This edited collection, bringing together art historians and curators working both in the ‘East’ ... more This edited collection, bringing together art historians and curators working both in the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ of Europe, is a result of a growing interest in the theorisation and historical analysis of feminist curating as a distinct practice with its own transnational history and politics.
In most former state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the emergence and public visibility of feminist curating and exhibitions usually dates back to the 1990s and is associated with the radical transformation of art practices, ideologies and art systems as well as with wider socio-political and intellectual changes, and challenges, of post-socialist transition. This history, and its legacy, is addressed in this book through national and regional case-studies ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans.
An equally significant part of the book is dedicated to the present and future of feminist curating, as well as of other politicised forms of curatorial activities (e.g. queer curating). In addition to the theoretical or historical accounts presented, the collection includes two highly relevant interviews with curators: Bojana Pejic on the block-buster exhibition Gender Check (2009–2010) in Vienna and Warsaw; and Airi Triisberg and Rebeka Põldsam on Untold Stories (2011), the first international queer exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia.
My recent project, Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2011–2017) develops further the strategies of a con... more My recent project, Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2011–2017) develops further the strategies of a conscious ethical politics in artistic production, the creation of a community with shared authorship and ownership, and the emancipatory potentials of collective autobiographical methodologies as the basis for art-making. Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić is a complex, long-term, interdisciplinary, participatory research art project, in which I used online social media networks, as well as collaborations with women, to trace and contact people sharing my first name and family name. These name-sisters are of diverse nationalities, ages, and levels of education and have different professions, social backgrounds, and life experience, but all of them are able to communicate in Serbo-Croatian, and they, or their parents, are from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Book was published in 2018.
Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions, 2017
INSIDE OUT:
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the e... more INSIDE OUT:
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the editors' introduction to the reader Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions by Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska
While acknowledging the “problem of performativity”, Performative Gestures Political Moves (2014)... more While acknowledging the “problem of performativity”, Performative Gestures Political Moves (2014), however, (still) lingers on the term, exploring its echoing in the research focused on what should thus also be considered as an effect of the performance of power – on the art and theory production in so-called “Eastern Europe”. The book does not (only) represent the research on performance art and performativity in a region denoted as “East European”, but also produces positions that go beyond the representation(s) of what performance art, performativity in/and “Post-Socialist Europe” are. Performative Gestures Political Moves therefore also raises questions of historisation(s) and their ideological positioning. Especially within feminist art history but also in feminist curating, the question of labelling art production as feminist has been till today a burning subject. How, what, when, why, where, by whom and for whom is (performance) art feminist, obviously does not have an unambiguous answer. The same is true for art and feminism as such. Therefore, the publication has aimed to foster a reflection on research positions and theoretical considerations of performativity, performance art, feminism, historisation and, above all, their political implications in/and/for the “continental Post-Socialist” condition.
With contributions by Angela Dimitrakaki, Ana Peraica, Barbara Orel, Dunja Kukovec, Grupa Spomenik and DeLVe, Marija Ratković, Marina Gržinić, Martina Pachmanová, Milijana Babić, Suzana Milevska, Tea Hvala, Waldemar Tatarczuk
On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into t... more On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into the productive potential of the affect of shame. This book contests the ontological understanding of shame and the psychoanalytical interpretation of it based on personal traumatic experiences linked to lack, loss, memory repression, and absence. Rather, the book builds on complex issues (initially proposed by Paul Gilroy) that concern the coming to terms with a grim colonial and imperial past: How can one deal with the personal and collective memories of “paralyzing guilt” after dreadful atrocities and genocides? How can such negative experiences be transformed into “productive shame” (not only for the perpetrators but also for the victims and witnesses)?
This collection of essays, discussions, and interviews reflects on the intersection of the historicity, materiality, and structures behind culturally constructed race and racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across different disciplines, fields, and theories (for example, in philosophy, art and art history, visual culture, architecture, curating, postcolonial history, gender and queer studies). Various case studies and artistic projects employing collaborative and participatory research methods are analyzed as practices that empower the process of turning shame into productive agency. The ensuing role of productive shame is to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns, and events that are responsible and constitutive of racism, and has been contextualized in recent debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 16 Design by Surface 2015, English 16.5 x 22 cm, 264 pages, 41 color ill., softcover ISBN 978-3-95679-149-9 €22.00 Texts by Tal Adler, Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Jasmina Cibic, Das Kollektiv, Zsuzsi Flohr, Eduard Freudmann, Tímea Junghaus, Jakob Krameritsch, Jean-Paul Martinon, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Trevor Ngwane, Karin Schneider, Primrose Sonti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
Following the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Bloc in 1989, gender studies and the the... more Following the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Bloc in 1989, gender studies and the theorization of feminism boomed in eastern Europe, from the Baltics to the Caucasus. Bojana Pejic's substantial companion volume to Gender Check (which compiled paintings, sculptures, photographs, posters, installations, films and videos by over 200 artists) offers a coherent picture of this previously unmapped terrain, analyzing the visual arts before and after 1989 in relation to the relative absence and then explosion of feminist debate. How were workers depicted on Socialist posters? How were male heroes portrayed in officially sanctioned art in Romania in the 1960s? How did female artists see themselves during the transition period after 1989? How do images impact our view of the sexes? Gender Check: A Reader reflects on ideas of masculinity and femininity in the former Communist Bloc.
