Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa (EESA)
Call for papers and artists
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central
Europe and South Africa. Cristian Nae (Romania), Judy Peter (South Africa) Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), &
Karen von Veh (South Africa)
Consultants: Edit Andras (Hungary), Vit Havranec (The Czech Republic), Piotr Piotrowski (Poland), Bisi Silva
(Nigeria), Didier Houanide (Benin), Gordon Froud (South Africa), A Sooful (South Africa), and Farieda
Nazier (South Africa)
Introduction and outcomes: Conference and travelling exhibitions
Conveners/Curators Note:
This transnational collaboration brings together scholars and artists from Eastern and Central
Europe, and South Africa. A core objective of the project is to draw upon both the cultural and disciplinary
diversities, as well as the cohesions of the participants to contribute towards knowledge generation
around the discourses of place, space and identity. The project will comprise a conference and an
exhibition in 2015, purposefully organised to coincide with the 20-year democracy celebrations in South
Africa, whilst also being mindful of 25 years of democracy in Eastern and Central Europe. While South
Africa remains unique in its position of constitutionally dismantling its apartheid legacies, it also provides
a poignant platform upon which to examine the shifts and implications for visual culture in contexts of
socio-political change, in this instance alongside cultural production from Eastern and Central Europe. To
this end, conference presenters and artists have been identified from interdisciplinary fields, including
identity politics, memory studies, post-colonial and post-socialist studies, in order to promulgate various
positions around creative output in relation to change.
The conference will be hosted at the University of Johannesburg and travelling exhibitions are to
be showcased in South Africa at Constitution Hill and in venues in Eastern and Central Europe. The
conference will consider questions that examine how, why and when theoretical and artistic practices of
these nationalities responded to the constructs of place and political disruption, memory and
commemoration, transforming ideologies and new contexts of acculturation. It will further pose
questions, considering to what extent an existing critical methodology, informed by post-colonial theory,
psychoanalysis and post-Marxist theory, contributes to understanding these discursive constructions?
And to what extent should new interpretive principles be envisioned in order to deal with a comparative
perspective, with the internal disparities inhabiting these imaginary geographies?
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
The exhibition in 2015 will host participating artists representing digital-narrative new media
(digital prints and moving images) who will visually present their work which develops out of theoretical
readings from these three geo-specific spaces. The proposed publications of the proceedings of the
conference and the catalogue for the exhibition will further contribute to existing bodies of knowledge by
documenting the interface between art histories, visual cultures, critical theories and artistic practice
between South Africa and Eastern and Central Europe.
Conference: 13-15 March 2015
Venue: School of Hospitality and Tourism- University of Johannesburg
Exhibition: September 2015
Venue: Constitution Hill- Johannesburg
Exhibition: 2015
Venue: EE – to be finalised
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
University of Johannesburg (Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture) - South Africa
Call for Papers
EESA Conference
13-15 March 2015
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central
Europe and Southern Africa
Keynote speakers:
Prof Achille Mbembe, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser) (Confirmed)
Contemporary theoretical framework for the conference: South Africa and Eastern and Central Europe
‘South Africa’ refers to a geographical location as well as to a constructed cultural space. In 1994, new
ideological and political shifts in South Africa were entrenched by a neo-liberal democracy. Artists and art
historians have in recent years revisited the contestations interconnected with the ideas of a racialised and
gendered political landscape and the renegotiation of constructed social spaces. Post-apartheid South
Africa from 1994 to 2014 is marked by the initially jubilant ideals of nation-building strategies such as the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the notions of the Rainbow Nation and the African Renaissance as
vehicles to grapple with the social constructions of identities in a ‘new’ South Africa. These strategies
reflected a rationalisation of the post-colonial recovery with a sense of self and place and were premised on
the assumptions of interchange, mixing, inter/transculturations, hybridity and creolisation.
In the 1990s, paradigm shifts were noted in the international mainstream art arena. New York was no
longer the international art capital, Eastern and Central European artists were now more visible as a result
of the end of the Cold War and South African art was awarded several international platforms. But many
South African artists continued their artistic practices of the ‘struggle years’. They were also under
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
enormous pressure both at home and from abroad to visually embody the political changes, as well as to
explore innovative approaches in their art. Art produced in the public domain of South Africa is still located
in the political place of unresolved identities and remains in search of a recovery of self. Historical and
political disruptions of transforming contexts periodically propelled artists into spaces of contention and
disjuncture in continuing and discontinuing artistic practices. Contemporary artworks in the national South
African context encompass representations of place, memory, active ideological forces in society, new
public places and acculturated places of intermingling and negotiation.
The ‘post-communist condition’ is not restricted to the space of the former Eastern Europe, but it also
affects ‘the former West’. It has become at least a pan-European phenomenon, if not a global one, taking
into account the pervasiveness of capitalist relations in the present world order. Instead of defining a
clearly regulated geographical space, the expression has rather referred to a heterogeneous and conflicting
discursive terrain. The collapse of the Berlin Wall prompted a reimagining of the formerly divided Europe on
the grounds of different political imaginaries, economies and bio-political regimes. This process has been
regarded as dependent on a shifting temporal logic (“back from the future”, as Boris Groys puts it),
pertaining to a post-utopian attitude, given the prospective dimension of communist utopia. Artists and
curators revisited the logic of modernity and explored its unrealised possibilities (Svetlana Boym), while at
the same time questioning contested territorial marks and processes of un-belonging. From a socialist
perspective, the recent crisis of global capital requires a reconsideration of social relations constructed by
the Soviet imaginary, proposing alternative economies of knowledge and desire and different imagined
collectives.
In relation to temporality, issues of identity and reconstruction of the private and the collective selves
became central themes in the recently unmarked and de-territorialised places of the ‘former East’. Thus,
the question of coping with the socialist past and its heritage has been an important political issue in much
of the art after 1989, overlapping issues of gender, ethnicity, class and national belonging. It has been dealt
with primarily by means of a psychoanalytical approach, for which terms such as trauma, amnesia and
desire pervaded art historical explanation of recent shifts in those societies and their art. Equally important
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
is the post-colonial perspective, according to which the reconstruction of collective identities corresponding
with a shifting political and social imaginary and the gradual disruption of the social fabric in an unstable
political milieu are key factors in understanding many of the artistic concerns with their present, as well as,
and especially with their past. In this respect, an “aesthetics of post-history”, as envisaged by Irit Rogoff in
order to deal with the German art after the Holocaust, may be considered in relation to the ways in which
collective and personal memory of the communist past is represented, performed, its former narratives and
certitudes critically destabilised or its effigies commercialised in recent political gestures and artistic
practices.
Sub themes:
uses and limitations of postcolonial theory in art historical methodologies

