Revisiting Heritage

Description

Title of the paper: Laura Leuzzi - Identitet=identità, the 1976 Video Encounter in Motovun. Early experimentation and exchanges between Yugoslavia and Italy in the field of video.


Description of the conference: The great interest in neo-avant-garde art, especially from ex-socialist European states, which we are witnessing during the last decade, confronts art historians and other researchers in the field with new and raising questions about methodology, the interpretation and reinterpretation of dominant narratives and the “official art history”. This becomes more acute when dealing with so-called “new media” art.
How to approach this huge body of material found in official (state) archives as well as “private archives” of artists and collectors? For example, on an interpretational level, is there a common source in neo-avant-garde practices throughout Europe that has been missed in dominant west-oriented canons? Or should researchers instead focus on the particularities having in mind different geo-political as well as social circumstances?
These kind of questions raised frequently during the research process of the FORGOTTEN HERITAGE project. Gathering researchers from Poland, Estonia, Belgium and Croatia, the project focused on neo-avant-garde practices in the countries of the “European rim”, with the aim of (re)discovering, (re)interpreting and promoting art practices that were mostly forgotten in the official international histories of avant-garde art. Using the tools of digital humanities, this project will deliver an online platform – a repository with a vast amount of data and descriptions of particular artists and artworks but also revealing connections between artists and institutions throughout Europe. As part of the project, the international conference REVISITING HERITAGE is being organised, aiming to examine the ways of discovering and revealing the past of art and the reasons to do it.
The political and social situation before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain has shaped an artistic map that abounds in blank spots. Dominant narratives of continuous division between East and West discouraged research focused on the connections and similarities between artistic practices and the mutual impact from the late 60s onward. By having in mind the discontinuous and porous character of the Iron Curtain, the conference invites scholars who research different dynamics within “uncanonical” artistic centers and exchanges between artists in the East and West.

The conference is organised by Arton Fondation (Warsaw) in cooperation with KUMU Art Museum of Estonia (Tallinn), Office for Photography (Zagreb) and LUCA School of Arts (Brussels) as a part of the international project FORGOTTEN HERITAGE – European Avant-Garde Art Online

Period	8 Jul 2018
Event type	Conference
Location	Warsaw, PolandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International