Zdenka Badovinac: "Art as a Parallel Cultural Infrastructure / Legacy of Post War Avantgardes from Former Yugoslavia"

In Eastern Europe, various art practices could be compared with the international genre of Institutional Critique. But a key difference is notable: while in the West this critique predominantly dealt with strong existing institutions and often involved proposals for their improvement, the central idea in the case of the practices in Eastern Europe, especially in former Yugoslavia, focused on building institutions.

This tradition reflects the need for functional infrastructure; for good and progressive institutions that provide decent conditions for artists and allow them to communicate with the world. Zdenka Badovinac has called attention to this with projects including the retrospective exhibition of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) movement, which was organized earlier this year in Moderna galerija in Ljubljana. The NSK collective, by virtue of its extensive membership, self-organization and strong network of like-minded people, served as a strategic stand-in for the official (and poorly developed) cultural infrastructure – and in the international context, which it aspired to enter as an equal partner.

Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer. Since 1993, she has been the Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana. In her work, Badovinac highlights the difficult processes of redefining history alongside different avant-garde traditions within contemporary art. Badovinac's first exhibition to address these issues was Body and the East—From the 1960s to the Present (1998). She also initiated the first Eastern European art collection, Arteast 2000+. Since 2011 this collection has been permanently exhibited in the new Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. 

The event series "Art and Historiography" consisted of four public lectures followed by seminars.

Asier Mendizabal "Face Value (the Possibility of the  Terrible)" Thursday, 22.10, 7 pm: Lecture  (AdBK) Friday, 23.10, 10 am: Seminar (HDK)
Antony Hudek "Making (Up) Queer Histories" Thursday, 26.11, 7 pm: Lecture (HDK) Friday, 27.11, 10 am: Seminar (HDK)
Zdenka Badovinac "Art as a Parallel Cultural Infrastructure / Legacy of Post War Avantgardes from Former Yugoslavia" Thursday, 14.01, 7 pm: Lecture (HDK) Friday, 15.01, 10 am: Seminar (HDK)
Gerard Byrne "Museums for playback" Thursday, 28.01, 7 pm: Lecture:  (AdBK) Friday, 29.01, 10 am: Seminar (HDK) 

Free admission Public seminars: Registration required

A cooperation between the Department of Philosophy | Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts, and Haus der Kunst; organization: Stefan Apostolou-Hölscher, Patrizia Dander, Maria Muhle, Jenny Nachtigall, Andrea Saul.

"Art and Historiography – A Mimetic Constellation" is conceived within the frame of the DFG-research group "Media und Mimesis".