Networking the Bloc: International Relations and Experimental Art in Eastern Europe (1968-1981)

The proposal is to complete a monograph entitled Networking the Bloc: International Relations and Experimental Art in Eastern Europe (1968-1981) surveying key instances of international exchange among East European unofficial artists in the period spanning the long decade between the Warsaw Pact troops' invasion of Czechoslovakia and the emergence of the Polish Solidarity movement. This time-frame is designed to coincide with the re-emergence of civil society in the region, post-thaw, taking as pivotal 'Basket Three' of the Helsinki Agreement (1975) guaranteeing the 'free movement of people and ideas' across divided Europe, to investigate both the opportunities for and impediments to these freedoms in the periods immediately preceding the Agreements and the changing position in the years that followed. The primary aim of the book is to chart a topography of experimental exchanges within the Soviet bloc itself, but the geopolitical scope of the material necessarily extends beyond the borders of the USSR and the Soviet Satellite countries to include important contacts with former Yugoslavia (independent of the USSR after 1948), Western Europe, the USA and Latin America.

By weaving together minor narratives, Networking the Bloc seeks to reposition East-East exchange within a global art historical field and to challenge accounts of the late Cold War period that emphasize isolation over connectivity. Hungarian dissident György Konrád asked "How can we strengthen the horizontal human relationships of civil society against the vertical human relationships of military society?" in 1984. By then, I argue, experimental artists had been exploring such questions, in their own way, for two decades. The book explores how artistic ideas were relayed among like-minded artists across ideological and national frontiers in a period characterised by political polarisation and a network of censors, informers and secret police. The focus is on the following: the pioneers and publications that fostered and facilitated exchange; the places that served as hubs for personal encounters among artists and artistic propositions; the events that brought art and artists together in new constellations; artists' accounts of their excursions abroad and, finally, the experiences of émigré artists who were able to play a part in facilitating international collaboration and the circulation of materials in the Soviet bloc after having decamped to the West.

Networking the Bloc will be a richly illustrated volume of around 100 000 words, to be published by MIT Press in 2018.

'Networking the Bloc' will directly benefit public sector national and international museum professionals and members of the general public with an interest in East European art and post-war cultural developments more widely, as well as the employees of commercial and private sector galleries and their publics. The study will serve as a resource for UK and European cultural policy-makers and government agencies seeking to foreground historic ties and to foster better cultural links between member states of the European Union, among others, through the international network of Cultural Institutes. A stronger understanding of the Cold War counter-cultural exchange is especially timely in view of the revival of interest in civil society in the wake of the Arab Spring, and recent demographic changes within Europe. Younger generations will benefit enormously from a more profound understanding of this recent history, which is rarely taught in schools. In the context of the widespread use of social media for self organisation, I anticipate that the publication of my monograph will be eagerly received by journalists analysing and historicising current cultural, social, and political phenomena, further publicising the study and delivering its benefits to wider interested audiences of all ages.

In recent years, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the visibility of contemporary Eastern European art in Western museum collections and at international biennials. Museum acquisition policies also testify to growing interest in 1960s and 1970s experimental art in general, and in former-East European art in particular, producing fresh markets for accessible, English language contextual publications. Tate, like MoMA in the US, is among those institutions currently building up its collections in this area, making fresh curatorial appointments and developing related events and exhibitions programme, and there are a growing number of East European cultural foundations in the UK. Museum professionals and curators will benefit enormously from the research and materials brought together in 'Networking the Bloc', providing inspiring material for delivering ground-breaking programmes to diverse audiences. The project will seek, in particular, to promote stronger links with East European minorities in the UK via the gallery education agency 'Engage''s innovative local strategies.

I have participated in tapping widespread, no-specialist, intergenerational interest in East European culture has, among others, delivering a study at the Department of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck, following the V & A exhibition Cold War Modern. Teaching a Summer School course in the field this year, has further convinced me of the wider public's fascination with this this filed, which, for many, remains all too often inaccessible, not least because of linguistic barriers. Consequently, I am in discussion with a series of institutions as regards developing an international touring exhibition to gain further visibility for the artists and networks discussed in the book project. Among the institutions with which I have close links at present are Modern Art Oxford, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Tranzit Prague and Budapest, Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana, and the Ekaterina Foundation in Moscow. In parallel with developing the exhibition, I intend to expand the Networking the Bloc project website into an audio and video platform for sharing interviews with East European artists', granting users from among the general public unprecedented access into the cultural world of unofficial art in the late socialist period. Bearing witness to historical transformations of immediate relevance today, living practitioners and participants in late Cold War developments, offer important testimonies of recent events that are in danger of being distorted, forgotten, and lost to younger generations who might profit enormously from close engagement with their personal accounts.