Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere: Event-based Art in Late Socialist Europe

Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances.

The artistic networks of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are discussed with a particular focus on the discourses that shaped artistic practice at the time, drawing on the methods of Performance Studies and Media Studies as well as more familiar reference points from art history and area studies.

Katalin Cseh-Varga is lecturer at the Universität Wien and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany. Her research focuses on the theory of public spheres in the former Eastern bloc, archival theory, and performative and medial spaces of the experimental art scene of the 1960s-80s.

Adam Czirak is Assistant Professor in Performance Studies at the Freie University Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on aesthetics of contemporary theatre, visual culture, and performance art in Eastern Europe. His publications include: Partizipation der Blicke (Bielefeld 2011); Melancholy and Politics (co-ed., Athens 2013).