[artinfo] CFP: Research Projects in on Art in Eastern Europe

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Ina Mertens <ina.mertens at ikg.unibe.ch>
Date: Apr 17, 2014
Subject: CFP: Research Projects in Eastern Europe (Bern, 10-11 Oct 14)

Bern, 10. - 11.10.2014

Deadline: Jun 6, 2014

Call for Participation: 'Which Side Are You On?' Positioning and 
Orientation in the Art Histories of Eastern Europe. (Workshop) 
University of Bern, Institute of Art History, 10-11 October 2014.

The workshop 'Which Side Are You On?' Positioning and Orientation in 
the Art Histories of Eastern Europe is designed as a working meeting 
for young academics (in history of art and cultural history), 
curators and artists engaged on a research project with reference to 
Eastern Europe. The goal of the event is to present for discussion 
specific approaches to the current art scene and readings of the 
histories of art in the formerly socialist Eastern bloc states. In 
the recent past this topic has attracted growing research interest 
and researchers in both East and West need a more nuanced approach to 
the transition histories of Eastern Europe and the changed structures 
of the art world after the fall of the 'Iron Curtain'. Even though 
museums especially have been constituting an essential intellectual 
space in East European studies over the past years, specific local 
conditions have so far not been thematised, studied and documented 
academically.
By exchanging ideas on specific projects and work processes, we aim 
to adopt a perspective that is firmly trained on practical research 
issues. The precarious situation of archives and collections, which 
often accompanies research in Eastern Europe, is just as much part of 
the workshop's scope as the opportunities for getting access to 
material and immaterial knowledge and for establishing cooperations 
between institutions, researchers and artists. We also wish to 
articulate the challenges faced by researchers who try to take a 
stand within the existing art and academic worlds or within the - 
often also changing - political structures of Eastern Europe. 
Research that takes account of transcultural aspects has to react to 
complex local currents, to subjective accounts and to the 'real 
place' in all its banality and economies. The goal of the workshop is 
to make tangible these 'soft aspects', which are normally excluded 
from scholarly discourse, and to discuss them with an eye to the 
knowledge they may yield. On the one hand we are interested in 
learning more about specific transition processes in their local 
circumstances, but also, moving beyond this, we wish to promote a 
discussion of method in transregional research. Not least among our 
aims is to establish contact and discussion among the participants in 
the longer term.

We invite researchers in the fields named above to apply as 
participants with a project description (max. 2 pages) that provides 
information about the research area and progress of their own work, 
and a short CV. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.
Please send your application materials no later than June 6 2014 to 
ina.mertens at ikg.unibe.ch and marcel.bleuler at ikg.unibe.ch

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Research Projects in Eastern Europe (Bern, 10-11 Oct 14). In: 
H-ArtHist, Apr 17, 2014. <http://arthist.net/archive/7481>.