This book presents the long-term collaborative project CODE:RED and its fields of operation: the ... more This book presents the long-term collaborative project CODE:RED and its fields of operation: the informal economy, the self-organization of urban minorities, global sex work, and human trafficking. The project would not have been possible without the partnership of numerous organizations, groups, and communities around the world who are fighting for the rights of sex workers. Here the reader will find articles that discuss the history of activism among sex workers, their commitment to social visibility, their fight for basic human and social rights, their cultural activities, and their involvement in trade unions, among other topics. But the book is also a tribute to the remarkable people who, through courage and willpower, have succeeded in breaking out of the vicious cycle of ignorance and stigmatization. The transition from invisibility to public openness represents one of the most life-changing – and liberating – decisions a person can make. CODE:RED is published by Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana and designed by Ajdin Bašić. The book was generausly supported by Erste Stiftung, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Featuring work by Thomas Hirschorn and Los Carpinteros among others, Volksgarten (People's Garden... more Featuring work by Thomas Hirschorn and Los Carpinteros among others, Volksgarten (People's Garden) explores identification systems and strategies of belonging within communities. This volume focuses on districts in Graz, Austria, as models for the possibilities and complexities of social utopias and communal life.
The influential Slovenian curator, art critic, writer and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was lar... more The influential Slovenian curator, art critic, writer and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was largely responsible for putting the Slovenian art scene on the map during the 1990s. As Senior Curator of Ljubljana's Moderna Galerija, he established cultural links between Eastern and Western Europe, developing a unique critical perspective on the ongoing transformation of the post-Communist era. This indispensable volume both develops and creates new contexts for the theories and strategies illustrated by Zabel in his exhibitions, publications, critical writings and European exchange initiatives. It is published collaboratively by the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory in Ljubljana and the Erste Foundation.
This is the third volume in The Art Seminar, James Elkin's series of conversations on art and vis... more This is the third volume in The Art Seminar, James Elkin's series of conversations on art and visual studies.
Is Art History Global? stages an international conversation among art historians and critics on the subject of the practice and responsibility of global thinking within the discipline. Participants range from Keith Moxey of Columbia University to Cao Yiqiang, Ding Ning, Cuautemoc Medina, Oliver Debroise, Renato Gonzalez Mello, Suzana Milevska, and other scholars.
The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments h... more The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments have shifted spatial practice to centre stage both in civic life and academic research. Social networking, political projects, cross-border movements, artistic interventions, urban and environmental initiatives, self-organized educational practices – all articulate the challenges involved in organizing the spaces we share. In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
The Renaming Machine / The Book
ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers
book, hardcover, 420 pp,... more The Renaming Machine / The Book ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers book, hardcover, 420 pp, ill., colour Ljubljana, Slovenia: P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute. 2010 The project The Renaming Machine looks at the complex entanglements involved in the political and cultural processes of renaming. Its main concept reflects the crucial need to question the way these processes have influenced the construction and destabilization of the memory of national, cultural and personal identities in the former Yugoslavia and South-Eastern Europe over the past two decades. Alongside the philosophical and theoretical implications of the “mystic writing pad” of historic renaming, the project examines clandestine ideological patterns of the “desiring renaming machine” at work behind the dominant and visible social machines. Particularly with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the renaming “apparatus” erased and overwrote most traces from the Tito era, including the Yugoslav leader’s own name, which had been attached to many places in the former country. Participating writers and artists in the book are (among others): Sanja Iveković, Tanja Ostojić/DavidRych, Tadej Pogačar, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Irwin, Alexander Vaindorf, Sasha Huber, Kalle Hamm, Mladen Stilinović, Hristina Ivanoska, Zdenko Bužek, Barbara Borčić, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , James E. Faulconer, Suzana Milevska, Aldo Milohnić, Zhivka Valiavicharska.Valiavicharska.
Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is best known as a deconstru... more Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is best known as a deconstructionist and post-colonial theorist. With an awe-inspiring track record in several areas, ranging from Feminism and Marxism to Literary Criticism and of course, Post-colonialism, she has built a reputation for being simultaneously at home and an outsider in many disciplines. The interviews collected in this volume reflect the international character of her intellectual engagement as, in her criss-crossings of the globe, she engages with activists, scholars and writers located in different cultural contexts, from America to India to Macedonia (Suzana Milevska) and China.