constructs of place and political disruption

the discourse of memory and commemoration

transforming ideologies

new contexts of acculturation

acculturated places of intermingling and negotiation

negotiating postcolonial identities

national (re)constructions and their visual representations
Send a 300 word abstract to: Judy Peter (PhD), eesa@uj.ac.za
Deadline for abstracts: 31 July, 2015
The conference proceedings will be published in a peer reviewed volume.
Convenors:
Judy Peter (University of Johannesburg, South Africa)
Cristian Nae (George Enescu" University of Arts, Iasi, Romania)
Ljiljana Kolešnik (Institute of Art History, Croatia)
Karen von Veh (University of Johannesburg, South Africa)
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
Call for artists’ participation
EESA- Exhibition
Between democracies 1989-2014: Memory and commemoration
September 2015
This transnational collaboration brings together artists from Eastern and Central Europe, and Southern
Africa. As the second phase of the project, the curators for the group exhibition invite artists to submit
proposals to have their work included in this exhibition that will be curated in South Africa and hosted at
Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg.
Artworks that use digital-narrative new media (digital prints and moving images) as an approach to
interrogate creative and theoretical processes will be considered for this exhibition.
Sub-themes

constructs of place and political disruption

new contexts of acculturation

acculturated places of intermingling and negotiation

negotiating postcolonial identities

national (re)constructions and their visual representations

the rebirth of xenophobia

post-war/post-apartheid identities

institutional, collective and individual memory

memory and war/ unrest/uprisings
Curators
Judy Peter (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) - Exhibition in South Africa
Cristian Nae (George Enescu" University of Arts, Iasi, Romania) - Exhibition in Eastern Europe
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
Ljiljana Kolešnik (Institute of Art History, Croatia) - Exhibition in Eastern Europe
For the purpose of this exhibition the curators’ note provides a background to the thematics as an
entrypoint for considering the production of a suitable artwork.
Artwork Information

Each artist may submit only one (1) recent (produced within the last 3 years) new media artwork.

The work must align with the themes of the exhibition.

The director of this project reserves the right to reproduce the works forming part of the
exhibition, without compensation to the artist, for inclusion in the catalogue or for advertising
the exhibition.
Required information:

Submit a short overview/background of planned and/or completed work (max 300 words)

Bio and CV of the artist.

Provide a 300dpi resolution still image of the artwork/planned artwork.

Specify audio visual requirements.
The inclusion of any additional works beyond those accepted will need to be approved by the curators.
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za
The curators have sole discretion to screen, broadcast, reproduce, print, exhibit or otherwise distribute
promotional images of the artworks, and upload the artistic works to the website domain of this project
with no additional cost to the artist.
Artists also have the option to offer their digital prints to be hosted in a permanent collection in South
Africa and/or Eastern and Central Europe.
Between democracies 1989-2014: Memory and commemoration
Participation Form
Curriculum Vitae & Artist’s statement
Surname
First Names
Date and Place of Birth
Qualifications
Awards
Biography
Artist’s statement
Send artwork information, exhibition information and participation forms to Judy Peter: eesa@uj.ac.za
Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2014
Between democracies 1989-2014: Remembering, narrating and reimagining the past in Eastern and Central Europe and South Africa.
Cristian Nae (Romania), Ljiljana Kolešnik (Croatia), Judy Peter (South Africa) & Karen von Veh (South Africa) eesa@uj.ac.za