The Return of East European In the 1990s, socialism was a bad dream from which all were glad to have awoken and was only recalled by artists in order to make moralistic judgements that appealed to Western curiosity. In the 2000s, a depoliticised version of the communist past was rediscovered by globally-oriented artists who were enthused with the eclectic sampling of socialism’s unique cultural artefacts. In the third post-communist decade, socialism has reappeared as a fairy tale...(more)

Unbearable Lightness of Being: Ecological Precariousness and the Fragility of Art and Life in the East European Neo-avant-garde The art production of the East European neo-avant-garde in the 1960s and 70s was characteristically ephemeral, frequently making use of poor materials from necessity as much as choice, and typically involved short lived interventions that left little immediate impression on the official art world of regular publications and supported exhibitions in communist ruled countries. Only rarely did their work spread beyond the close circles of the cultural opposition made up of a few hundred like-minded individuals to reach a wider public, while breaking through to significant international recognition as expressed through art criticism, art history, museum collections and major exhibitions was for most East European artists an unattainable goal during the communist period...(more)

Musings with Damir Očko on the Occasion of his Solo Show at Trapéz Gallery Budapest about poster art, poetry and working with distance. I come from Zagreb and to live there and work elsewhere is a challenging situation, as it means living with distance in all directions. I don’t really feel part of the Zagreb scene, but the advantage of living there is that I also maintain a distance from all the more hectic aspects of working in the international scene...(more)

Central European Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (Maja Fowkes, PhD in Art History, University College London.) This thesis addresses the question of how the natural environment figured in the neo‐avant‐garde practices of the generation of artists who around 1970 started to engage with the subject across the socialist states of Central Europe, where various degrees of communist control over society influenced not only artistic production, but also limited access to information about the state of the environment and ecological discourse...(more)

#Occupy Art Feature article in September 2012 issue of Art Monthly. A year after Occupy Wall Street began, the Occupy movement has become such a potent symbol of protest that artists and curators have scrambled to embrace it. Interestingly, however, protest artists are redefining artistic success outside the gallery system...(more)

Chapter in sustainability handbook Enough for All for Ever (2012) The Relevance of Sustainability for contemporary art can be approached from two distinct angles. On the one hand, we may consider the role of art in highlighting environmental issues, expressing criticism towards unsustainable factors in society, and offering imaginative ideas for how to achieve sustainability. The other approach is to turn eco-criticism back towards the art world itself...(more)

Text for exhibition catalogue (September 2012) The artistic practice of Bálint Szombathy is not overly concerned with adding to the global stockpile of art pieces or material objects of any kind, since for the artist, ‘creativity is not connected with production’, but rather with establishing ‘models of new linguistic systems.’The artist is concerned not with the fetishized objets trouvés of the avant-garde, but with the discovery of lacunae or inconsistencies in the urban fabric and exploring the visual and emotive effect when something we expect to see is not there...(more)

Going for Gold at Documenta While side-stepping the impossible expectations of the art world with the aphoristic one-liner that ‘the concept is to have no concept’, there are nevertheless important hints in this year’s Documenta as to where contemporary art may be headed. The curatorial statement is peppered with references to post-humanist thought, a radical branch of eco-philosophy that puts the non-human at the centre...(more)

Reclaiming Lukacs:Interventions in the Archive of a Marxist Philosopher Overlooking the Danube in Budapest is the archive of György Lukács, housed in the philosopher’s residence for the last three decades of his life, which on 12 May 2010 became a site for bold artistic encounters with his legacy...(more)

Contemporary East European Art in the Era of Globalisation article in ArtMargins on the possibilities offered by a liberated concept of Eastern Europe to deal with both the heritage of communism and the social and political dilemmas of post-communism...(more) 

Networks and Sociability in East European Art is the topic of the 9th SocialEast Seminar, to be held at the Courtauld Institute of Art London on 23 October 2010, speakers include Misko Suvakovic, Zofia Kulik,Goran Trbuljak, Petr Stembera andDorota Monkiewicz for more details see...(more)