This edited collection, bringing together art historians and curators working both in the ‘East’ ... more This edited collection, bringing together art historians and curators working both in the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ of Europe, is a result of a growing interest in the theorisation and historical analysis of feminist curating as a distinct practice with its own transnational history and politics.
In most former state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the emergence and public visibility of feminist curating and exhibitions usually dates back to the 1990s and is associated with the radical transformation of art practices, ideologies and art systems as well as with wider socio-political and intellectual changes, and challenges, of post-socialist transition. This history, and its legacy, is addressed in this book through national and regional case-studies ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans.
An equally significant part of the book is dedicated to the present and future of feminist curating, as well as of other politicised forms of curatorial activities (e.g. queer curating). In addition to the theoretical or historical accounts presented, the collection includes two highly relevant interviews with curators: Bojana Pejic on the block-buster exhibition Gender Check (2009–2010) in Vienna and Warsaw; and Airi Triisberg and Rebeka Põldsam on Untold Stories (2011), the first international queer exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia.
My recent project, Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2011–2017) develops further the strategies of a con... more My recent project, Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić (2011–2017) develops further the strategies of a conscious ethical politics in artistic production, the creation of a community with shared authorship and ownership, and the emancipatory potentials of collective autobiographical methodologies as the basis for art-making. Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić is a complex, long-term, interdisciplinary, participatory research art project, in which I used online social media networks, as well as collaborations with women, to trace and contact people sharing my first name and family name. These name-sisters are of diverse nationalities, ages, and levels of education and have different professions, social backgrounds, and life experience, but all of them are able to communicate in Serbo-Croatian, and they, or their parents, are from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Book was published in 2018.
Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions, 2017
INSIDE OUT:
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the e... more INSIDE OUT:
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the editors' introduction to the reader Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions by Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska
While acknowledging the “problem of performativity”, Performative Gestures Political Moves (2014)... more While acknowledging the “problem of performativity”, Performative Gestures Political Moves (2014), however, (still) lingers on the term, exploring its echoing in the research focused on what should thus also be considered as an effect of the performance of power – on the art and theory production in so-called “Eastern Europe”. The book does not (only) represent the research on performance art and performativity in a region denoted as “East European”, but also produces positions that go beyond the representation(s) of what performance art, performativity in/and “Post-Socialist Europe” are. Performative Gestures Political Moves therefore also raises questions of historisation(s) and their ideological positioning. Especially within feminist art history but also in feminist curating, the question of labelling art production as feminist has been till today a burning subject. How, what, when, why, where, by whom and for whom is (performance) art feminist, obviously does not have an unambiguous answer. The same is true for art and feminism as such. Therefore, the publication has aimed to foster a reflection on research positions and theoretical considerations of performativity, performance art, feminism, historisation and, above all, their political implications in/and/for the “continental Post-Socialist” condition.
With contributions by Angela Dimitrakaki, Ana Peraica, Barbara Orel, Dunja Kukovec, Grupa Spomenik and DeLVe, Marija Ratković, Marina Gržinić, Martina Pachmanová, Milijana Babić, Suzana Milevska, Tea Hvala, Waldemar Tatarczuk
On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into t... more On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into the productive potential of the affect of shame. This book contests the ontological understanding of shame and the psychoanalytical interpretation of it based on personal traumatic experiences linked to lack, loss, memory repression, and absence. Rather, the book builds on complex issues (initially proposed by Paul Gilroy) that concern the coming to terms with a grim colonial and imperial past: How can one deal with the personal and collective memories of “paralyzing guilt” after dreadful atrocities and genocides? How can such negative experiences be transformed into “productive shame” (not only for the perpetrators but also for the victims and witnesses)?
This collection of essays, discussions, and interviews reflects on the intersection of the historicity, materiality, and structures behind culturally constructed race and racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across different disciplines, fields, and theories (for example, in philosophy, art and art history, visual culture, architecture, curating, postcolonial history, gender and queer studies). Various case studies and artistic projects employing collaborative and participatory research methods are analyzed as practices that empower the process of turning shame into productive agency. The ensuing role of productive shame is to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns, and events that are responsible and constitutive of racism, and has been contextualized in recent debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 16 Design by Surface 2015, English 16.5 x 22 cm, 264 pages, 41 color ill., softcover ISBN 978-3-95679-149-9 €22.00 Texts by Tal Adler, Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Jasmina Cibic, Das Kollektiv, Zsuzsi Flohr, Eduard Freudmann, Tímea Junghaus, Jakob Krameritsch, Jean-Paul Martinon, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Trevor Ngwane, Karin Schneider, Primrose Sonti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
Following the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Bloc in 1989, gender studies and the the... more Following the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Bloc in 1989, gender studies and the theorization of feminism boomed in eastern Europe, from the Baltics to the Caucasus. Bojana Pejic's substantial companion volume to Gender Check (which compiled paintings, sculptures, photographs, posters, installations, films and videos by over 200 artists) offers a coherent picture of this previously unmapped terrain, analyzing the visual arts before and after 1989 in relation to the relative absence and then explosion of feminist debate. How were workers depicted on Socialist posters? How were male heroes portrayed in officially sanctioned art in Romania in the 1960s? How did female artists see themselves during the transition period after 1989? How do images impact our view of the sexes? Gender Check: A Reader reflects on ideas of masculinity and femininity in the former Communist Bloc.
