We would like to invite researchers, academics, artists, curators and organisations to join us for the upcoming In-Between Spaces: Central and Eastern European Artists in the UK conference. The event will explore the experiences and practices of Central and Eastern European (CEE) artists living and working in the UK as well as the issues facing them. The conference will take place on the 11th of October 2019 at the University of Birmingham (UK).
This conference emerges from a study conducted at the University of Birmingham in partnership with Centrala (art space run by Polish Expats Association) as part of an AHRC Midlands4Cities Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship. The research explores the inclusion and visibility of CEE artists and art in the UK’s creative economy. Throughout the study, we have observed that CEE artists who work in the UK often think of themselves as occupying a space located on the verge of difference and sameness in relation to their British counterparts and in relation to their own communities. This experience, combined with the growing sense of precarity in respect to their future in the UK, results in the creation of barriers towards inclusion, visibility, and representation of their practices.
We aim for this event to become a platform for the exchange of research and practice and an occasion to inform CEE artists, curators and the organisations that support them through the public dissemination of the findings of our study and the provision of networking opportunities.
THE SCHEDULE CAN BE FIND HERE
THE LIST OF SPEAKERS CAN BE FIND HERE
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes are co-founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, an independent research platform focusing on the art history of Central Europe and contemporary ecological practices. They head the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London and co-direct the Getty Foundation-supported program Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History. Recent and forthcoming publications include a co-authored book on Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson World of Art Series, 2020), Maja Fowkes’s The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde and Ecology under Socialism (2015) and a special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (2018). They have contributed chapters to Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (2018), Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere (2018) and Creative Time: Another World is Possible (2019). Their curatorial projects include the Experimental Reading Room, the Danube River School and they are also founding members of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Central European University Budapest. Their curated exhibitions include Walking without Footprints (2016), Like a Bird: Avian Ecologies in Contemporary Art (2014) and Loophole to Happiness (2011).
Venue:
University of Birmingham
Murray Learning Centre Room UG10 Birmingham, B15 2TT
Dates