Melancholy of Resistance. The History of Performance Art in the Real Socialist Countries of Europe

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Adam Czirak
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2022 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 498466080

My habilitation makes documents of Eastern European performance art accessible, some of which are unpublished or is going to be published for the first time in a bundled and contextualized form. Although performance art has played an important role in exhibition practice and art historiography over the last two decades, the relevant exhibitions have lacked a view of the artistic scenes of the former 'Eastern Bloc', and the Western-influenced (but globally understood) scholarly canon of this art form has also ignored the work of Eastern and Southeastern European performance artists. Against this background, the monograph aims on the one hand to make partially still 'untouched' image and text material of censored performances visible for the first time, thus providing an insight into numerous remarkable but hitherto unknown artistic positions of the European neo-avant-garde (1960s-1980s). On the other hand, these works, which have so far been neglected by researchers, are contextualized in terms of art and cultural history and analyzed and commented on in terms of their political and subversive dimensions.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants