Chair of East European Art and Visual History
In geographical terms, the Chair of Art and Visual History of Eastern Europe encompasses the eastern part of Central Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the former German Democratic Republic) as well as Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and the other countries of the former Soviet Union, and Southeastern Europe. The teaching curriculum covers the entire spectrum of the region’s art and visual history—including its historical interconnections with other cultural spheres (particularly Western Europe and Asia)—from the Middle Ages to the present. The research area, in turn, addresses historical (primarily early modern, ca. 1500-1800) and contemporary phenomena in art and visual history, including political iconology, in their functional and discursive contexts with a focus on visible forms of social conflict and negotiations of social dissent, such as iconoclasm, cultural appropriation, knowledge transfer, anachronism, antagonism, and revolution. Within that scope, the research concentrates on intersections between historical discourses of power, knowledge, and art or visual history as well as issues of cultural heritage, the iconic turn, new media, and the relationship between decolonization and transculturality. In the context of contemporary image media, the Chair’s research pays particular attention to artistic and activist/artivist strategies of resistance to imperial and repressive state power structures (focus on Ukraine and Belarus) and the visual history of anti-totalitarian and anti-authoritarian struggles for freedom and democratic sovereignty in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1990 and beyond.
Coordination
Vera Charlotte von Lieres
Student Assistant
Antonija Matanic