Ebook: Socially engaged art after socialism: art and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe

Reclaiming public life from the ideologies of both communist regimes and neoliberalism, their projects have harnessed the politically subversive potential of social relations based on trust, reciprocity and solidarity. Drawing on archival material and exclusive interviews, in this book Izabel Galliera traces the development of socially engaged art from the early 1990s to the present in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. She demonstrates that, in the early 1990s, projects were primarily created for exhibitions organized and funded by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art. In the early 2000s, prior to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania entering into the European Union, EU institutions likewise funded socially-conscious public art in the region. Today, socially engaged art is characterised by the proliferation of independent and often self-funded artists' initiatives in cities such as Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest. Focusing on the relationships between art, social capital and civil society, Galliera employs sociological and political theories to reveal that, while social capital is generally considered a mechanism of exclusion in the West, in post-socialist contexts it has been leveraged by artists and curators as a vital means of communication and action.;Introduction : Within and beyond the borders of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania ; Subversive potential in social capital : Politics of socially engaged art in CEE ; Research methodologies and significance -- Points of contention: socially engaged art practice in contemporary theory -- Civil society, and social, cultural and political capital : Civil society ; Social, cultural and political capital -- Historical antecedents: participatory art under socialism, 1956-89 : Socially engaged art in socialist Hungary ; Participatory art in socialist Romania ; Unconventional art in socialist Bulgaria -- From second society to civil society -- Civil society in a period of post-socialist transition -- Antipolitics: exhibitions at the Soros Centres for Contemporary Art : Reclaiming public life through interventionist public art ; Curatorial visions: framing community-oriented art projects ; Soros Centres for Contemporary Arts: constraint and self-determination -- Sofia: participatory public art and emerging contemporary art institutions : Friendship networks in post-1989 emerging art institutions for contemporary art -- From localized public sites to EU transnational public spheres -- Place-making: framing art in public spaces curatorially : Moszkva Tér (Gravitacio) / Moscow Square (Gravitation) ; Visual seminar ; Spaţiul public Bucureşti / Public art Bucharest ; Catching up to Europe with culture -- Representing counterpublics in Bucharest, Budapest and Sofia : h.arta: undermining curatorial protocols in self-organizing collaborative projects ; János Sugár: staging confrontation in participatory public art ; Luchezar Boyadjiev: Roma counterpublic art monuments in Sofia ; Ivan Moudov: performing a museum of contemporary art through collective participation -- Contesting the politics of belonging in the post-1989 EU community : About the artists: Bejenaru and Big Hope ; 'Mental maps' in 'Fortress Europe' ; The power of the gaze ; Constructing differential spaces through social capital and political capital -- Institutionalized and institutionalizing -- Institutionalized community arts programmes : Art for social change: bypassing systemic causes ; cARTier: cultivating self-help through art in marginalized communities ; Participation and collaboration as apolitical strategies of engagement -- Big Hope: reviving leftist activism in Budapest : Hungarian cultural institutions: stage for populist right-wing narratives ; Big Hope and homelessness ; Disobbedienti ; In and out of institutions -- Self-institutionalizing as political agency : From DINAMO to IMPEX: expanding institutional framing ; Department of art in public space: challenging the left's official condemnation ; 0GMS's self-institutionalization ; Self-institutionalizing as platforms for self-determination -- Conclusion.