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The post-1989 period has seen artists in Central and Eastern Europe embrace socially engaged practices. Reclaiming public life from the ideologies of both communist regimes and neoliberalism, their projects have harnessed the politically subversive potential of social relations based on trust, reciprocity and solidarity. Drawing on archival material and exclusive interviews, in this book Izabel Galliera traces the development of socially engaged art from the early 1990s to the present in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. She demonstrates that, in the early 1990s, projects were primarily created for exhibitions organized and funded by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art. In the early 2000s, prior to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania entering into the European Union, EU institutions likewise funded socially-conscious public art in the region.
Today, socially engaged art is characterised by the proliferation of independent and often self-funded artists' initiatives in cities such as Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest. Focusing on the relationships between art, social capital and civil society, Galliera employs sociological and political theories to reveal that, while social capital is generally considered a mechanism of exclusion in the West, in post-socialist contexts it has been leveraged by artists and curators as a vital means of communication and action.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Points of Contention: Socially Engaged Art Practice in Contemporary Theory
2. Civil Society, and Social, Cultural and Political Capital
3. Historical Antecedents: Participatory Art under Socialism, 1956-89
PART I FROM SECOND SOCIETY TO CIVIL SOCIETY
4. Civil Society in a Period of Post-Socialist Transition
5. Antipolitics: Exhibitions at the Soros Centres for Contemporary Art
6. Sofia: Participatory Public Art and Emerging Contemporary Art Institutions
PART II FROM LOCALIZED PUBLIC SITES TO EU TRANSNATIONAL PUBLIC SPHERES
7. Place-Making: Framing Art in Public Spaces Curatorially
8. Representing Counterpublics in Bucharest, Budapest and Sofia
9. Contesting the Politics of Belonging in the Post-1989 EU Community
PART III INSTITUTIONALIZED AND INSTITUTIONALIZING
10. Institutionalized Community Arts Programmes
11. Big Hope: Reviving Leftist Activism in Budapest
12. Self-Institutionalizing as Political Agency
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Izabel Galliera
Summary
The post-1989 period has seen artists in Central and Eastern Europe embrace socially engaged practices. Reclaiming public life from the ideologies of both communist regimes and neoliberalism, their projects have harnessed the politically subversive potential of social relations based on trust, reciprocity and solidarity. Drawing on archival material and exclusive interviews, in this book Izabel Galliera traces the development of socially engaged art from the early 1990s to the present in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. She demonstrates that, in the early 1990s, projects were primarily created for exhibitions organized and funded by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art. In the early 2000s, prior to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania entering into the European Union, EU institutions likewise funded socially-conscious public art in the region.
Today, socially engaged art is characterised by the proliferation of independent and often self-funded artists' initiatives in cities such as Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest. Focusing on the relationships between art, social capital and civil society, Galliera employs sociological and political theories to reveal that, while social capital is generally considered a mechanism of exclusion in the West, in post-socialist contexts it has been leveraged by artists and curators as a vital means of communication and action.
Foreword
As the first comprehensive study of socially engaged art in post-USSR Europe, this book is a major contribution to debates around art as social action.
Additional text
Socially Engaged Art after Socialism is the first comprehensive scholarly treatment of the important new forms of socially engaged art that emerged in Central and Eastern Europe following the demise of the USSR. Its publication represents an important intervention in the emerging critical and theoretical debate around socially engaged art, and will allow us to further broaden the geopolitical scope of this important research.
