East Art Map: History Is Not Given. Please Help to Construct It

On Saturday 2 June 2012, Calvert 22, in collaboration with the History of Art Department, University College London, will hold a symposium to explore the work of the Slovenian artists’ group IRWIN and East Art Map in relation to strategies of archiving, self-historicisation and re-enactment in Eastern European art.

Published by Afterall in 2006, East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe surveys the extraordinary artistic landscape of the eastern half of the European continent. IRWIN invited artists, curators, theorists and critics to record a wide range of innovations and radical actions that have taken place in the region since 1945 in an ambitious attempt to reconstruct some of the hidden histories of contemporary art. A substantial contribution to art history, East Art Map is also an artists’ project, with a subjective and quixotic appeal in addition to its informative contents.

The symposium will involve an afternoon of presentations from established speakers and postgraduate researchers engaging with issues surrounding IRWIN’s practice, East Art Map, archival tendencies in Eastern European art, and the legacies of these practices today. Specialists will explore the legacies of the project in relation to artistic and curatorial practice, art institutions and the writing of art history.

Speakers include Afterall’s Charles Esche, Gediminas Gasparavičius, members of IRWIN, Saša Nabergoj, Milena Tomić and Jonah Westerman. Copies of East Art Map will be available on the day or can be purchased online through The MIT Press website.

East Art Map: History Is Not Given. Please Help to Construct It
Saturday 2 June 2012, 14.00-18.00

University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT

Tickets £5.00. For further details or to book a place please visit the Calvert 22 website.