Given the multifaceted nature of the phenomenon, the analysis will take an interdisciplinary perspective and employ several different approaches.

The avant-garde magazine will be examined as a discursive space of avant-garde communication, as a Gesamtkunstwerk, and as a historical document. As the recent conjuncture in scholarship positions the art of the region in the international context, our aim is to draw more attention to the interrelationships between the local contexts and international networks of Central European avant-gardes.

How did the different cultural and historical characteristics affect the ‘local’ avant-gardes of Central Europe? How are the avant-garde magazines of Central Europe related to each other?

Accordingly, how could ‘Central European avant-gardes’ be described from the perspectives of Kraków, Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava or Budapest?

Through detailed case studies, the conference will emphasize the complex and problematic nature of Central European avant-garde magazines regarding the questions of national/local and international/cosmopolitan.

The conference includes monographic, thematic and problem-oriented lectures on current research on local avant-garde magazines published during WWI and in the interwar period.

Program:

Thursday, 17 September 2015.

9.30–10.00 - Registration

10.00–11.00 - Plenary I.

Edit Sasvári, Kassák Museum
The Kassák Museum in Central and East European perspective
Eszter Balázs, Kodolányi János University of Applied Arts
‘Artist and Public Intellectual, Artist or Public Intellectual’ – Polemics of the Hungarian Avant-Garde on New Art, 1915–1918

11.00–11.30 - Coffee

11.30-13.30 - Session I.

Oliver Botar, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg
Moholy-Nagy: Art as Information / Information as Art
Jindrich Toman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Moholy Nagy’s idea of a Synthetic Journal
Sonia de Puineuf, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest
“Syntetische Zeitschrift” – Study cases Nová Bratislava and Nový Svet

13.30–15.00 - Lunch

15.00–17.00 - Session II.

Lucie Česálková, Masaryk University, Brno
Artuš Černík between national and media contexts
Vendula Hnídková, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague
Styles of Styl – Platform for Czech modern architecture
Przemysław Strożek, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Chaplin goes viral – Avant-garde publications and the images of popular culture

18.00–20.00 - Dinner at the Petőfi Literary Museum

Friday, 18 September 2015.

10.00–11.00 - Plenary II.

Gábor Dobó – Klára Rudas – Merse Pál Szeredi, Kassák Museum
Curators’ introduction to the exhibition ‘Signal to the World – War ∩ Avant-Garde ∩ Kassák’
Merse Pál Szeredi, Kassák Museum
The politics of artistic utopia – Lajos Kassák and MA in Vienna (1920–1925)
Gábor Dobó, Kassák Museum
“Extraterrestrials in Budapest” – Self-description of Kassák’s avant-garde magazine Dokumentum (1926–1927)

11.00–11.30 - Coffee

11.30-13.30 - Session III.

Kinga Siewior, Jagiellonian University, Kraków
From aesthetics to anthropology – The concept of East in Zenit magazine
Jakub Kornhauser, Jagiellonian University, Kraków
From repulsion to attraction – A long story of surrealism in Romanian avant-garde magazines
Dušan Barok, Monoskop, Bratislava
Body of Thought – Artists’ texts and their contribution to theory

13.30–15.00 - Lunch

15.00–16.30 - Session IV.

Klára Prešnajderová, Slovak Design Museum, Bratislava
Two magazines with two different concepts – Slovenská Grafia and Nová Bratislava
Michał Burdziński, University of Warsaw, Warsaw
How much did our graphic arts fly aloft? On defining the spirit of avant-garde pretensions in an impecunious world
Hanna Marciniak, Charles University, Prague
The D Programme and the Czech avant-garde in the 1940s

16.30–17.00 - Coffee

17.00–18.30 - Session V.

Markéta Theinhardt, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris
L’Art et les Artistes: Revue mensuelle d’art ancien et moderne (1905–1939) – Central European art between modernism and conservatism
Vojtěch Lahoda, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague
Global Art History “avant la lettre” – The Case of Umělecký měsíčník (1911–1914)
Lenka Bydžovská, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague
On the extreme left? The Devětsil monthly ReD in international networks (1927–1931)

20.00–22.00 - Dinner

Saturday, 19 September 2015.

10.00–12.00 - Session VI.

Piotr Rypson, National Museum in Warsaw
Tadeusz Peiper’s strategy for Zwrotnica magazine
Michalina Kmiecik, Jagiellonian University, Kraków
The aftermath of Zwrotnica? Kraków avant-garde and its magazines in the 1930s
Michał Wenderski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Between Poland and the Low Countries – Mutual relations and cultural exchange between constructivist magazines and avant-garde formations

12.00–13.00 - Lunch

13.00–14.30 - Roundtable On the research of Central-European avant-garde magazines

Program and abstract

The conference is accompanied by the temporary exhibition entitled ‘Signal to the World – War ∩ Avant-Garde ∩ Kassák’ dedicated to the first avant-garde magazine of Lajos Kassák, A Tett [The Act] published between 1915 and 1916. The exhibition marks the centenary of Kassák’s ‘debut’. The Kassák Museum is the only thematic showroom of the historical avant-garde in Hungary. Its objectives in this regard are to reach a broader audience and to establish the museum as a regional focus point for research into the avant-garde and modernism.

The conference is organized by Gábor Dobó and Merse Pál Szeredi (Kassák Museum). Cooperating partners are the Charles University, the Jagiellonian University, the Adam Mickiewicz University, the University of Warsaw, the Masaryk University, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the National Museum in Warsaw, the Slovak Design Museum and Monoskop.org.

Registration:

Due to the limited seating capacity of the conference venue in the Kassák Museum we would like to ask everyone who is interested in participating to register by 11 September 2015 at kassakmuzeum@pim.hu.

When you register, please state which days of the conference you would like to attend. (Facebook event RSVP does not count as registration!)

Source: Kassák Museum Budapest
Address: 1033 Budapest, Fő tér 1.
Phone: +36 1 368 7021