Andrea Bátorová opens the conference.

In post-war Hungary, artistic connections with the "Third World" were sought through both official and unofficial channels. Cultural diplomacy and exhibition exchange were the means of the former type of conduit, while Mail Art was of extraordinary importance for non-mainstream artists who had only restricted access to cross-border exchanges. The official and unofficial routes did not only differ in terms of the kind of art practice both advanced, but they also unfolded along distinct chronological lines. Cultural diplomatic linkages with non-Western extra-European countries were most actively pursued in the 1950s and early 1960s, after which periodic artistic exchanges with Western Europe appear to have regained precedence. Mail Art connections with Latin-American and Asian artists started to intensify from the mid-1970s onwards.

The proposed talk follows up these dynamics up until the mid-1980s and early 1990s when institutional culture in both regions began appropriating both the existing networks established through Mail Art practice and its operation principles for projects to be realized under their own auspices.

(The talk draws on material located in Artpool and the archives of the Budapest Kunsthalle/Műcsarnok.)

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The paper explores the catalyst role Klaus Groh's Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa (1972) played in regional cultural transfers. Although Groh's book was published in West Germany it also contributed to shifting attention from west-east contacts to east-east exchanges. Collecting material for "Aktuelle Kunst", Groh established contacts with several East-European artists, who remained in touch with Groh and continued to send him artworks and documentation, which accumulated into a unique collection of East European Art.

Relying on Marxist terminology, Groh saw in East-European art an alternative to capitalist art production, whereas the East-European artists involved in the publication hoped for international as well as commercial recognition. The book, however, received criticism on more different grounds, its circulation was stopped by the publisher, and it also provoked private debates and debates in the press. The preceding and subsequent correspondence and exchanges Groh had with such artists and art critics as Gábor Attalai, Imre Bak, László Beke, János Major, Dóra Maurer, Géza Perneczky, Endre Tót, Alex Mlynárčik, Rudolf Sikora, Tomáš Štraus, Petr Štembera, Jiří Valoch, Jarosław Kozłowski, KwieKulik, Henryk Gajewski, Dobrica Kamperelić, Goran Trbuljak, and Bálint Szombathy inspired significant artistic reflections and statements, and moreover, generated further contacts and dialogues within the region. These exchanges reveal a shift in the 1970s, namely that the desire to establish contacts and build networks transformed to the need to investigate how "traveling" artworks, concepts, and ideas can be interpreted, and how artists, art critics, and curators can influence their transnational reception and contextualization. 

Czech Art of the 1970s was in a complicated situation due to the "normalization" policy. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces in 1968 to Czechoslovakia, the new political garniture took power. It was a period, that saw a radical turnaround of the gallery operation and intellectual exchange. This involved an ongoing search for alternative presentational formats. One of them was samizdat, which in the Czech art world replaced the role of non-existing magazines and became a source of information about contemporary art and theories from the unofficial art scene and forbidden West. One unique series of samizdat is the edition of 40 notebooks edited by Petr Rezek in 1978. It consists of 40 square-format notebooks with typewritten texts and imprinted black-and-white photographs. Individual samizdat notebooks are devoted to contemporary themes (e.g. Minimal Art, Land Art, Fluxus) or artist (e.g. John Cage, Robert Morris, La Monte Young). Five of the notebooks are dedicated to Milan Knížák and his activities. One can find original versions of Petr Rezek’s texts in some of them as well as many carefully selected translations. Originals of this unique samizdat edition preserved in the archive of the VVP Research Center at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague show the extraordinary orientation of Petr Rezek in the progressive art of the 1970s and his will to share it with the unofficial artistic and intellectual circles. Philosopher, aesthetician and psychologist, Petr Rezek, played a key role on the Czech art scene in the 1970s, he was a close friend to many progressive artists, who were developing conceptual, performative and other alternative approaches in their work. 

