready to clash. An important feature of this
>rivalry was the promise of happiness; who can build a more prosperous
>life for their citizens, either the communist East or the capitalist
>West? One of the primary sites for this happiness to appear was in the
>home; the private sphere and the domestic environment. Could these new
>homes bring the expected happiness?
>
>The conference addresses this politically and ideologically
>controversial period from the everyday level through the domestic
>environment as one of the central topics in the genesis of modern
>architecture. Focusing on the domestic environment of the Cold War era
>as a multidimensional social space we will look at the intertwined
>network of power relations, islands of private life and the unseen
>barriers and prescribed identities that homes contain.
>
>* Building industry and the society
>Mass housing and the industrialisation of the building process in the
>post-war years was seen as an opportunity for overall improvement of the
>living environment. Simultaneously, the private builder carried out a
>mass urbanisation outside the confines of the city centres. What were
>the differences in regard to the image of the ideal home and public
>housing schemes between the East and the West? What were the different
>means for financing them?
>
>* Barriers, borders, identities
>In addition to seen physical boundaries that define spaces and operate
>in houses, homes are structured by unseen orders of social relations,
>gender representations and power networks. Together they define the
>conventions of the domestic everyday. This leads to questions on the
>relationship between the housing industry and its imagined subject, on
>the constructed architectonics of the family and the architecture of the
>home. Also, what kind of identities, gendered spaces and new
>territorialisations evolved in different cultural contexts?
>
>* Islands of private life
>The retreat into the private sphere is generally considered as a
>strategy for staying outside the reach of the ideological public life.
>In the Cold War climate the private sphere acquired significance as a
>site of pretended autonomy, of tactical gestures slipping through the
>fingers of big politics. Was such a concentration on the private sphere
>impelled by political distress or the radically transformed living
>environment? Was the private sphere a site for resistance or a place for
>escape?
>
>The conference wishes to gather together the different experiences of
>the home environment and the everyday during the long period of the Cold
>War (1947-1989), to combine different disciplinary understandings and to
>bring together scholars from both sides of the former East - West
>divide.
>
>Abstracts consisting of the title, text of no more than 250 words and
>brief information about the speaker should be submitted by 1 December
>2003. Speakers will be notified of the acceptance of their papers by
>12th January 2004. Abstracts or queries should be sent, preferably by
>e-mail, to:
>
>Prof. Mart Kalm
>e-mail: kalm at delfi.ee
>Institute of Art History,
>Estonian Academy of Art
>Tartu mnt.1, 10 145
>Tallinn
>Estonia
>Phone 372 6267 325
>Fax 372 6267 328