ABSTRACT
In this text, I will recount one instance of an attempt to negotiate the terms of this transition, in which “Eastern Europe” was juxtaposed to “contemporary art,” with the aim of creating an East Art Map, purportedly on the East’s own terms. By initiating collaborations with Moscow artists and curators in the early 1990s, the Slovenian group Irwin – part of the more expansive art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK, or “New Slovenian Art”) – made a decisive contribution in the creation of such a paradigm of Eastern European art which, in alliance with their principle of ironic “overidentification,” we could also dub Neue östeuropäische Kunst, or “New Eastern European Art.”