This paper is an attempt to present the nearly internationally unknown, but exceptional figure of Petr Rezek and his role in the development of progressive art trends in Czechoslovakia. It is also a reflection upon the sources of information contemporary artists had during the 1970s. The limited circulation of ideas was one of the features of that time, which, paradoxically, was a time of bold experimentation.

This paper investigates different aspects of the project Argíllia, which was created and organized by the Slovak artist Alex Mlynárčik. Mlynárčik is well known for his innovative and non-conformist artistic activities in the second half of the 1960s and for his experimental large-scale happenings at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1975, he created the independent state of Argíllia - an alternative space and a platform for communication. It was defined as a kingdom of clay without borders, a monarchy without categories like nationality or religion. The kingdom had its own royal court, a real place, that was situated in the small village of Krištofícko in northern Slovakia. In addition, it had its own parliament and insignia (currency, sign, stamp, etc.). The members of Argíllia were artists, art historians and art critics, and anyone who was interested in participating in the project. In addition to the origins of the idea of Argíllia, this paper aims to explore the artistic strategies of cooperation that made this project possible. Furthermore, it investigates the different aspects of cultural transfer between France and former Czechoslovakia, and the specificity and significance of the domestic and international contexts of the 1970s. This entails taking a closer look at the subsequent process of "normalization" in the cultural field, in which all non-conformist activities became unofficial and Mlynárčik became an unofficial artist. This paper will focus especially on mapping the networks and channels of communication between Czechoslovakia and France and within the so-called Eastern bloc that led to impressive projects, such as the exhibition "Inter-Entrennes" (1972), the collective show "Agence Argíllia Presse" (1977), or the happening "Homage a Rousseau" (1978). These projects emerged in cooperation and with support of Pierre Restany and took place in Paris, and therefore the paper explores and analyzes relevant archival materials.

In a 2014 report, French intellectual Jacques Attali made the following statement: "The ongoing effacement of national borders requires identifying other criteria of belonging: language and culture now constitute the new geography" (Erfurt 2018). While Attali's assessment characterizes a contemporary condition, it nonetheless has a historic relevance in relation to describing transregional processes. Language constitutes space, it is embodiment and appropriation, language is the foundation of communication it is symbolic power and market (Erfurt 2018). Since the early appearance of colonialism and imperialism, and the interaction and increased mobility among cultures, language (and especially its translation) has contributed to the formation of transnational identities and evolution of shared/shareable memories. Language, its carriers and actors, travels across time and space to create "a rich fabric of literary, religious, and historical allusions and association, within whose matrix ideas emerge" (Evuthov 2003). This cultural matrix extends into the terrain of arts as well, where the theoretical framework of the so-called translation zone (Apter 2006) can be operationalized. The physical and mediated locomotion of language, "the epistemological interstices of politics, poetics, logic, […] media" (Apter 2006) and creative impulses may be a fruitful framework with which to uncover overlooked cultural geographies in (central and eastern) European art histories. 

This paper will assess different approaches to cultural translation as potential research methods for transregional studies in art scenes. Central and eastern Europe has produced numerous transnational personalities, such as the cultural and political philosopher Béla Hamvas, born in Eperjes (Prešov/Preschau) and raised in Pozsony (Bratislava/Pressburg), who has read and translated Latin, Greek, German, French, Hebrew, and English and written about the cultural influences of people, landscapes, and climates within and beyond the borders of Hungary. The stops on this experimental journey to uncover translation zones in the region will include, for instance, the editorial work of the Romanian Dan Haulica, the networking activity of the Poland-based Hungarian art historian János Brendel, and the intellectual atmosphere at the National Gallery in Prague in the circle of Jiří Kovanda, Karel Miler, Helena Kontová, and Petr Rezek.

Photography is one of the most common means of documenting performance art. Such photographs are often understood as evidence of art pieces that happened at other times and somewhere else. However, in a case study of Eastern European performance with particular emphasis on the 1970s Czechoslovak art scene, I will analyze photography in a different sense, as a communication tool. I intend to demonstrate this by considering all the materialities and stages of the photographic process: film negatives, diapositives, prints, printed reproductions in the form of posters, invitation cards, pages in magazines, books, or newspapers. Drawing on photography studies, this perspective enables us to see the rich variety of forms within what is often called photographic documentation. Moreover, I argue that the material through which we approach performance art shapes the way we relate to it. Our understanding of an artwork that we approach through photographic documentation always depends on the specific conditions in which the photographs are used or presented (for example, black-and-white photographs of different quality, size and number, shown discreetly on a kitchen table, or blow-ups sent to the institutions to be exhibited or sold, etc.). I believe that this material-based interpretation enables us to emphasize the role which photography has played in transnational networking. It traveled internationally, ensuring the presence of Czechoslovakian performance art abroad, even in situations where the artists themselves were not allowed to travel. In this way, photography became the lingua franca of performance art.

During the maintenance of Jiří Valoch's archive in Brno in Moravian Gallery, it was possible to document 4563 mailing addresses, to which Jiří Valoch sent out letters and artworks on a regular basis. His regular contacts included artists, archivists, collectors, members of the Fluxus movement and fans of modern art from all around the world. The extent and reach of this network is evidenced not only by Valoch's correspondence, but also the array of multiples, art periodicals and unique editions of original books which remain intact in his archive. These documents make it possible to reconstruct at least the contours of this global artist network, which replaced the network of the art market with the utopian idea of friendly distribution based on exchange and sharing. My contribution focuses on Valoch's artistic activity, which I will illustrate through specific examples of his contributions to foreign periodicals, exhibitions, catalog and artistic multiples. This is how I present not only Valoch's works, but also those of others who were in touch with him (Klaus Groh, Ulises Carrión, Bob Cobbing, something else press, Amodulo edition etc.). Comparison of Valoch with other artists sheds light on a specific feature of his work, namely, art as a means of communication in which originality is less important than experimentation with contemporary artistic tendencies—for example, Fluxus and poesia visiva influences, works addressed to specific artists and friends, and even reactions to their works. It is clear that Jiří Valoch adopted a variety of approaches to achieve this, and in so doing he managed to connect the unconnectable: the lyricism of poetry with the bare rationality of conceptual thinking.

Throughout its history, AICA (The International Association of Art Critics) has played an instrumental role in distributing critical ideas and encouraging a heterogeneity of viewpoints while fostering interactions between art historians, critics and artists from various cultural and political contexts. To some extent, its universalist aspirations reduced the artistic and ideological division between East and West and helped to create an elaborate web of connections through which the conflicting dynamics between the official and unofficial positions were constantly transformed by factors such as personal relationships, individual mobility or informal diplomacy.

To provide a better understanding of how the international associations and the whole conference scene acted as a ground for stimulating exchange in different fields, this paper will offer an insight into the history of the Czechoslovak branch of AICA during the 1970s—a period which was marked by the restoration of firm party rule and the evolving normalization process.

During the 1970s, the operation of AICA in Czechoslovakia was deemed ideologically subversive by the official organs, and consequently the activities of the local section were gradually suppressed. One of this paper's objectives is to demonstrate that the suppression of AICA in Czechoslovakia created conditions that stimulated interactions between artists, critics and art historians that sought to sidestep the official institutional framework and create an alternative informal network. For example, the paper will mention the connections between the members of the Czechoslovak section and French critic Raoul-Jean Moulin (1934–2014), who served as a Chair of AICA from 1972 to 1984. In addition to explaining Moulin's efforts to support the initiative of some Czechoslovak critics to join the section libre, it will also look at their mutual influence and shared gestures of solidarity without losing sight of ideological disparities.