This book presents the long-term collaborative project CODE:RED and its fields of operation: the ... more This book presents the long-term collaborative project CODE:RED and its fields of operation: the informal economy, the self-organization of urban minorities, global sex work, and human trafficking. The project would not have been possible without the partnership of numerous organizations, groups, and communities around the world who are fighting for the rights of sex workers. Here the reader will find articles that discuss the history of activism among sex workers, their commitment to social visibility, their fight for basic human and social rights, their cultural activities, and their involvement in trade unions, among other topics. But the book is also a tribute to the remarkable people who, through courage and willpower, have succeeded in breaking out of the vicious cycle of ignorance and stigmatization. The transition from invisibility to public openness represents one of the most life-changing – and liberating – decisions a person can make. CODE:RED is published by Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana and designed by Ajdin Bašić. The book was generausly supported by Erste Stiftung, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Featuring work by Thomas Hirschorn and Los Carpinteros among others, Volksgarten (People's Garden... more Featuring work by Thomas Hirschorn and Los Carpinteros among others, Volksgarten (People's Garden) explores identification systems and strategies of belonging within communities. This volume focuses on districts in Graz, Austria, as models for the possibilities and complexities of social utopias and communal life.
The influential Slovenian curator, art critic, writer and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was lar... more The influential Slovenian curator, art critic, writer and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was largely responsible for putting the Slovenian art scene on the map during the 1990s. As Senior Curator of Ljubljana's Moderna Galerija, he established cultural links between Eastern and Western Europe, developing a unique critical perspective on the ongoing transformation of the post-Communist era. This indispensable volume both develops and creates new contexts for the theories and strategies illustrated by Zabel in his exhibitions, publications, critical writings and European exchange initiatives. It is published collaboratively by the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory in Ljubljana and the Erste Foundation.
This is the third volume in The Art Seminar, James Elkin's series of conversations on art and vis... more This is the third volume in The Art Seminar, James Elkin's series of conversations on art and visual studies.
Is Art History Global? stages an international conversation among art historians and critics on the subject of the practice and responsibility of global thinking within the discipline. Participants range from Keith Moxey of Columbia University to Cao Yiqiang, Ding Ning, Cuautemoc Medina, Oliver Debroise, Renato Gonzalez Mello, Suzana Milevska, and other scholars.
The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments h... more The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments have shifted spatial practice to centre stage both in civic life and academic research. Social networking, political projects, cross-border movements, artistic interventions, urban and environmental initiatives, self-organized educational practices – all articulate the challenges involved in organizing the spaces we share. In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
The Renaming Machine / The Book
ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers
book, hardcover, 420 pp,... more The Renaming Machine / The Book ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers book, hardcover, 420 pp, ill., colour Ljubljana, Slovenia: P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute. 2010 The project The Renaming Machine looks at the complex entanglements involved in the political and cultural processes of renaming. Its main concept reflects the crucial need to question the way these processes have influenced the construction and destabilization of the memory of national, cultural and personal identities in the former Yugoslavia and South-Eastern Europe over the past two decades. Alongside the philosophical and theoretical implications of the “mystic writing pad” of historic renaming, the project examines clandestine ideological patterns of the “desiring renaming machine” at work behind the dominant and visible social machines. Particularly with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the renaming “apparatus” erased and overwrote most traces from the Tito era, including the Yugoslav leader’s own name, which had been attached to many places in the former country. Participating writers and artists in the book are (among others): Sanja Iveković, Tanja Ostojić/DavidRych, Tadej Pogačar, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Irwin, Alexander Vaindorf, Sasha Huber, Kalle Hamm, Mladen Stilinović, Hristina Ivanoska, Zdenko Bužek, Barbara Borčić, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , James E. Faulconer, Suzana Milevska, Aldo Milohnić, Zhivka Valiavicharska.Valiavicharska.
Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is best known as a deconstru... more Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is best known as a deconstructionist and post-colonial theorist. With an awe-inspiring track record in several areas, ranging from Feminism and Marxism to Literary Criticism and of course, Post-colonialism, she has built a reputation for being simultaneously at home and an outsider in many disciplines. The interviews collected in this volume reflect the international character of her intellectual engagement as, in her criss-crossings of the globe, she engages with activists, scholars and writers located in different cultural contexts, from America to India to Macedonia (Suzana Milevska) and China.
On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into t... more On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a unique crossdisciplinary inquiry into the productive potential of the affect of shame. This book contests the ontological understanding of shame and the psychoanalytical interpretation of it based on personal traumatic experiences linked to lack, loss, memory repression, and absence. Rather, the book builds on complex issues (initially proposed by Paul Gilroy) that concern the coming to terms with a grim colonial and imperial past: How can one deal with the personal and collective memories of “paralyzing guilt” after dreadful atrocities and genocides? How can such negative experiences be transformed into “productive shame” (not only for the perpetrators but also for the victims and witnesses)? This collection of essays, discussions, and interviews reflects on the intersection of the historicity, materiality, and structures behind culturally constructed race and racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across different disciplines, fields, and theories (for example, in philosophy, art and art history, visual culture, architecture, curating, postcolonial history, gender and queer studies). Various case studies and artistic projects employing collaborative and participatory research methods are analyzed as practices that empower the process of turning shame into productive agency. The ensuing role of productive shame is to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns, and events that are responsible and constitutive of racism, and has been contextualized in recent debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa. Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 16 Design by Surface 2015, English 16.5 x 22 cm, 264 pages, 41 color ill., softcover ISBN 978-3-95679-149-9 €22.00 Texts by Tal Adler, Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Jasmina Cibic, Das Kollektiv, Zsuzsi Flohr, Eduard Freudmann, Tímea Junghaus, Jakob Krameritsch, Jean-Paul Martinon, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Trevor Ngwane, Karin Schneider, Primrose Sonti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
"Within the larger context of cultural memory, family pictures have become one of the most i... more "Within the larger context of cultural memory, family pictures have become one of the most intriguing multi- and interdisciplinary fields of investigation in the past decade. This field brings together artists working in different media (e.g. documentary photography and film, photo-based painting and installations, digital art, collage, montage, comics, etc.) as well as academics, critics, theorists and writers working in a wide range of disciplines including literature, history, art history, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, film and media studies, visual culture studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and word and image studies. This volume intends to offer a broad, panoramic view of the topic combining West and East European as well as American perspectives. "Due to some ancient, amusing misunderstanding, family photographers push the button convinced that they are capturing a moment from the family’s life. Not so. Time eludes them. Still, the movingly minute scale of a restricted life becomes visible in these pictures. This book opens up grand and diverse vistas of reflection on the mass production of the minute." Péter Nádas, author of The Book of Memories and Fire and Knowledge "This book is an insightful interdisciplinary exploration of the estranging effects of family pictures at the cutting edge of the study of visual culture and politics of representation. The book expands both the conception of the family incorporating elective affinities and fictional filiations and the conception of photography incorporating ghosts, narratives and literary documents. The essays splinter the grand narrative of history and official memory, engaging in critical reflection on document and fiction, politics and intimacy, narrative and trauma. Filled with original insights, personal parables and theoretical finds, the volume draws on a broad range of texts, art works and photographs including Sebald, Boltanski, Kabakov, Eperjesi and Gjuzelova as well as historical images from the Hungarian revolution and anonymous pictures from immigrant archives. The book will be of interest to researchers in a large variety of fields from visual arts to literature, anthropology, sociology and history as well as to the general reader." Svetlana Boym, Harvard University, Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, author of The Future of Nostalgia and Another Freedom "
"The Slovenian curator, art critic, writer, and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was largely ... more "The Slovenian curator, art critic, writer, and theorist Igor Zabel (1958-2005) was largely responsible for promoting the visibility of the Slovenian art scene in the international arena back in the 1990s. As Senior Curator of the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana he was engaged in establishing links between Eastern and Western Europe without loosing a critical perspective on the (still) ongoing transformations. The aim of the book, which accompanies the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory initiated by the Erste Foundation, is to further develop, in terms of content, the theories and approach pursued by Igor Zabel in his exhibitions, publications, critical writings, and European exchange initiatives. With artists’ contributions by AA Bronson, Art & Language, IRWIN, Deimantas Narkevicius, Johanna Billing, Roman Ondák, Florian Pumhösl, Josef Dabernig, Yuri Leiderman among others." -- Erste Stiftung website
The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments h... more The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments have shifted spatial practice to centre stage both in civic life and academic research. Social networking, political projects, cross-border movements, artistic interventions, urban and environmental initiatives, self-organized educational practices - all articulate the challenges involved in organizing the spaces we share. In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the most visible a... more Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the most visible and controversial cultural critics of our time. Her reputation was first made by her translation and preface to Jacques Derrida's ground-breaking work, "Of Grammatology". She has since built a global reputation in feminist, marxist and literary criticism as well as post-colonialism. A reputation underpinned by her active involvement in the practical politics of women's empowerment, third world education and development debates. In these thought-provoking interviews and talks, we see her being provocative, playful, personal and accessible in a way that her complex, theoretical essays do not allow. The interviews collected here reflect the international character of her intellectual engagement with the ideas and the politics which are shaping our world.
