Download or read book Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition written by Boris Groys and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path. Artists, seeing it all first-hand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took emerges in this volume.

Download or read book Postmodernism and the postsocialist condition written by Aleš Erjavec and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path; the world was witnessing political and social transformations without precedent. Artists, seeing it all firsthand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took--how artists in the 1980s marked their societies' traumatic transition from decaying socialism to an insecure future--emerges in this remarkable volume. With in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and Mitteleuropa, China, and Cuba--all from scholars and art critics who were players in the tumultuous cultural landscapes they describe--this stunningly illustrated collection captures a singular period in the history of world art, and a critical moment in the cultural and political transition from the last century to our own. Authors Ales Erjavec, Gao Minglu, Boris Groys, Péter György, Gerardo Mosquera, and Misko Suvakovic observe distinct national differences in artistic responses to the social and political challenges of the time. But their essays also reveal a clear pattern in the ways in which artists registered the exhaustion of the socialist vision and absorbed the influence of art movements such as constructivism, pop art, and conceptual art, as well as the provocations of western pop culture. Indebted to but not derived from capitalist postmodernism, the result was a unique version of postsocialist postmodernism, an artistic/political innovation clearly identified and illustrated for the first time in these pages.

Download or read book Postsocialist Conditions written by Xiaoping Wang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Postsocialist Conditions: Idea and History in China’s “Independent Cinema,” 1988-2008, WANG Xiaoping offers a comprehensive survey and trenchant critique of China’s “Independent Cinema” by the sixth-generation auteurs. By showing the multi-valence of the postsocialist conditions in contemporary Chinese society, their films articulate a new cultural-political logic in postsocialist China, which is also the logic of the market in this era of neoliberal transformation, brought about by the forces of marketization since the late 1980s. The directors laudably show the spirits of humanism and the humanitarian concerns of the underclass, yet the shortage and repudiation of class analysis prohibits the artists from exploring the social contradictions and the cause of class restructuration.

Download or read book Art and Democracy in Post Communist Europe written by Piotr Piotrowski and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Eastern Europe saw a new era begin, and the widespread changes that followed extended into the world of art. Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe examines the art created in light of the profound political, social, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the former Eastern Bloc after the Cold War ended. Assessing the function of art in post-communist Europe, Piotr Piotrowski describes the changing nature of art as it went from being molded by the cultural imperatives of the communist state and a tool of political propaganda to autonomous work protesting against the ruling powers. Piotrowski discusses communist memory, the critique of nationalism, issues of gender, and the representation of historic trauma in contemporary museology, particularly in the recent founding of contemporary art museums in Bucharest, Tallinn, and Warsaw. He reveals the anarchistic motifs that had a rich tradition in Eastern European art and the recent emergence of a utopian vision and provides close readings of many artists—including Ilya Kavakov and Krzysztof Wodiczko—as well as Marina Abramovic’s work that responded to the atrocities of the Balkans. A cogent investigation of the artistic reorientation of Eastern Europe, this book fills a major gap in contemporary artistic and political discourse.

Download or read book Art Philosophy and Ideology written by Aleš Erjavec and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-04-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a selection of aesthetic and art theoretical writings by the internationally renowned philosopher Aleš Erjavec from the 1990s to the present. Erjavec was an active participant in the artistic revolt in Slovenia throughout the 1980 and became one of the most notable international theorists of late- and post-socialist developments in art. His work also extended to new, emergent forms of contemporary art and visual culture in global art and culture networks. The diverse contexts and artists with which he has engaged gives him a unique critical perspective on major debates in philosophical aesthetics and art theory.

Download or read book The political aesthetics of the Armenian avant garde written by Angela Harutyunyan and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses late-Soviet and post-Soviet art in Armenia in the context of turbulent transformations from the late 1980s to 2004. It explores the emergence of 'contemporary art' in Armenia from within and in opposition to the practices, aesthetics and institutions of Socialist Realism and National Modernism. This historical study outlines the politics (liberal democracy), aesthetics (autonomous art secured by the gesture of the individual artist), and ethics (ideals of absolute freedom and radical individualism) of contemporary art in Armenia and points towards its limitations. Through the historical investigation, a theory of post-Soviet art historiography is developed, one that is based on a dialectic of rupture and continuity in relation to the Soviet past. As the first English-language study on contemporary art in Armenia, the book is of prime interest for artists, scholars, curators and critics interested in post-Soviet art and culture and in global art historiography.

