The Community in Avant-Garde Literature and Politics

The Community in Avant-Garde Literature and Politics
Author: Zrinka Božić
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3031115570

This book rethinks the concept of community taking Jean-Luc Nancy’s influential essay “La communauté désoeuvrée” as its starting point, tracing subsequent scholarship on community and adding new insights on avant-garde aesthetics and politics. Extensively exploring the communitarian dimension of avant-garde aesthetics and politics (focusing on artistic groups, intellectual circles and theoretical collectives), the author aims to bring literature and art into a philosophical examination of the paradoxical and complex idea of community.

How Slavoj Became Žižek

How Slavoj Became Žižek
Author: Eliran Bar-El
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2023-01-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226823512

An engrossing account of the meteoric rise of contemporary philosophy’s most contentious and prolific intellectual. ​ Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj Žižek is one of the most famous intellectuals of our time, publishing at a breakneck speed and lecturing around the world. With his unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture, he is recognizable to a wide spectrum of fans and detractors. But how did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country come to such popular notoriety? In How Slavoj Became Žižek, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the emergence, popularization, and development of this phenomenon called “Žižek.” Beginning with Žižek’s early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society, Bar-El traces Žižek’s rise from Marxist philosopher to a political candidate to eventual intellectual celebrity as Žižek perfects his unique performative style and a rhetorical arsenal of “Hegelacanese.” Following 9/11, Žižek’s career as a global op-ed writer and TV commentator married his rhetoric with global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Yet, at the same time, this mainstream popularity, as well as a series of politically incorrect views, almost entirely estranged the Slovenian from the normal workings of academia. Ultimately, this account shows how Žižek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as a public intellectual.

NSK from Kapital to Capital

NSK from Kapital to Capital
Author: Zdenka Badovinac
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262029952

The generously illustrated, lavishly documented story of NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), the eastern European art collective present at the last revolution of the twentieth century. This book is the generously illustrated, lavishly documented, critically narrated story of one of the most significant art collectives of the late twentieth century. In 1984, three groups of artists in post-Tito Yugoslavia—the music and multimedia group Laibach, the visual arts group Irwin, and the theater group Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater—came together to form the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) art collective. Adopting the symbols, codes, appearances, and discourses of fascism, nationalism, state power, socialist-realist, and avant-garde art, and pushing the strategies of overidentification and subversive affirmation to their limits, NSK exposed the common foundations of various regimes, systems, and ideologies, while affirming that “art and totalitarianism are not mutually exclusive.” Employing music, video, film, exhibitions, writing, graphic design, architecture, theater, and public relations to probe the aesthetic possibilities of declining socialism and proliferating capitalism, NSK introduced an idiosyncratic version of postmodernism (the Retro-Avant-Garde) into the globalizing cultural sphere. Combining primary documents, period artifacts, critical essays, and contextual notes, NSK from Kapital to Capital documents NSK's collective practice during the final decade of Yugoslavia—from the first (and banned) Laibach concert (1980) in a small proletarian mining town in Slovenia to the series of projects launched by individual NSK groups entitled Kapital (1991-92). This illuminating chronicle of NSK's work and its reception is produced in conjunction with the first major museum exhibition devoted to NSK. Designed by Novi Kolektivizem (New Collectivism), the graphic design section of NSK, the cover of each individual copy of the book is printed with a custom detail; no two covers exactly are the same. Copublished with Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Contributors Eda Čufer, Goran Đorđević, Slavoj Žižek, Marina Gržinić, Rastko Močnik, Marina Gržinić, Lev Kreft, Tomaž Mastnak, Mladen Dolar, Chrissie Iles, Boris Groys, Inke Arns, Alexei Monroe, Catherine Wood, Daniel Ricardo Quiles, Anthony Gardner, Barbara Borčič, Alexei Yurchak, Dejan Kršić, and others Exhibition Moderna galerija, Ljubljana: 12 May–17 August 2015 Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven: March–August, 2016 Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow: Fall 2016

A Slow Burning Fire

A Slow Burning Fire
Author: Marko Ilic
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262361418

Yugoslavia's diverse and interconnected art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s, linked to the country's experience with socialist self-management. In Yugoslavia from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, state-supported Student Cultural Centers became incubators for new art. This era's conceptual and performance art--known as Yugoslavia's New Art Practice--emerged from a network of diverse and densely interconnected art scenes that nurtured the early work of Marina Abramovi&ć, Sanja Ivekovi&ć, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), and others. In this book, Marko Ili&ć offers the first comprehensive examination of the New Art Practice, linking it to Yugoslavia's experience with socialist self-management and the political upheavals of the 1980s.