VIVA AVIVA the Hungarian version of the Turner Prize is always eclectic, diverse and surprising, Maja and Reuben Fowkes turn the spotlight on this kurátormentes extravaganza at the Budapest Mucsarnok...(more)

Reclaim Happiness: Art and Ecology Unbound feature article in Spanish art magazine Artecontexto on the realisation that at the heart of much contemporary art discourse lies a growth model that replicates our unsustainable economic system...(more)

From Stockholm to Copenhagen via Rio: Art and Ecology in the Wake of the Global Summits
talk at Muzeum Sztuki Lodz exploring the lessons of art’s engagement with ecology, from the early 70s to the crystallisation of the debate between technocratic and radical approaches at the ill-fated Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009...(more)

PowerGames catalogue text for exhibition of Danish art at Ludwig Museum Budapest that considers how power exercised through political decision making, national institutions and media constructions is met by artistic strategies of deconstructing national myths, exposing racist subtexts or providing subversive insights...(more)

Look, which wittily is translated as Luk or hole in Hungarian, could be seen as part of a wider artistic trend of exodus from over-institutionalised galleries, towards marginal spaces that offer more freedom for experimentation and potentially less alienation...(more)

Ideology and Ecology: In Search of an Antidote in Contemporary Art Sustainability, in its corporate and ‘green capitalist’ guise, is in danger of taking on some of the negative characteristics of an ideology, and in this way, of contributing to the problem of ‘mental pollution’...(more)

Art, Post-Fordism and Eco-Critique fifth symposium and workshop at Central European University Budapest with Stephen Wright, Igor Stokfiszewski, Branka Cvjeticanin, Ralo Mayer that explored the conundrum of capitalism’s remarkable ability to absorb criticism and adapt to new circumstances. ..(more)

Networks and Sociability in East European Art symposium to be held at the Courtauld Institute of Art that explores the ways in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic collaboration that flew in the face of an official culture of isolationism, censorship and political control..(more)

The Possibility of the Post-National in Contemporary East European Art paper at the CAA Conference in Chicago in February 2010 on the panel Transformation Reconsidered: ‘Utopias’, Realities and National Traditions in Post-1989 Central Europe...(more)

Transitland is a late arrival at the bitter-sweet party of reminiscence and reflection on the twentieth anniversary of 1989. Parallel to the revolutionary political changes of the perestroika era, 1989 was also a turning point in the history of video art in Eastern Europe, with ex-Bloc artists quick to explore the communicative possibilities of a cheap, censor-proof and accessible medium..(more)

Biennial Culture and Sustainability presentation at Cornerhouse Manchester as part of the Ecological Footprint of Contemporary Art, concentrating on the phenomenon of international biennials of contemporary art and ask how the ecological impact of major international art gatherings might be measured...(more)

Revolutionary Decadence The last exhibition in the revolution trilogy focuses on the enclave of foreign artists within the Budapest art world, and examines their participation in libratory forms of sociability, negotiation of the politics of belonging, and contribution to a post-national understanding of contemporary art in post-communist Europe....(more)

Planetary Forecast explores the extent to which ecological awareness and the specific concerns of environmental sustainability are manifest in the critical writings of artists and curators in the early 1970s. Many of the issues later identified by theorists of sustainability, such as consideration of social equality and genuine democracy, as well as the recognition that quality of life is not just a matter of monetary income, were extensively explored in the radical art of the period...(more)

Ecological Footprint of Contemporary Art broad based investigation into the environmental sustainability of the international art world that includes both consideration of the direct environmental impact of art works, conferences, biennials and art fairs, presented as a series of Translocal lectures...(more)

How Philosophers Get Curated asks what are the reasons for the proliferation of philosophers in the world of contemporary art? Have philosophers overtaken the role of art critics in providing legitimation for the mechanisms and structures of the art world? Published in Art Monthly January 2009...(more)

