East Art Map
Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe
edited by IRWIN

Reconstructing the missing history of contemporary art, art networks, and art conditions in Eastern Europe from the East European perspective.

The artistic map of Europe contains different degrees of detail and resolution. Italy, France, and Spain are presented in fine grain, but the Balkan peninsula is little more than a vague outline. England, Germany, and Scandinavia have many features filled in, but to the east of Germany things are blurred. Until recently, cities like Sofia, Odessa, Skopje, and Belgrade had next to no definition. Further to the East, Moscow comes into focus, but this is no compensation for the Baltics, sentenced for the last halfcentury to blank space.

In the West, virtually every move of the artist, the art market, and the art public is documented. But in Eastern Europe, no such system of documentation or communication exists. Instead, we encounter systems that are not only inaccessible to the West,
but incongruous from one country to the next. Beside the official art histories there is often a whole series of stories and legends about “unofficial,” unapproved art and artists. East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct the missing histories of contemporary art in Eastern Europe from an East European and artistic perspective. It is perhaps the widest ranging art documentation project ever undertaken by the East on the East, involving a large network of artists, scholars, curators and critics coordinated by the IRWIN group over several years.

The editors invited eminent art critics, curators, and artists to present up to ten crucial art projects produced in their respective countries over the past 50 years.The choice of the particular artworks (many of them reproduced in colour), artists, and events, as well as their presentation, was left exclusively to the individual selectors. In addition, the editors asked experts from both East and West to provide longer texts offering cross-cultural perspectives on the art of both regions.

An Afterall book /distribution MIT Press

536 pages
more than 250 color and b&w reproductions
24 selectors
17 essays

selectors and writers:

Inke Arns, Vladimir Beskid, Iara Bubnova, Calin Dan, Ekaterina Degot, Branko Dimitrijevic, Lilia Dragneva, Marina Gržinic, Sirje Helme, Marina
Koldobskaya, Suzana Milevska, Viktor Misiano, Edi Muka, Ana Peraica,
Piotr Piotrowski, Branka Stipancic, János Sugár, Jiri Ševcik, Miško
Šuvakovic, Igor Zabel, Nermina Zildžo

Lutz Becker, Susan Buck-Mors, Roger Conover, Eda Cufer, Michael Fehr, Boris Groys, Jürgen Harten, Sergej Kapus, Erden Kosova, Rastko Mocnik, Andreas Spiegl, Slavoj Žižek

EAST ART MAP
(RE) CONSTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN EASTERN EUROPE

Every single move of the artist in Western civilization is documented.
But, did you know there is no similar thing in Eastern Europe?!

In Eastern Europe (former communist countries, East & Central Europe or New Europe) there is, as a rule, no transparent structures of events, artifacts and artists significant for the history of art that would be organized into a referential system and accepted and respected outside the borders of a particular country. Instead of them 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 official art histories there are a whole series of stories and legends about art and artists who opposed the former. But written records about these latter are few and fragmented. Comparisons with contemporary Western art and artists are extremely rare.

1. A system that is fragmented to such an extent, first of all, prevents any serious possibility to comprehend the art created during the times of socialism as a whole.

2. Secondly, it represents a huge problem of orientation for artists, who, apart from lacking any solid support in their activity, are compelled, for the same reason, to steer between the local and international systems of art.

3. And thirdly, this blocks communication among artists, critics and theoreticians from these countries.

History is not given.
It has to be constructed.

EAST ART MAP ONLINE
www.eastartmap.org

What is the East Art Map (EAM)?

East Art Map Online is a tool that will lead you through the last 50 years of the history of visual arts in Eastern Europe.
You will get to know 250 artists/events/projects that are considered of major importance by the 24 invited art critics, curators and artists from the different ex-socialist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern countries invited to make an initial selection for the EAM.
East Art Map Online is now open for contributions by its users.
You are invited to participate in the selection of the ten most important artworks or crucial art projects from every country of Eastern Europe since 1945.

How to participate?

We invite anyone who wishes to, and who thinks s/he has a better idea than the initial selectors, to propose a replacement for any project or artwork included in the EAM.

Send your proposal - complete with a) a written page of text presenting your suggested replacement and the reasons why it should be included, and b) written references confirming the reliability of the date of the work you are proposing for inclusion - to editor@eastartmap.org or submit it directly at this website on the information page of the artist you wish to replace.

All the proposals - provided they contain the requested materials - will be displayed on the website and kept for public discussion until the final decision of the international committee. A feedback area will be installed.

Every two to three months an international committee of six experts will decide whether or not to include any of the proposals submitted.

Any questions should be directed to the editor Inke Arns at editor@eastartmap.org

NEW MOMENT publication:
www.newmoment-irwin.com

CD ROM

A multimedia presentation is being made by Renderspace in cooperation with the art group Irwin, which is, besides the book, the main carrier of the East Art Map project. The presentation, uses state-of-the-art "portex" technology, which is a combination of animated (2D), classic 3D graphics and video.

For more information about this multimedia project visit the web site of RenderSpace:
www.renderspace.si

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East Art Map Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe edited by IRWIN

Reconstructing the missing history of contemporary art, art networks, and art conditions in Eastern Europe from the East European perspective.

East Art Map
Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe
edited by IRWIN