The last Yugoslav generation

The last Yugoslav generation
Author: Ljubica Spaskovska
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2017-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526106345

This promising addition to the growing literature on the history of late socialism charts the development of youth culture and politics in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on the 1980s. Rather than examining the 1980s as a mere prelude to the violent collapse of the country in the 1990s, the book recovers the multiplicity of political visions and cultural developments that evolved at the time and that have been largely forgotten in subsequent discussion. The youth of this generation, the author convincingly argues, sought to rearticulate the Yugoslav socialist framework in order to reinvigorate it and 'democratise' it, rather than destroy it altogether.

“I am Jugoslovenka!”

“I am Jugoslovenka!”
Author: Jasmina Tumbas
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1526156466

“I am Jugoslovenka” argues that queer-feminist artistic and political resistance were paradoxically enabled by socialist Yugoslavia’s unique history of patriarchy and women’s emancipation. Spanning performance and conceptual art, video works, film and pop music, lesbian activism and press photos of female snipers in the Yugoslav wars, the book analyses feminist resistance in a range of performative actions that manifest the radical embodiment of Yugoslavia’s anti-fascist, transnational and feminist legacies. It covers celebrated and lesser-known artists from the 1970s to today, including Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivekovic, Vlasta Delimar, Tanja Ostojic, Selma Selman and Helena Janecic, along with music legends Lepa Brena and Esma Redžepova. “I am Jugoslovenka” tells a unique story of women’s resistance through the intersection of feminism, socialism and nationalism in East European visual culture.

What Will Be Already Exists

What Will Be Already Exists
Author: Emese Kürti
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3839458234

How do artist archives survive and stay authentic in radically changed contexts? The volume addresses the challenge of continuity, sustainability, and institutionalization of archives established by Eastern European artists. At its center stands the 40th anniversary of the Artpool Art Research Center founded in 1979 in Budapest as an underground institution based on György Galántai's »Active Archive« concept. Ten internationally renowned scholars propose contemporary interpretations of this concept and frame artist archives not as mere sources of art history but as models of self-historicization. The contributions give knowledgeable insights into the transition of Cold War art networks and institutional landscapes.

Language of the Revolution

Language of the Revolution
Author: Eugen Wohl
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2023-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 303137178X

This edited book fills a void in the existing research concerning anti-communist movements in Central and Eastern Europe, outlining the linguistic implications of the cultural, social and political metamorphoses brought about by the (change of) regime. The authors included in this volume approach the topic from a variety of perspectives, but, ultimately, focus on language seen as a fundamental tool for simultaneously subjugating and liberating, concealing and revealing truth, discouraging dissidence and fostering revolt. Readers are invited to discover the linguistic implications of the many shapes and forms that the 1989 anti-communist revolutions took. Equally interesting are the investigations of the revolution aftermath, in the first years of transition to democracy. Perceived as a whole throughout the Cold War (1947-1991), the so-called "Eastern Bloc" managed to reveal its heterogeneity, the singularity of each of its comprising states and the multitude of its internal contrasts, most vividly perhaps, in the manifold manifestations of the 1989 anti-communist fight. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers from various fields, including history, (socio)linguistics, political studies, and conflict studies.

Art Work

Art Work
Author: Katja Praznik
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2021
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1487508417

By exposing the separation of art and labour, Art Work provides a valuable, historical perspective on the present-day struggle for artists' rights.

Works for Works, Book 1

Works for Works, Book 1
Author: Gavin Keeney
Publisher: punctum books
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2022-07-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1685710328

Works for Works, Book 1: Useless Beauty tackles "legacy" issues of intellectual property rights (IPR) in artistic production and academic scholarship and proposes a category or class of works that has no relation to IPR nor to proprietary regimes of copyright and academic privilege. Keeney's book is a structuralist argument for establishing new forms of artistic scholarship that operate in direct opposition to established norms in both the art world and neoliberal academia, and is also rigorously contextualized within past and present-day arguments for and against patrimonial and paternalistic, avant-garde and normative, forms of censure and conformity across cultural production. Works for Works, Book 1: Useless Beauty privileges an iterative, generative, and aleatory methodology for artistic scholarship, with transmedia proposed as a "tutelary form" of editioning works against the dictates of the art-academic complex. This focus on generativity also invokes the dialectical operations historically associated with past avant-gardes as they have negotiated an elective nihilism as an avenue for exiting established and authorized forms of conceptual and intellectual inquiry in the Arts and Humanities. Gavin Keeney is Director of Agence 'X', founded in New York, New York, in 2007. He completed a research doctorate in Architecture at Deakin University, Australia, in 2014, on the subject of "Visual Agency in Art and Architecture." His publications include Dossier Chris Marker: The Suffering Image (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), Knowledge, Spirit, Law, Book 1: Radical Scholarship (punctum, 2015), and Knowledge, Spirit, Law, Book 2: The Anti-capitalist Sublime (punctum, 2017). He has taught and lectured in architecture schools in the US, England, Slovenia, Australia, and India.