Gender Check takes a flexible reading of gender theory as a guide to the legacy of East and Central European art since the 1960s, starting with the female heroes of Soviet labour in Socialist Realism, moving up through the 1970s photography of orgasms, to contemporary works that combine sex, capitalism and pornography...(more)

Degrees of Modernity reviews three exhibitions dealing with the phenomenon of national representation within a globalised art context. Arctic Hysteria is a show of Finnish art curated for an international audience, Mi Vida is an exhibition based on a Spanish collection of international art, while Altermodern is the 2009 edition of the British art triennial that trespasses national borders...(more)

Translocal Interview: Barnabas Bencsik the director of Ludwig Museum Budapest talks about his new acquisitions and reappraisal of the museum's permanent collection after one year in the job published in Time Out Budapest...(more)

Hard Realities and the New Materiality Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at Central European University Budapest on 26 March 2009 to examine the recent reappearance of a harsh materiality from struggles for ever-diminishing resources to the degradation of the environment, speakers include: Marina Grzinic, Sebastjan Leban, Tadzio Müller, Tamás St.Auby, Janek Simon...(more)

From Post-Communism to Post-Transition In the first decade after the Fall of the Berlin Wall the label ‘post-communism’ appeared as the most appropriate term to refer to the overall situation in Eastern Europe. Today, the pressures of the present outweigh the burden of the past to such an extent that contemporary art in Eastern Europe is fast moving beyond the ‘transition’ into uncharted territory...(more)

SocialEast Seminar on Art and Espionage A symposium on the legacy of cold war espionage for contemporary art in East and West held at Courtauld Institute London 27 February 2009...(more)

The Exclusive World of Art Power The author of Art Power is maverick art theorist Boris Groys, while Seven Days in the Art World was written by self-appointed anthropologist of the international art scene, Sarah Thornton, and despite the differences, they both provide provocative insights into the internal power relations of the art world...(more)

The Ecology of Post-Socialism The year of the Rio Summit marked the end of the optimistic period following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as countries were confronted with the hard realities of international Realpolitik. Perhaps it was the disintegration of the ideological polarities of the Cold War that made it possible for the notion of sustainability to emerge in the context of a global understanding of ecological and social crisis...(more)

Three Colours Red seeks connections and contrasts between the work of Miklós Erhardt, Thomas Hirschhorn and Isa Rosenberger at Vienna Secession...(more)

Revolution I Love You
Mladen Stilinović, Tamás St.Auby, Zofia Kulik, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Oliver Ressler, Fia-Stina Sandlund, Miklós Erhardt, Heath Bunting, Marko Lulić, Tamás Kaszás, Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Csaba Nemes, Nancy Davenport opening International Project Space Birmingham 12 November 2008...(more)

Revolution I Love You: 1968 in Art, Politics and Philsophy
is a mosaic of interviews, statements and essays by prominent theorists, historians, curators, cultural workers and artists including Kostis Kornetis, Viktor Misiano, Jens Kastner, Katja Diefenbach, Krunoslav Stojaković, Lukasz Ronduda, Simon Ford, Rajko Grlić and Gaspár Miklós Tamás...(more)

Towards the Ecology of Freedom
As the quest for sustainability poses a challenge to all spheres of human activity, there are also implications for contemporary art. Essay in GROUND UP: Re-Considering Contemporary Art Practice in the Rural Context...(more)

Manifesta Reaches New Heights
Manifesta 7 aspires to flourish on ambiguity, manifold readings, and the realm of the post-political, taking modernism and regionally-specific Futurism as constant reference points (review in Exindex)...(more)

Exit or Activism?
Symposium investigating thinking about sustainability in the light of the continuing mutations of post-Fordist global capitalism and its devastating effects on the environment, society and the individual...(more)

SocialEast Seminar on 1968
A symposium on the legacy of 1968 for contemporary art in Eastern Europe and beyond held at Jagiellonian University Krakow on 26 April 2008..(more)