The paper focuses on some central figures of the alternative and unofficial art scene in former Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. They connected with artistic research into language, visual semiology, communication contexts, and retrospectively formed archives. The paper will compare contrasting and yet related artists: Milan Adamčiak, Stano Filko, Július Koller, and Jiří Valoch. The terms para-institution, archive, and self-historicisation will be critical to this paper, especially since they connect art and communication. Para-institutions or personal archives of artists were more than substitutes for institutional frameworks during socialism and the so-called normalization, when no galleries of alternative art could function in Czechoslovakia. They provided several levels for communication: transregional, local, informative, and creative. This paper will focus on several artistic projects that used these alternative means of communication, participation, and exchange. It will also explain and examine the role of printed media in the transformation of conventional cultural platforms, such as the gallery, festival, competition, artist book, and exhibition catalogue.

The paper examines the history of Galeria Adres, which was founded in 1972 by the Polish conceptual artist Ewa Partum in Łódź. Within the framework of the gallery Partum distributed her artistic practice transnationally, organized exhibitions, meetings and events with the participation of Polish and international conceptual artists, artists related to Fluxus and Mail Art.

Galeria Adres was an important part of the international neo-avant-garde art network operating outside the official artistic system and beyond dichotomies and geographies of Cold War politics. It was conceived as a place for creating and presenting artistic actions and processual forms of art that eluded the then existing art institutions. The beginnings of Galeria Adres were related to the interventions at the headquarters of the Association of Polish Artists in Łódź, where it was located between 1972 and 1973. In 1973, Partum moved the archive of the gallery to her apartment declaring that the gallery functions autonomously and independently of official structures—"outside of the management system".

My presentation focuses on the transnational role of Galeria Adres in specific contexts (both Polish and East-Central European) and considers 1) its structure and artistic profile; 2) its transnational aspirations and strategies; and 3) Partum’s strategy of appropriating infrastructure as a part of her artistic practice.

During the 1970s—the period known as normalisation—culture in Czechoslovakia was heavily influenced by censorship and the lack of personal and creative freedom. Consequently, artists searched for alternative conditions in which to continue their work, for mutual generational and intergenerational confrontation, and for the presentation of contemporary art. No longer supported by the state, art was forced to move to a model of self-organisation. It created alternative channels of communication and established a range of exhibition venues outside of gallery institutions. All these unofficial activities arose thanks to the engagement of individuals, their fierce commitment, and their willingness to take risks under the common and challenging conditions of that time.

"Album 76", a collection of graphic prints and original drawings by nearly seventy Czech and Slovak artists, is a unique example of such an alternative form of presentation and confrontation of contemporary art. It served as a portable platform through which the communication of art, disrupted by circumstances at that time, could take place, and offered information about the ongoing work of an important part of the unofficial art scene that could not be seen elsewhere. The album instigated other artistic events and impacted both the development of mutual Czech-Slovak relations, as well as relations with Poland, Hungary and East Germany.

This paper will analyse the circumstances and preconditions that led to the creation of "Album 76", its significance at the time, and the influence it would go on to exert. It will offer a brief comparison of formally related works from both sides of the Iron Curtain that worked with a similar exhibition strategy, albeit in different contexts and for different reasons.

Although the portable exhibition format of the album was soon exhausted and the circle of "Albumists" moved onto other projects, it remains one of the specific forms of alternative institutionalisation that artists in the Eastern bloc discovered. It reveals the full range of the network extending across Czechoslovakia and into the wider region, and is testimony to the uninterrupted activity of local art scenes even during the normalisation period of the 1970s.

This paper will discuss selected aspects of performativity and its documentation based on the example of Slovak art production by artists in the 1960s and 1970s. It will include case studies based on extensive art-historical research in the archives of artists Peter Bartoš (b. 1938), Ján Budaj (b. 1952), Ľubomír Ďurček (b. 1948), and Stano Filko (1937–2015), and will be concerned with the question of what to do with them and the knowledge they contain. This will be discussed through selected curatorial projects which presented works of a performative nature and whose meaning was determined by the specific context in which they were created and how to convey them to a contemporary audience. In addition, and with reference to the context of the symposium, the sense in which the positions of these artists had potential for international networking will be briefly outlined.