Video Art from East and Central Europe | 1989–2009
January 21, 2010. - March 07, 2010.
In 1989, parallel to major political changes, video art started to develop in Eastern and Central Europe. Presenting that radical change through the new medium of the time, the exhibition TRANSITLAND displays a thematic selection from the archives of a hundred works by artists from twenty-five countries.
Being cheap, censure-free and accessible, video has become the prime medium for recording everyday personal stories as well as social phenomena. The exhibition offers an opportunity to discover how this relatively young but highly exciting and significant form of art reacts with a special historical and geographical context.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, democratic tendencies have characterized the whole region, yet the extent, momentum and manner of change is still different in each county. Accordingly, the responses of individual artists and artist groups also vary. The exhibition uses a psychological viewpoint to consider the impact of changes on individuals as well as on social groups in the originally nine, now twenty-four countries of the so-called “Eastern Bloc”. How have we managed to face our past? How have we coped with the changes of national identity and national stereotypes, and with the challenge of the different emerging group conflicts? What was the role of the media in all these processes?
The exhibition entitled TRANSITLAND is a subjective, thematic selection from the archives under the same name, consisting of a hundred works by artists from twenty-five countries. This unique collection was put together by fifty outstanding curators of the region. During the time of the exhibition access will be free to the whole material.
The archives came into existence through the initiative and cooperation of the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, InterSpace (Sofia, Bulgaria), and the transmediale (Berlin, Germany).