Artist and Agents
Series: Denkt Kunst
Two-Day Conference Workshop with Inke Arns, Liliana Gomez-Popescu, Anna Krakus, Kata Krasznahorkai, Elisabeth Pichler, Caterina Preda, Sylvia Sasse, Tamás Szőnyei, and Anikó Szűcs
The 'case of Julia Kristeva' has recently drawn our attention to the fact that reading records kept by the state security is a challenging task. These records don't reflect facts; the have much more to do with creating facts.
In this workshop, specialists from various countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America will present their research into the archives of former state security agencies. In the process, they will show to what extent the archives of the secret police can be understood as archives of the arts. What does the photographic documentation produced by informants of the art scene, especially performances, happenings, and actions, actually look like? How have informants spoken about actions and happenings? What does their view of the art scene say about the state's fears regarding artists? How 'performative' was the Stasi? How did it manipulate artistic actions by planting secret agents and pursuing counteractions? How did artists respond to the Stasi's presence in the shadows? How did they incorporate both the potential and the concrete perspective of the Stasi into their work? Since 1989, how have artists worked with the material that the secret police collected on them?
Kata Krasznahorkai is a curator and research associate working on the ERC project 'Performance Art in Eastern Europe 1950–1990: History and Theory' at the Slavic Institute at the University of Zurich. More
Prof. Dr. Sylvia Sasse is Professor for Slavic Literature Studies at the University of Zurich, co-founder of the ZKK (Center for Arts and Cultural Theories), co-publisher of ‘Geschichte der Gegenwart’ (Contemp More
Dr. Inke Arns became artistic director of the HMKV (Hartware Media Art Center) in Dortmund in 2005. Since 1993, she has worked as an independent curator and author with a focus on media art and theory, ne More
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