Summer school: “Constructing Utopia. Eastern European Avant-Gardes and Their Legacy”

Moderna galerija Ljubljana is pleased to announce a summer school entitled ”Constructing Utopia. Eastern European Avant-Gardes and Their Legacy” in August 2018.

Aimed at postgraduate students and art professionals interested in Eastern European art, the summer school offers courses on its museumisation, interpretation and presentation. The focus of the courses will be on different topics and characteristics of Eastern European avant-garde art, its influence on contemporary art in Eastern European countries, and the relationship between art and society in these countries during the 20th century.

The one-week summer school is taking place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, which houses the first collection of Eastern European art Arteast 2000+. The Arteast 2000+ Collection includes works by such artists as Marina Abramović, Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Neue Slowenische Kunst with the groups Laibach, Irwin, and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater, Mladen Stilinović, Kazimir Malevich from Belgrade, and others. In the more than seventeen years since the inception of this collection, Moderna galerija has staged some very consequential exhibitions in the frame of a series entitled Arteast 2000+ Exhibitions. We are currently planning another exhibition in the series, with the working title Yugoslav Avant-Gardes from the 1920s to the Early 1990s in Dialogue with Russian Avant-Gardes. In addition, the next edition of Moderna galerija’s Triennial U3 will be conceived around topics related to Eastern and Central European issues.

The summer school will be directed by Boris Groys, one of the most prominent theorists and curators of Eastern European, and especially Russian art, a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, and Zdenka Badovinac, Director of Moderna galerija, curator, writer and initiator of the Arteast 2000+ Collection. The programme will consist of lectures delivered and workshops led by specialists on Eastern European art, with exclusive access to the Arteast 2000+ Collection. Also included in the programme will be visits to other collections in the region.

We will look at researching and presenting Eastern European art through its different shifts, in particular the shifts that happened after the October Revolution, after the Second World War, and after the collapse of the communist regimes. The lectures, field trips, studio visits, presentations, discussions and practical work will enable the participants to define or become more acquainted with their own field of interest and theoretical approach.

We will visit a number of spaces in Ljubljana, the city of Jožef Plečnik, and other cities in the region (such as Zagreb), ranging from museums, galleries, and foundations to alternative art spaces and artists’ studios, with some of the leading experts giving lectures and presentations.

The summer school will give participants an opportunity to meet and learn from some of the leading curators and theorists of Eastern European contemporary art and to be introduced to prominent artists and other professionals in the field. Our speakers include Boris Groys, Zdenka Badovinac, Keti Chukhrov, Eda Čufer, Branislav Dimitrijević, Mladen Dolar, Vit Havranek, Marko Jenko, Lev Kreft, Bojana Piškur, Arseny Zhilyaev.

The programme of courses will be published on our website. All the courses will be held in English. The summer school will take place at the Moderna galerija and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, from August 24 to 31, 2018.

More information available here.