SocialEast Seminar on Art and Espionage at the Courtauld Institute, 27 February 2009
This SocialEast symposium considers the involvement of art during the Cold War with espionage, both on the level of international exchange and in specific national contexts. It deals with attempts within the Eastern Bloc to monitor artists through surveillance and networks of informers, the role of art espionage as an instrument of Sovietisation, and the methods used to control the involvement of artists in the international art world. There will also be discussion of the parallel role of Western organisations in activities from cultural espionage to the use of art as a propaganda weapon. The seminar will also consider artistic responses to the phenomenon of spying and the wider legacy of artistic espionage for the topography of contemporary art.
Speakers include Doina Anghel, László Beke, Mark Boswell, Paolo Cirio, Anthony Downey, Catherine Fraise, Kata Krasznahorkai, Nina Levitt, Łukasz Ronduda, Kädi Talvoja, Raluca Voinea and Franciska Zólyom.
The seminar takes place from 1.15 – 7.00pm, Friday 27 February 2009, at the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN. For further information, click here (pdf).
The seminar will be accompanied by an issue of Third Text, guest edited by Dr Reuben Fowkes, and including essays by leading theoreticians dealing with the problematic of how to rewrite the art history of Europe after the Cold War to take into account the multiple histories of the countries of Eastern Europe.