RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE by Izabel Anca Galliera B.A., Troy University, 2001 M.A., University of South Florida, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Izabel Anca Galliera It was defended on April 4, 2013 and approved by Barbara McCloskey, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh Kirk Savage, Professor, University of Pittsburgh Grant Kester, Professor, University of California, San Diego Committee Chair: Terence Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, University of Pittsburgh ii RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE Izabel Anca Galliera, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2013 Copyright © by Izabel Anca Galliera 2013 iii RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE Izabel Anca Galliera, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2013 This Ph.D. dissertation traces the emergence and development of an important current of socially engaged art in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. It examines various participatory, collaborative and dialogic projects in public spaces by contemporary artists, working in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. These works often directly engaged marginalized communities, such as the homeless, members of immigrant groups and the Roma. In various ways, these artworks revived leftist traditions in a local context where, as political ideologies and economic orders, socialism had become equated with authoritarianism and democracy with neoliberalism. Occurring at specific moments in time throughout the post-communist period, most often with the presence of both financial and institutional support from the USA and EU nations, specific contemporary art practices sought to reclaim public life and build inclusive public spheres as democratic forms within emerging civil societies. Relying on sociological theories of social and political capital, and on theories of civil societies in political science, my goal has been to identify the potentially transformative roles that socially engaged art forms played in the post-communist transition. Concerned with current socio-political issues and foregrounding spaces of participation and collaboration, such art practices implicitly proposed iv new modes for art’s communication with the viewer, explored notions of public space as the locus of constantly negotiated public spheres, and provoked discussions of viable forms of democracy. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 OUTLINE OF DISSERTATION SECTIONS ................................................ 11 1.3 THE 1990s BATTLE OF BOUNDARIES AND NAMES: THE BALKANS, CENTRAL EUROPE, EASTERN EUROPE AND IDENTITY-POLITICS IN POST- 1989 ART EXHIBITIONS ................................................................................................. 16 1.4 THEORIES OF CIVIL SOCIETY, PUBLIC SPHERE AND SOCIAL CAPITAL’S POLITICAL POTENTIALS ...................................................................... 30 1.4.1 Social capital’s political potentials ............................................................... 34 1.4.2 “Anti-politics” as social capital and civil society in pre-1989 Central Europe ......................................................................................................................... 41 1.4.3 Contentious forms of civil society and public spheres................................ 43 1.5 SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART: PRACTICE IN THEORY ........................... 46 2.0 PART I: FROM SECOND SOCIETY TOWARDS CIVIL SOCIETY ................ 51 2.1 HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS: NEO-AVANT-GARDE PARTICIPATORY PRACTICES IN SOCIALIST HUNGARY, ROMANIA AND BULGARIA, 1960s-1980s .................................................................................................. 55 2.1.1 Socially engaged art in socialist Hungary.................................................... 57 vi 2.1.2 Participatory art in socialist Romania ......................................................... 72 2.1.3 Unconventional art in socialist Bulgaria ..................................................... 83 2.2 THE POLITICS OF ANTI-POLITICS IN THE SOROS CENTERS FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS’ EARLY 1990s EXHIBITIONS IN BUDAPEST AND BUCHAREST ..................................................................................................................... 90 2.2.1 Civil society during the 1990s post-communist transition ......................... 91 2.2.2 Reclaiming public life through interventionist public art ......................... 97 2.2.3 Curatorial Visions: Framing Community-oriented Art Projects ........... 107 2.2.4 Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts: Constraint and Self- Determination ........................................................................................................... 118 2.2.5 The role of institutions, curators and artists in the 1990s post-communist context ....................................................................................................................... 120 2.3 PARTICIPATORY PUBLIC ART AND EMERGING CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTIONS, SOFIA 1990s ............................................................................. 123 2.3.1 The Role of Social Capital in emerging post-1989 Contemporary Art Institutions ................................................................................................................ 129 3.0 PART II: PUBLIC SPHERES IN A POST-1989 EUROPEAN CONTEXT OF NEOLIBERAL COMMUNITARIANISM ................................................................................ 139 3.1 FROM LOCALIZED PUBLIC SITES TO EU TRANSNATIONAL PUBLIC SPHERES: EXHIBITIONS OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART IN PUBLIC SPACES ........................................................................................................................... 141 3.1.1 Moszkva Ter Graviation ............................................................................... 143 3.1.2 Visual Seminar.............................................................................................. 150 vii 3.1.3 Spatiul Public Bucuresti / Public Art Bucharest 2007 ................................ 156 3.2 PARTICIPATORY MODELS IN CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC ART PRACTICES: ATTEMPTS AT INCLUSIVE PUBLIC SPHERES IN BUDAPEST, BUCHAREST AND SOFIA ............................................................................................ 164 3.2.1 Displaying the Roma as critically participatory monuments .................. 165 3.2.2 Staging confrontation and a lack of self-determination ........................... 169 3.2.3 Democratically self-organized projects undermining curatorial protocols . ....................................................................................................................... 172 3.2.4 Self-historicization as situational and participatory art practice ........... 176 3.2.5 Performing a museum of contemporary art through collective participation .............................................................................................................. 180 3.3 CHALLENGING POLITICS OF BELONGING IN THE POST-1989 EU COMMUNITY: BIG HOPE’S AND MATEI BEJENARU’S COLLABORATIVE PRACTICES ..................................................................................................................... 187 3.3.1 Advocating a pluralist form of democratic belonging .............................. 190 3.3.2 Transgressing essentialist views through participatory performativity . 195 4.0 PART III: FORMS OF ARTISTS’ INSTITUTIONALIZATIONS IN AN ERA OF NEOLIBERALISM ............................................................................................................ 206 4.1 COMMUNITY-BASED ARTS AS DEPOLITICIZED SOCIAL PRACTICE IN THE 2000s: ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE AND cARTier ...................................... 208 4.1.1 Art for Social Change: The rhetoric of social exclusion as forms of legitimation ................................................................................................................ 210 4.1.2 cARTier: Entertaining “Community” with cultural activities ............... 221 viii 4.1.3 Participation and collaboration as apolitical engagement strategies ...... 229 4.2 VISUALIZING POLITICAL CAPITAL IN INSIDE OUT AND DISOBBEDIENTI ............................................................................................................. 232 4.2.1 Addressing homelessness: A comparative look at Big Hope and Martha Rosler ....................................................................................................................... 233 4.2.2 Disobbedienti: An attempt at reviving leftist activism in Hungary ......... 244 4.3 ARTISTS’ SELF-INSTITUTIONALIZATION AS SOCIO-POLITICAL PRACTICE ....................................................................................................................... 255 4.3.1 From Dinamo to Impex: Expanding the institutional framing ............... 257 4.3.2 Hungarian cultural institutions: Stage for populist