This dissertation deals with the issue of gender difference in the Balkans. In order to evade the... more This dissertation deals with the issue of gender difference in the Balkans. In order to evade the many assumptions and presumptions that posit gender difference in the Balkan region as being necessarily subsumed to established orders and regimes of representation, this dissertation focuses on an array of visual materials. This singular material consists of nineteenth and twentieth century photographs, and a series of contemporary art works (objects, installations, videos, etc.) This material draws attention to overlooked images of women (some of them taken by women) that resist the logic and rhetoric of the patriarchal order and emphasises the ambiguous rhetoric of gender difference within the field of representation in visual culture. The aim of this dissertation and of this collated visual material is to challenge and deconstruct the problematic understanding of institutional archives as places dedicated to guarding and preserving the truth of written documents and visual imagery....
Since the outsourcing of the state museums, a process,
which began in 2000, economic criteria and... more Since the outsourcing of the state museums, a process, which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations regarding commercial success have gained significance in the exhibition field and have had an impact on organizational forms, conditions of production and decision making processes. At the same time, a critical discourse has emerged in the 1990s outside the institutions, which, referring to Governmental Studies, examined in depth power relations and the processes of commodification, which are a result of the economization of public institutions. Premised on these circumstances and perspectives the New Institutionalism was developed, an approach, which pursues a change of the structures of institutions from inside. In economic science a new subject, the Critical Management Studies (CMS) are currently evolving and becoming a new field of academic inquiry, that, deriving from Critical Theory, questions and challenges the authority and significance of the mainstream of institutional thought and action, thus challenging dominant systems and proposing new and alternative developments. In an interdisciplinary seminar we intended to scrutinise these developments that are currently taking place in economics, political theory and the exhibition field, as well as their connections between and examine its usage within institutions and society.
“Feminist Research in Visual Arts.” Art as a Thinking Process Visual Forms of Knowledge Production., 2013
“Feminist Research in Visual Arts.” is a chapter published in the book Art as a Thinking Process ... more “Feminist Research in Visual Arts.” is a chapter published in the book Art as a Thinking Process Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Edited by Mara Ambrožič and Angela Vettese, Sternberg Press and Università IUAV di Venezia 2013, 162-176.
‘Feminist Critique: Open and Critical Enquiry: A Conversation between Katy Deepwell and Suzana M... more ‘Feminist Critique: Open and Critical Enquiry: A Conversation between Katy Deepwell and Suzana Milevska’ in Spaces for Criticism (eds. Pascal Gielen, Thijs Lijster, Suzana Milevska, Ruth Sonderegger) (Amsterdam: Valiz publishers, 2015) ISBN: 978-90-78088-75-2 pp.171-192.
Uploads
Books by Suzana Milevska
In most former state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the emergence and public visibility of feminist curating and exhibitions usually dates back to the 1990s and is associated with the radical transformation of art practices, ideologies and art systems as well as with wider socio-political and intellectual changes, and challenges, of post-socialist transition. This history, and its legacy, is addressed in this book through national and regional case-studies ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans.
An equally significant part of the book is dedicated to the present and future of feminist curating, as well as of other politicised forms of curatorial activities (e.g. queer curating). In addition to the theoretical or historical accounts presented, the collection includes two highly relevant interviews with curators: Bojana Pejic on the block-buster exhibition Gender Check (2009–2010) in Vienna and Warsaw; and Airi Triisberg and Rebeka Põldsam on Untold Stories (2011), the first international queer exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia.
Book was published in 2018.
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the editors' introduction to the reader Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions by Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska
The book does not (only) represent the research on performance art and performativity in a region denoted as “East European”, but also produces positions that go beyond the representation(s) of what performance art, performativity in/and “Post-Socialist Europe” are.
Performative Gestures Political Moves therefore also raises questions of historisation(s) and their ideological positioning. Especially within feminist art history but also in feminist curating, the question of labelling art production as feminist has been till today a burning subject. How, what, when, why, where, by whom and for whom is (performance) art feminist, obviously does not have an unambiguous answer. The same is true for art and feminism as such. Therefore, the publication has aimed to foster a reflection on research positions and theoretical considerations of performativity, performance art, feminism, historisation and, above all, their political implications in/and/for the “continental Post-Socialist” condition.
