13.45 – 19.45, Friday 22 February (with registration from 13.15)
10.00 – 19.45, Saturday 23 February (with registration from 09.30)
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
Utopia III is the third in a series of major conferences devoted to the theme of utopia in 20th and 21st century Russian culture organised by CCRAC (The Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre).
Utopia III: Contemporary Russian Art and the Ruins of Utopia explores the afterlife of utopian thought in Russian art since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the years 1989-91. The splintering of the vision of a collective Soviet utopia and the rise of individual utopias undoubtedly predated perestroika. During the Brezhnev years of stagnation, unofficial artists deployed a range of strategies to analyse the failure of the project of constructing Socialist society. If, for some, the collapse of the Soviet Union and entry into the free-market appeared to be a gateway to Western-style utopia, rapid socio-economic change left others out in the cold. Groups of Russian artists working since the 1990s have continued to explore collective organisation as a mode of political engagement, from Chto Delat’, to Voina, to those artists involved in the current protests against Putin’s government. As artists today wrestle with new forms of social and cultural decay, and as critics negotiate new forms of nostalgia, what, if anything, remains be salvaged from among the ruins of the Soviet utopia?
Bringing together artists, art historians, curators and cultural theorists to discuss recent transformations in the Russian cultural landscape, Utopia III addresses the following questions: How has Soviet avant-garde art been historicised, re-contextualised, and re-mobilized in recent years? Is the intersection of art and activism necessarily utopian? In what ways has the arrival of Capitalist utopia transformed the landscape of the contemporary Russian art world?
To book a place: £31 (£21 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions)
BOOK ONLINE: http://courtauld-institute.digitalmuseum.co.uk Or send a cheque made payable to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating the event title ‘Utopia III’.
For further information, email ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk
Organised by Dr Klara Kemp-Welch and Elizaveta Butakova (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
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