Art and Revolution
is a considered intervention inthe delicately poised debate on the relevance of post-Fordist theory to art by a Viennese philosopher who is himself a leading figure in the field (Gerald Raunig's influential book reviewed in Art Monthly)...(more)

Sustainable City
Presentation in Senigallia Italy opening out the issue of the sustainable city towards a range of wider questions, in terms of ecology and the sustainability of the urban model itself...(more)

Rehab
REHAB is a state of mind, a decision to press pause and unwind, a shrugging off of the burden of social responsibility and responsible socialising...(more)

Can provincialism be rehabilitated?
Quick-fire response to an editor's question in Budapest's free monthly art listings magazine index...(more)

Ecological Citizenship
Lecture by Maja and Reuben Fowkes on the Quest for Sustainable Citizenship at Turner Contemporary 12 February 2008...(more)

Art and Sustainability Blog
Blog exploring the deepening relationship between contemporary art and notions of environmental sustainability, which aims to both track the recent history of these ideas and highlight current developments in the field of sustainability and contemporary art....(more)

The Hidden Depths of Hungarian Art
Contribution to Modern Art Oxford's Arrivals: New Art from Eastern Europe published June 2007 examining the grassroots potential of the Hungarian art scene...(more)

Don’t Complain
Art that does not seek to seduce, excite or create a spectacle at the Venice Biennial 2007 reviewed for exindex.hu...(more)

Sensuous Resistance
The legacy of modernism for sustainable art explored for the Dokumenta 12 magazine project...(more)

Revolution is not a Garden Party
Publication with new essays by Gerald Raunig, Benda Hofmeyr, Simon Sheikh, Chus Martinez and Maja and Reuben Fowkes that engage with issues such as art and revolution, aesthetics and politics, and ecology and anarchism...(more)

The Art of Post-Ecological Subjectivities
Futurological contribution to Die Planung / A Terv edited by Katarina Sević et al Budapest/Berlin, 2007...(more)

Remake
Csaba Nemes's project for the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2007 and the controversy surrounding the official result of the competition...(more)

Revolution is not a Garden Party
Contemporary resonances of the revolution with Michael Blum, Nick Crowe, Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Gergely László and Péter Rákosi, Nils Norman, Adrian Paci...(more)

The Lure of Fresh Air:
Sustainability in Contemporary Croatian Art
Examines the shift towards dealing with deep-rooted environmental problems through sustainability...(more)

The Art of Making Do with Enough
Contribution to the new art dealing with sustainable practices in contemporary art, published by Rachmaninoff's London, October 2006...(more)

SocialEast Seminar on Art and Revolution
Manchester Art Gallery 3 February 2007 10-5pm, speakers include Gerald Raunig, Malcolm Miles, Klara Kemp-Welch and Gaspar Miklos Tamas see: www.socialeast.org

Socialist Memory
Screening of artist films using documentary techniques to engage with the socialist past at Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest 10 November 2006...(more)

Sustainable Visions
Screening of films engaging with sustainability for Shifting Ground Conference Ireland,19-22 October 2006...(more)

Djeribi and Stevens
Lecture and workshop by artist and architect based in rural Ireland addressing sustainable art and living in a rural context at CEU Budapest 11-12 April 2007...(more)

Transmit
The ideal is a translocal knowledge that manages to combine the insight and particular experience of the local and the specific, with a love of the comparative and the shared...(more)

Beata Veszely investigates the experience of the impossible in 'On the Way to Heaven', Galerija Balen Slavonski Brod, 8 September - 7 October 2006...(more)

Croatian Spring at Tate Modern
Paper given at Tate Modern conference 'Open Systems' on the innovative conceptual art of the early 1970s in Croatia...(more)

Principles of Sustainability
Sustainable art is arguably a wider concept than environmental art, which is primarily focussed on remedying ecological problems, recycling, and the healing of nature...(more)

Indie Art and the Seventies
Explores the current revival of interest in the art of the 1970s. Are we to look to the art of the Seventies for the key to go beyond materialism? ...(more)

