ABSTRACT
Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances.
The artistic networks of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are discussed with a particular focus on the discourses that shaped artistic practice at the time, drawing on the methods of Performance Studies and Media Studies as well as more familiar reference points from art history and area studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|55 pages
Geopolitics and transnationalism of art production
chapter 1|13 pages
Beyond “East” and “West” through The Eternal Network
part II|91 pages
Locating the second public sphere
chapter 5|13 pages
Basements, attics, streets and courtyards
chapter 6|14 pages
Performing the proletarian public sphere
chapter 7|13 pages
Outside by being inside
chapter 8|12 pages
From a local to a national to a transnational public sphere
chapter 9|11 pages
Surveilling the public sphere
chapter 11|13 pages
Escape into nature!
part III|71 pages
Facets of gender in the second public sphere
part IV|15 pages
Post-socialist performance
