AIDA Nederland

eastartmap.org

In Eastern Europe (also known as the former communist countries, East & Central Europe, or New Europe) there are as a rule no transparent structures in which those events, artifacts and

artists that are significant to the history of art have been organized into a referential system accepted and respected outside the borders of a particular country. Instead, we encounter systems that are closed within national borders, most often based on argumentation adapted to local needs, and sometimes even doubled so that besides the official art histories there are a whole series of stories and legends about art and artists who were opposed to this official art world. But written records about the latter are few and fragmented. Comparisons with contemporary Western art and artists are extremely rare.                                                   

Ivo Sebalj 1912-2002

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A system fragmented to such an extent, first of all, prevents any serious possibility of comprehending the art created during socialist times as a whole. Secondly, it represents a huge problem for artists who, apart from lacking any solid support in their activities, are compelled for the same reason to steer between the local and international art systems. And thirdly, this blocks communication among artists, critics and theoreticians from these countries.
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EAM is intended to serve as an orientation tool in the still-undefined field of the art of the East. There is no need to emphasize how crucially important it is to have a proper orientation in art, just as in other fields. Whenever someone looks at a work by Joseph Beuys, for example, if he is the least bit familiar with artistic production, he will instantly perceive it in relation to an entire network of other artworks and artists, among whom Beuys occupies an important place. The map of the art produced mainly in the West is present in the consciousness of almost everyone, at least in its basic outlines. Very rarely does it happen that, when looking at a certain work of art, one does not have at least a basic orientation about its place in the art system.
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Just the opposite is true when it comes to art originating in the East; in most cases, one is at a loss to say just where and in what way such-and-such a work belongs. A great deal of engagement is required in order to untangle whether a given work is something of significance for the production of a certain region or whether it is merely a belated variation. This sort of disorientation affects not only art-lovers from the West, but also the majority of art-lovers in the East. The nonexistence of a transparent art system is not merely the consequence of certain conditions in the East of Europe; it is, rather, a constitutive part of the art system in these territories. (This we can assert unambiguously in regard to the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which, indeed, we know quite well.) Instead of a transparent art system that would allow comparisons on an international level, what we have to deal with in our region is an art-historical narration organized into local mythologies, which are not, as it were, susceptible to translation into the international language of art. The persistence of local mythologies relies not so much on a lack of knowledge or expertise, but rather on the fear of a realignment in the value system. This is precisely why, in our territories, experts from one country have, typically, not intervened in the interpretation of the art of another country. This principle, for example, held true even on the territory of the single state of Yugoslavia, where experts from one constituent republic were loath to intervene in the art system of another republic — or rather, this happened only very rarely and then, as a rule, as something excessive.
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The only possible way to overcome this tendency is by organizing a field that will induce the intervention of foreign experts. In the desire to transgress closed systems of interpretation and evaluation, EAM is organized as a unified system, despite the number of countries it encompasses. Given this imperative for intervention, the selection of artists assembled so far is merely the basis for subsequent phases, which have been drafted so as to transgress in concrete ways and on various levels, within the scope of our capabilities, the borders of these art fiefdoms.
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The aim of the first phase of the East Art Map was to show the art of the whole space of Eastern Europe, to take artists out of their national frameworks and present them in a unified scheme that can serve as a clear and user-friendly map of the art of Eastern Europe from 1945 to 2000.
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Our initial presumption was that in local areas there exists the memory or consciousness of what had actually affected the development of art in these areas. But since we knew of no previous attempt to map this knowledge, we invited 24 eminent art critics, curators and artists to present up to 10 crucial art projects from their respective countries over the past 50 years. The choice of the particular artworks, artists and events, as well as their presentation (sometimes accompanied by a more general text about the specific circumstances of the given country), was always left exclusively to the individual selectors. The invited selectors were: Inke Arns, Vladimir Beskid, Iara Boubnova, Calin Dan, Ekaterina Degot, Branko Dimitrijevic, Marina Gr