Often discussed as a singular “block,” the countries and peoples of Central Eastern Europe are, in reality, a diverse multitude. For over a century, artists in this region have contended with dissolving superpowers and shifting nationalities.
Living within such instability, these artists developed various approaches in response to turbulent ideologies and institutions that often employed collaboration and group efforts. Exploring historical and contemporary strategies, the series Solidarity in Unraveling Worlds gathers various voices to consider how cultural collaboration in the region has formed unique approaches to artist-formed institutions and endeavors.
Paired with the exhibition Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, Solidarity in Unraveling Worlds reveals case studies and new strategies for anyone confronting a rapidly shifting world.
It’s No Accident Socialism Started Here: A Conversation with Zdenka Badovinac
Raised in a country that no longer exists, Slovenian curator and writer Zdenka Badovinac discusses commandership, the potential of minority positions, and how rethinking socialism might help tackle life in today's unraveling worlds.
A Non-Western Exchange: Looking Back at Transnational Cinema Education in the Cold War Eastern Bloc
From the 1950s through the end of the 1980s, the film and TV schools in Prague and Poland attracted hundreds of students from countries including Syria, Algeria, Iran, India, Colombia, and Cuba. Looking back at this history, a group of scholars reconsider the successes and failures of this attempt by authorities to promote global socialist solidarity.
Multiple Realities: Navigating Experimental Art in Central Eastern Europe, 1960s–1980s
Exhibition curator Pavel S. Pyś explores experimental art made in six Central Eastern European nations during the 1960s to 1980s and their relationships between art and politics as well as the roles that institutions play in society.