Download or read book Russian Postmodernism written by Mikhail N. Epstein and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have been decisive for Russia not only politically but culturally as well. The end of the Cold War has enabled Russia to take part in the global rise and crystallization of postmodernism. This volume investigates the manifestations of this crucial trend in Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, demonstrating how Russian postmodernism is its own unique entity. It offers a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. This second edition includes additional essays on the topic and a new introduction examining the most recent developments.

Download or read book The Art of Neue Slowenische Kunst NSK During the Transition to Post communism written by Sonja Cendak and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Postsocialist Cinema in Post Mao China written by Chris Berry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the fundamental shift in Chinese Cinema away from Socialism and towards Post-Socialism can be located earlier than the emergence of the "Fifth Generation" in the mid-eighties when it is usually assumed to have occured. By close analysis of films from the 1949-1976 Maoist era in comparison with 1976-81 films representing the Cultural Revolution, it demonstrates that the latter already breaks away from Socialism.

Download or read book Critical and Post Critical Political Economy written by G. Browning and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-07-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is original in focusing on critical political economy, identifying its character and reviewing its continuing legacy. In doing so it throws new light on Hegel and Marx and a range of subsequent theorist. It also develops a perspective on topics such as postmodernism, globalization, identity politics and the cultural turn.

Download or read book The Green Bloc written by Maja Fowkes and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding the horizon of established accounts of Central European art under socialism, this book uncovers the neglected history of artistic engagement with the natural environment in the Eastern Bloc. The turbulent legacy of 1968, which saw the confluence of political upheaval, spread of counterculture, rise of ecological consciousness, and emergence of global conceptual art, provides the setting for Maja Fowkes’s innovative reassessment of the environmental practice of the Central European neo-avant-garde. Focussing on artists and artist groups whose ecological dimension has rarely been considered, including the Pécs Workshop from Hungary, OHO in Slovenia, TOK in Croatia, Rudolf Sikora in Slovakia, and the Czech artist Petr Štembera, 'The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism' brings to light an array of distinctive approaches to nature, from attempts to raise environmental awareness among socialist citizens to the exploration of non-anthropocentric positions and the quest for cosmological existence in the midst of red ideology. Embedding artistic production in social, political, and environmental histories of the region, this book reveals the Central European artists’ sophisticated relationship to nature, at the precise moment when ecological crisis was first apprehended on a planetary scale.

Download or read book Second World Postmodernisms written by Vladimir Kulic and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If postmodernism is indeed 'the cultural logic of late capitalism', why did typical postmodernist themes like ornament, colour, history and identity find their application in the architecture of the socialist Second World? How do we explain the retreat into paper architecture and theoretical discussion in societies still nominally devoted to socialist modernization? Exploring the intersection of two areas of growing scholarly interest - postmodernism and the architecture of the former socialist world - this edited collection stakes out new ground in charting architecture's various transformations in the 1970s and 80s. Fourteen essays together explore the question of whether or not architectural postmodernism had a specific Second World variant. The collection demonstrates both the unique nature of Second World architectural phenomena and also assesses connections with western postmodernism. The case studies cover the vast geographical scope from Eastern Europe to China and Cuba. They address a wealth of aesthetic, discursive and practical phenomena, interpreting them in the broader socio-political context of the last decades of the Cold War. The result provides a greatly expanded map of recent architectural history, which redefines postmodernist architecture in a more theoretically comprehensive and global way.

Download or read book Playgrounds And Battlefields written by Francisco Martínez, Klemen Slabina, Mihhail Lotman, Siobhan Kattago, Kevin Ryan, Tom Frost, Flo Kasearu, Marcos Farias-Ferreira, Jaanika Puusalu, Dita Bezdíčková, Emeli Theander, Patrick Laviolette, Alastair Bonnett, Oleg Pachenkov and Lilia Voronkova, Anne Vatén, Helena Holgersson, Patricia García Espín and Manuel García Fernández, Benjamin Noys, Kristina Norman, Madli Maruste, Pille Runnel and Ehti Järv, Alessandro Testa, Sean Homer, Tarmo Jüristo and published by Tallinn University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores whether the metaphors of ‘playground’ and ‘battlefield’ might be analytically meaningful terms for understanding contemporary society. The duality of playgrounds and battlefields is presented as a space of continuous becoming, related to the recreation, domination and experience of a place, as well as to corresponding practices of excess, interaction and enjoyment. We believe that a discussion about engagement and responsibility in a modern social setting is possible only through new concepts that avoid binary formulations. Playgrounds and battlefields are thus used as a trigger enabling a fresh approach to a contemporaneity that is highly influenced by the way in which societies deal with their past and future. In this sense, the ‘Playgrounds and Battlefields’ volume is a thematic one, mapping the field and offering grammar of possibility.

