Bridge over time. Art in Central Europe.
Research-Educational Project
Project Manifesto
The collapse of the Berlin Wall is a symbolic fall of the iron curtain. And thus, the end of the post-Yalta past. Admission of V4 countries to the European Union is their symbolic rebirth. The political history of the countries subjected to Soviet domination after the Second World War was different, and yet similar, insofar as the social reality is similar in all totalitarian countries. And art has a different but still very similar history in each of these countries. Contemporary art, i.e. art of conceptual and post-conceptual forms which dominated the art scene since the sixties, brought various individual solutions, but the trend itself was similar. Just like its theoretical basis. Shaping art forms depending on the political and social context was also both similar and different. Conceptualism was an artistic means, but it was used as a political means in all V4 countries. Conceptual = political. This was the dominant assumption of contemporary artists. The autonomy of the conceptual art means and tautology as an artistic form, even with no political content whatsoever, paradoxically, were political by the mere inherent critique of the traditional definition of art and the desire for a subversive reevaluation of all values. Such a synthetic approach to the past is possible from the perspective of the present. Contemporary art created today is largely post-conceptual. Such a continuum can also be proven in research on the art of the region and in V4 countries. But the breakthrough was profound. It was a shock – both similar and different. It created a distance towards the history of art in the countries which underwent the transformation. Past and present were separated. Three decades have already passed since that moment. And, most importantly, we are in one region of the EU. It all indicates that there has been a new opening, a re-birth of art in these post-conceptual countries, similar and different from its counterpart in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
Our today's look at the varied art of that time is not only an objectified historical research, but also a reinterpretation and re-actualization of history in today’s times. Reconstruction is a construction, reenactment is a new action. We return to history as a new present. The history of conceptualism as a political art created in totalitarian countries is placed in the context of the art created in these countries today. The lesson in art history is a lesson about contemporary art in the orbit of the EU and the free world. The image of history is shaped by the present. History looks at today as if in a mirror and sees its own image. The differences and similarities to the past are significant for today. A bridge over time that connects the contemporary with history.
Project leader:
The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund [Attention! The link opens in new tab!]. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe