Tranzit Display Gallery, Prague
Tuesday 24 May 1-5pm

Tamas St.Auby, Centaur, 1973-5

Tranzitdisplay Gallery, Prague
Tuesday 24 May, 1-5pm

This symposium considers East European socialism and post-communist capitalism as opposing systems and explores the tactics devised by artists, dissidents and social activists to circumvent, escape or resist them. Issues to be discussed include the question of how connected the artistic avant-garde and political dissidence were under socialism, especially in the wake of the protest movements of 1968. More generally, how capitalistic in practice was the system disparagingly labelled ‘really existing socialism’ by leftist dissidents, especially in terms of economic and working practices?  In terms of opposition to the system, the symposium will discuss the inventive methods of everyday resistance against both totalitarianism in politics and society and exploitative conditions in the workplace. Why does the hidden history of opposition to the socialist system continue to fascinate and how have contemporary artists tried to salvage the submerged experience of resistance. Is there perhaps an untapped reserve of oppositional energy in Eastern Europe, and if so, can it be turned back on?

Programme

1.00 Maja and Reuben Fowkes (translocal.org), ‘New Left East, Socialism as (if) it really existed’
1.25 Conversation between Tamás St.Auby  and Miklos Haraszti 
1.55 Fedor Blascak (Bratislava) ‘If the enemy is a clear cut, a stroke can be strong’
2.20 Adam Chodzko (artist, UK) introduction to The Pickers
2.45 Break
3.15 Franco Bifo Berardi (philosopher)
3.45 Jiří Skála (artist, Prague) presentation of project One Family of Objects (2011)
4.10 Roundtable discussion with Katarina Šević, Péter Szabó, Csaba Nemes and Siniša Labrović.
4.45 Screening of Tamás St.Auby’s film Centaur (1973-5)


Participants are invited to attend the opening of Loophole to Happiness at Futura Centre for Contemporary Art at 6pm.

Venue:
TRANZITDISPLAY, Dittrichova 9/337, 120 00 Praha 2
www.tranzitdisplay.cz

Partners and supporters:

AMT_Project Bratislava

Tranzitdisplay Prague