Performance Art in Eastern Europe

While performance art, or live art created by visual artists, in Western Europe and North America has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, texts and studies, performance art in Eastern Europe remains under-studied. This research, then, will probe the following questions: what does it mean to create performance art in the specific socio-political circumstances of Eastern Europe? What was the function and significance of performance art in this context? How does the knowledge and understanding of performance art practices from Eastern Europe enhance our understanding of the genre in a global sense?

Performance art emerged as a genre in its own right in Western Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s. Its function and significance varied, but one of the main drives behind creating an ephemeral art form was to both expand beyond the frame of the canvas, and to escape the commodification of art by refusing to produce art objects. Feminist artists also seized upon the genre because it enabled them to become active agents, instead of passive subjects.

In Eastern Europe, however, there was no art market to speak of. The state was the main patron, and painting and sculpture were the only officially tolerated genres of art. Nevertheless, artists in Eastern Europe developed their own performance art traditions, and these manifestations often varied depending on the country in question. For example, in the former Yugoslavia, performance developed on a semi-official level among artists in Student Culture Centres, established by Tito across the country to contain student unrest. In other places, such as Czechoslovakia and Russia, artists retreated to the countryside, where they experienced freedom from surveillance and an escape from the everyday, which they used to create. In Hungary, especially in the more liberal atmosphere of the 1970s, performances often took place at art openings, a liminal space between the official and unofficial where a more relaxed atmosphere provided room for experimental work.

One of the first and only explorations of performance art in the region took the form of an exhibition and catalogue in 1998, entitled "Body and the East" (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana), curated by Zdenka Badovinac. Due to the nature and range of its scope, the analysis of artworks remained limited to single-country studies and brief catalogue entries. This project will result in a comprehensive monographic study, Performance Art in Eastern Europe, that expands on this groundbreaking undertaking and provides a thorough narrative and analysis of the development of the genre in the region. I organise my book thematically, so as to avoid a broad-brush approach inherent in a country-by-country study. This research also provides an additional dimension, by examining the work of artists working nowadays in the context of their predecessors, to examine how the significance, manifestation and function of performance art has changed since the communist period, if at all.

While the research will fill a gap in the literature on performance art, this new knowledge and information is targeted at a non-academic audience as well. Dynamic and interactive activities have been integrated into the project so as to involve artists and art historians in the region, such as a conference and exhibition that will solicit both papers and performances through an open call. Just as the book and conference aim to integrate Eastern European artists into the discourse, school workshops, with both educators and pupils, will integrate contemporary art practices, such as performance art, into the curriculum.

This project aims to bring the knowledge and information about Eastern European contemporary art practices, such as performance art, off of the page of the book and into the public sphere, to promote new knowledge about the national cultural identities and distinct and changing political situations from the region. What better way to understand a people than through their art and culture, which often functions as the expression of individuality, nation, and place? The impact activities will also reinvigorate a historic link between Scotland and Eastern Europe, through the sphere of the arts, established by Richard Demarco in the 1960s.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the breakup of Yugoslavia have changed not only the map of Europe significantly, but also the corresponding geopolitical relations. No longer the monolithic Eastern Bloc, the face of Europe now includes a number of new individual nations, many of which have already become part of the EU and NATO, while others look to join eventually. The residual effect of the expansion of EU borders, with its policy of free migration, means that the makeup of the UK's population is changing as well. This is particularly the case in Scotland, which not only hosts large migrant communities from new EU member states, but has also witnessed an increase in students from countries such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, for example, over the past several years. This makes a healthy understanding individual identity, and healthy approach to integration, essential.

The popularity of social media, publicly organised events such as flash mobs, and even actions taking place as part of the Occupy demonstrations all have their roots in performance art, however the history and understanding of contemporary art practices are often inaccessible to general audiences.

By utilising established mechanisms through the third sector, such as a public conference and exhibition, as well as the Aberdeen May Festival, an annual event that is very popular with the non-academic community in Aberdeenshire, this knowledge and information about both contemporary art practices and culture in Eastern Europe, will be made open and approachable. Through interactive workshops with schools and teachers, I will engage viewers with the topic, and provide opportunities for them to create performances themselves, focused on the topic of identity. This will mark a change the way contemporary art practices are approached, by involving students on a practical level first, in order to understand the mechanisms behind the work of art.

By getting involved with members of the greater Aberdeen community, I will connect my research to the local environment in meaningful ways that will inform the public about the diverse and vibrant cultures of Eastern Europe that are represented right here in the shire. For example, by involving the public in dynamic events, such as performances taking place during the conference, and workshops where participants create their own works of action art, I will make Aberdeen a place where performance art is created, visible and understood.

I will continue to build my website through the course of this project, providing information about a subject for which it is otherwise difficult to find information. The site is already used by a range of visitors across the globe.

This study of performance art in Eastern Europe will not end with the end of the Fellowship, nor with the publication of the book. I already have plans for the afterlife of the project, including a large-scale exhibition at the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana, which will revisit the noteworthy 1998 exhibition there, "Body and the East." I am applying for funding from the European Research Council to support the planning an implementation of that project, which should debut in 2018, twenty years after the first exhibition.