Liberating the Former East: Reassessing Collaborative Art Practices from East to West

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Collaborative practices have been fundamental to art from the Former East for decades. Yet the importance of that collaborative work has yet to be fully realized or recognized more widely, even though artists from “east of the former Berlin Wall to west of the Great Wall of China”—as the collective art group “Slavs and Tatars” defines the area—provide powerful new models for cooperative work that should be of interest both East and West. Offering vivid proof of the liberating potential to be gained by abandoning outdated hegemonies, groups from the region use their art to redraw old maps, reinvigorate political discourse, and reinvent their own discipline. This panel explores the myriad cross-disciplinary ways in which such artists converge and collaborate, including contingent art groups, multimedia projects, and innovative performance pieces that connect across borders, language barriers, and time periods. Collaborative art from the end of the Soviet period provides important context for a discussion of past practice and future possibilities for the shared work of Art.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Ksenya Gurshtein, Independent Scholar

Papers

• Collaboration as Liberation from Neoliberal Capitalism? - Amy Bryzgel, Northeastern U

• Contingent, Convergent, Collaborative: Liberating Art Practices in Soviet and Post-Soviet Space - Mary A. Nicholas, Lehigh U

• Cleansing of the Temple: Art, Faith, and Politics in Contemporary Georgia - Nikoloz Nadirashvili, U of Washington

Discussant

• Joanna Matuszak, U of Texas at Tyler