Dr. Amy Bryzgel “Performing the East: Research as Performance”

Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia invites:

“Performing the East: Research as Performance” 

A lecture by Dr. Amy Bryzgel from University of Aberdeen, UK on Monday, October 7 at 5PM in CCA, Estonia.

Amy Bryzgel is currently conducting research on performance art in Eastern Europe as part of a project that will result in the first book monograph on performance art in the region. Most current texts dealing with performance art focus on its development in North America and Western Europe, where the use of the genre had different meanings and implications. For example, in the West, artists used performance art as a way to escape the commodified space of the gallery and create a work of art that could not be bought or sold. Women artists, too, seized upon the genre as one that was not traditionally dominated by male artists, such as painting or sculpture. In the East, there was no real art market to speak of, nor did a sexual revolution take place in communist countries that were, at least in theory, egalitarian. Bryzgel’s research attempts to nuance our understanding of the genre of performance art by including artists from the former Soviet, communist and socialist countries of Eastern Europe in the discourse.

Having just spent the summer traveling through the countries of the former Yugoslavia, meeting with and interviewing artists for her book, in her talk, Bryzgel will discuss the complexities of doing research on this topic in the region. She will also present some results of the findings of her research thus far, which is still a work in progress.

For further information: 

Rebeka Põldsam rebeka(@)cca.ee