Ruri - Endangered Waters
The Icelandic artist Ruri archives elements of the natural landscape that are threatened with extinction as a consequence of human intervention....(more)

Symposium on Sustainabiity and Contemporary Art
Speakers: Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison, Tamás Kaszás, Hildegard Kurt, Nils Norman, Marko Peljhan, Rúrí ...(more) (magyar)

"Powersave On"
Endre Koronczi’s film mimics the mode of scientific observation, slowly panning across found objects and scenarios to recreate the atmosphere of life on the seventh floor...(more)

Less is Beautiful
Cross-generational stretch, bold interventions in the exhibition space, ascendancy of relational aesthetics, dematerialisation, and a sense of sustainability in many works...(more)

Living at the Edge
Jane Frost residency at Galerija Balen Slavonski Brod, involving a community-based art project, exhibition, and investigation into the role of art in making an ecologically sustainable future...(more)

Possible Theatre
Exhibition of Croatian artists Iva Matija Bitanga and Leo Vukelic in Galerija Balen, focusing on performativity in their work...(more)

The Private Other in the American Dream
Kristina Leko employs the tools of ethnology to explore the Croatian émigré community in America.
(Art Margins October 2005)

Glocal Practices in Contemporary Croatian Art
Socially-engaged art practices at the intersection of global and local culture.
(Praesens 2004/2)

Art and Ecology: Unified or Fragmentary?
Critical review of alternative approaches towards art and environment.
(GreenMuseum)

Little Warsaw: Removal and Deconstruction
Physical and textual removals that recontextualise the reception of public monuments.
(Umelec 2005/3) [magyar]

Croatian Spring: Art in the Social Sphere
Paper for Tate Modern symposium on Open Systems c.1970, 16-19 September 2005. [programme]

System of Coordinates
Survey show at Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art Presents a heterogeneous but constructed picture of the contemporary Russian scene.
(Art Margins, June 2005)

Attention Recycling
Art that goes beyond the triviality of everyday living by raising problems and making solutions less transparent.
(Galerija Balen April 2002)

Unframed Landscapes
An international exhibition of environmentally-attuned art from Hungary and Croatia. [hrvatski] [magyar]

Art and Biotechnology
Heath Bunting's ‘Natural Reality Superweed’ is an important contribution to artistic practice in a new creative field on the borderline between science and art.
(Galerija Balen, April 2004)

Grass Sculptures
Erika Feher's grass chairs suggest the possibility of dialogue in a busy Budapest park.
(Praesens no.2 2005)

Alem Korkut
Solo exhibition of Croatian sculptor with first showing of prize winning installation 'Rain'.
(Galerija Balen, March 2005)

Human Nature
Contemporary Croatian artists explore the intriguing notion of Human Nature.
(Trafo Budapest June 2003)

Dream Factory Communism
Boris Groys lays aside western modernist scruples and hang iconic works of Socialist Realism on the walls of a major German art gallery.
(Blok November 2004)

Here Tomorrow
Engaging works and projects dealing with issues as diverse as institutional critique, war memories, globalisation, travel, fashion and activism.
(Frieze November 2002)

Branding vs. No Logo
Survey of the Croatian contemporary art scene, from the Zagreb Salon to Here Tomorrow.
(ArtMargins July 2004)

Budapest Box
Review of survey show on the Hungarian underground art scene of the 1990s at Ludwig Museum Budapest.
(Umelec no.3 2002)

Identity
Photographs and paintings of refugee children that tangle with the issue of the Other.
(Praesens no.2 2004)

ARTsylumseekers
Reflections on contemporary artists' experience of migration.
(Radionica no.1 January 2002)

Getting Personal
Feminist art at the Zagreb salon risks constructing a simulacra of Central European women's art.
(Balkon April 2002)

Sociability
Marijan Crtalić, Danko Friščić, Denis Krašković, Frane Rogić and Igor Zlobec began to hang out at the Academy in Zagreb and often organise common projects and group exhibitions.
(Galerija Balen September 2003)