With contributions by Angela Dimitrakaki, Ana Peraica, Barbara Orel, Dunja Kukovec, Grupa Spomenik and DeLVe, Marija Ratković, Marina Gržinić, Martina Pachmanová, Milijana Babić, Suzana Milevska, Tea Hvala, Waldemar Tatarczuk
Edited by Katja Kobolt and Lana Zdravković
This collection of essays, discussions, and interviews reflects on the intersection of the historicity, materiality, and structures behind culturally constructed race and racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across different disciplines, fields, and theories (for example, in philosophy, art and art history, visual culture, architecture, curating, postcolonial history, gender and queer studies). Various case studies and artistic projects employing collaborative and participatory research methods are analyzed as practices that empower the process of turning shame into productive agency. The ensuing role of productive shame is to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns, and events that are responsible and constitutive of racism, and has been contextualized in recent debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 16
Design by Surface
2015, English
16.5 x 22 cm, 264 pages, 41 color ill., softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-149-9
€22.00
Texts by Tal Adler, Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Jasmina Cibic, Das Kollektiv, Zsuzsi Flohr, Eduard Freudmann, Tímea Junghaus, Jakob Krameritsch, Jean-Paul Martinon, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Trevor Ngwane, Karin Schneider, Primrose Sonti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
Here the reader will find articles that discuss the history of activism among sex workers, their commitment to social visibility, their fight for basic human and social rights, their cultural activities, and their involvement in trade unions, among other topics. But the book is also a tribute to the remarkable people who, through courage and willpower, have succeeded in breaking out of the vicious cycle of ignorance and stigmatization. The transition from invisibility to public openness represents one of the most life-changing – and liberating – decisions a person can make.
CODE:RED is published by Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana and designed by Ajdin Bašić. The book was generausly supported by Erste Stiftung, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Is Art History Global? stages an international conversation among art historians and critics on the subject of the practice and responsibility of global thinking within the discipline. Participants range from Keith Moxey of Columbia University to Cao Yiqiang, Ding Ning, Cuautemoc Medina, Oliver Debroise, Renato Gonzalez Mello, Suzana Milevska, and other scholars.
In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers
book, hardcover, 420 pp, ill., colour
Ljubljana, Slovenia: P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute. 2010
The project The Renaming Machine looks at the complex entanglements involved in the political and cultural processes of renaming. Its main concept reflects the crucial need to question the way these processes have influenced the construction and destabilization of the memory of national, cultural and personal identities in the former Yugoslavia and South-Eastern Europe over the past two decades. Alongside the philosophical and theoretical implications of the “mystic writing pad” of historic renaming, the project examines clandestine ideological patterns of the “desiring renaming machine” at work behind the dominant and visible social machines. Particularly with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the renaming “apparatus” erased and overwrote most traces from the Tito era, including the Yugoslav leader’s own name, which had been attached to many places in the former country.
Participating writers and artists in the book are (among others):
Sanja Iveković, Tanja Ostojić/DavidRych, Tadej Pogačar, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Irwin, Alexander Vaindorf, Sasha Huber, Kalle Hamm, Mladen Stilinović, Hristina Ivanoska, Zdenko Bužek, Barbara Borčić, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , James E. Faulconer, Suzana Milevska, Aldo Milohnić, Zhivka Valiavicharska.Valiavicharska.
The interviews collected in this volume reflect the international character of her intellectual engagement as, in her criss-crossings of the globe, she engages with activists, scholars and writers located in different cultural contexts, from America to India to Macedonia (Suzana Milevska) and China.
In most former state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the emergence and public visibility of feminist curating and exhibitions usually dates back to the 1990s and is associated with the radical transformation of art practices, ideologies and art systems as well as with wider socio-political and intellectual changes, and challenges, of post-socialist transition. This history, and its legacy, is addressed in this book through national and regional case-studies ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans.
An equally significant part of the book is dedicated to the present and future of feminist curating, as well as of other politicised forms of curatorial activities (e.g. queer curating). In addition to the theoretical or historical accounts presented, the collection includes two highly relevant interviews with curators: Bojana Pejic on the block-buster exhibition Gender Check (2009–2010) in Vienna and Warsaw; and Airi Triisberg and Rebeka Põldsam on Untold Stories (2011), the first international queer exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia.
Book was published in 2018.
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions is the editors' introduction to the reader Inside Out Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions by Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska
The book does not (only) represent the research on performance art and performativity in a region denoted as “East European”, but also produces positions that go beyond the representation(s) of what performance art, performativity in/and “Post-Socialist Europe” are.