Download or read book Postmodernism and China written by Xudong Zhang and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-27 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few countries have been so transformed in recent decades as China. With a dynamically growing economy and a rapidly changing social structure, China challenges the West to understand the nature of its modernization. Using postmodernism as both a global frame of periodization and a way to break free from the rigid ideology of westernization as modernity, this volume’s diverse group of contributors argues that the Chinese experience is crucial for understanding postmodernism. Collectively, these essays question the implications of specific phenomena, like literature, architecture, rock music, and film, in a postsocialist society. Some essays address China’s complicity in—as well as its resistance to—the culture of global capitalism. Others evaluate the impact of efforts to redefine national culture in terms of enhanced freedoms and expressions of the imagination in everyday life. Still others discuss the general relaxation of political society in post-Mao China, the emergence of the market and its consumer mass culture, and the fashion and discourse of nostalgia. The contributors make a clear case for both the historical uniqueness of Chinese postmodernism and the need to understand its specificity in order to fully grasp the condition of postmodernity worldwide. Although the focus is on mainland China, the volume also includes important observations on social and cultural realities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, whose postmodernity has so far been confined—in both Chinese and English-speaking worlds—to their economic and consumer activities instead of their political and cultural dynamism. First published as a special issue of boundary 2, Postmodernism and China includes seven new essays. By juxtaposing postmodernism with postsocialism and by analyzing China as a producer and not merely a consumer of the culture of the postmodern, it will contribute to critical discourses on globalism, modernity, and political economics, as well as to cultural and Asian studies. Contributors. Evans Chan, Arif Dirlik, Dai Jinhua, Liu Kang, Anthony D. King, Jeroen de Kloet, Abidin Kusno, Wendy Larson, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Wang Ning, Xiaobing Tang, Xiaoying Wang, Chen Xiaoming, Xiaobin Yang, Zhang Yiwu, Xudong Zhang

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Matter written by Sarah Posman and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-20th-century avant-gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The book’s contributions, written by experts from some 20 countries, seek to answer the following questions: What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist “aesthetics of matter”? How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? How were “immaterial” things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? What “material meanings” were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the “aesthetics of matter” in their response to historical predecessors?

Download or read book The European Avant Garde A Hundred Years Later written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-01-08 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title of this book, The European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later, implies the European avant-garde took place a century ago, that it is a thing of the past. However, it does not aim to consolidate this position, but to question it. It addresses temporality as the central dimension related to the notion of the avant-garde. The book brings forth original revisions of the theories of the avant-garde, the works of the avant-garde, the idea of the avant-garde as being the vanguard, the leading force of change. It addresses the returning of the avant-garde during the twentieth century and today.

Download or read book Transitional Aesthetics written by Uroš Cvoro and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the way in which artists from the former Eastern bloc perceive the experience of EU integration and transition from a Soviet past as a conceptual launching pad, this book explores how artists critically inhabit a permanent state of 'in-between' to capture the simultaneous existence of multiple and overlapping temporalities. Transitional aesthetics are artistic strategies that disrupt and interrogate ideologically loaded trajectories of cultural, social, or political transition. Examples of such trajectories include the movement from totalitarianism to democracy (post-socialism), from war to freedom and reconciliation (post-conflict), and from the edges of Europe to its centre (inclusion in the European Union). These transitional states include: the future orientation of (failed) socialism and the perpetual present of global capital; the history of unresolved past conflicts and reconciliation through 'transitional justice'; nationalist obsessions with the past and the cultural appeal of kitsch and retro objects in fashion, film and music; and the uncertain future promise of EU membership and resurgence of global right-wing populism, headed by figures like Berlusconi, Le Pen, and Trump. Transitional Aesthetics shows that apprehending time in contemporary art is fundamental to capturing the lived experience of a permanent state of instability; particularly relevant to Europe in the contemporary moment. In a world that has entered 'accelerated transition' towards instability, understanding this experience has broad and resonating relevance for politics, art and society.