Performative Gestures Political Moves therefore also raises questions of historisation(s) and their ideological positioning. Especially within feminist art history but also in feminist curating, the question of labelling art production as feminist has been till today a burning subject. How, what, when, why, where, by whom and for whom is (performance) art feminist, obviously does not have an unambiguous answer. The same is true for art and feminism as such. Therefore, the publication has aimed to foster a reflection on research positions and theoretical considerations of performativity, performance art, feminism, historisation and, above all, their political implications in/and/for the “continental Post-Socialist” condition.
With contributions by Angela Dimitrakaki, Ana Peraica, Barbara Orel, Dunja Kukovec, Grupa Spomenik and DeLVe, Marija Ratković, Marina Gržinić, Martina Pachmanová, Milijana Babić, Suzana Milevska, Tea Hvala, Waldemar Tatarczuk
Edited by Katja Kobolt and Lana Zdravković
This collection of essays, discussions, and interviews reflects on the intersection of the historicity, materiality, and structures behind culturally constructed race and racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across different disciplines, fields, and theories (for example, in philosophy, art and art history, visual culture, architecture, curating, postcolonial history, gender and queer studies). Various case studies and artistic projects employing collaborative and participatory research methods are analyzed as practices that empower the process of turning shame into productive agency. The ensuing role of productive shame is to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns, and events that are responsible and constitutive of racism, and has been contextualized in recent debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 16
Design by Surface
2015, English
16.5 x 22 cm, 264 pages, 41 color ill., softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-149-9
€22.00
Texts by Tal Adler, Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Jasmina Cibic, Das Kollektiv, Zsuzsi Flohr, Eduard Freudmann, Tímea Junghaus, Jakob Krameritsch, Jean-Paul Martinon, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Trevor Ngwane, Karin Schneider, Primrose Sonti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
Here the reader will find articles that discuss the history of activism among sex workers, their commitment to social visibility, their fight for basic human and social rights, their cultural activities, and their involvement in trade unions, among other topics. But the book is also a tribute to the remarkable people who, through courage and willpower, have succeeded in breaking out of the vicious cycle of ignorance and stigmatization. The transition from invisibility to public openness represents one of the most life-changing – and liberating – decisions a person can make.
CODE:RED is published by Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana and designed by Ajdin Bašić. The book was generausly supported by Erste Stiftung, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Is Art History Global? stages an international conversation among art historians and critics on the subject of the practice and responsibility of global thinking within the discipline. Participants range from Keith Moxey of Columbia University to Cao Yiqiang, Ding Ning, Cuautemoc Medina, Oliver Debroise, Renato Gonzalez Mello, Suzana Milevska, and other scholars.
In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
ed. by Suzana Milevska, various writers
book, hardcover, 420 pp, ill., colour
Ljubljana, Slovenia: P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute. 2010
The project The Renaming Machine looks at the complex entanglements involved in the political and cultural processes of renaming. Its main concept reflects the crucial need to question the way these processes have influenced the construction and destabilization of the memory of national, cultural and personal identities in the former Yugoslavia and South-Eastern Europe over the past two decades. Alongside the philosophical and theoretical implications of the “mystic writing pad” of historic renaming, the project examines clandestine ideological patterns of the “desiring renaming machine” at work behind the dominant and visible social machines. Particularly with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the renaming “apparatus” erased and overwrote most traces from the Tito era, including the Yugoslav leader’s own name, which had been attached to many places in the former country.
Participating writers and artists in the book are (among others):
Sanja Iveković, Tanja Ostojić/DavidRych, Tadej Pogačar, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Irwin, Alexander Vaindorf, Sasha Huber, Kalle Hamm, Mladen Stilinović, Hristina Ivanoska, Zdenko Bužek, Barbara Borčić, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , James E. Faulconer, Suzana Milevska, Aldo Milohnić, Zhivka Valiavicharska.Valiavicharska.
The interviews collected in this volume reflect the international character of her intellectual engagement as, in her criss-crossings of the globe, she engages with activists, scholars and writers located in different cultural contexts, from America to India to Macedonia (Suzana Milevska) and China.
which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations
regarding commercial success have gained significance in
the exhibition field and have had an impact on organizational
forms, conditions of production and decision making
processes. At the same time, a critical discourse has emerged
in the 1990s outside the institutions, which, referring to
Governmental Studies, examined in depth power relations
and the processes of commodification, which are a result of
the economization of public institutions. Premised on these
circumstances and perspectives the New Institutionalism was
developed, an approach, which pursues a change of the
structures of institutions from inside.
In economic science a new subject, the Critical Management
Studies (CMS) are currently evolving and becoming a new
field of academic inquiry, that, deriving from Critical Theory,
questions and challenges the authority and significance
of the mainstream of institutional thought and action, thus
challenging dominant systems and proposing new and
alternative developments.
In an interdisciplinary seminar we intended to scrutinise
these developments that are currently taking place in
economics, political theory and the exhibition field, as well
as their connections between and examine its usage within
institutions and society.