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2012 Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 12 The 12th issue of Sešit (Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones) contains four texts, each relating to a different sphere of visual culture. The essay on theoretical architecture by Martina Sedláková entitled "Between the Abstract and the Concrete. Tadao Andó and his Concept of Architectonic Space" examines Andó's thematisation of the relationship between the "abstract" and the "concrete" and the dialectic of emptiness and fullness, and considers his unique cultural position at the intersection of the influences of traditional Japanese and modern Western architecture. In her article "Public Privacy as a Model of Neo-conceptual Art" Nina Vrbanová argues that a characteristic feature of neo-conceptualism is the selection of expressive resources on the basis of content, and that this is therefore not a style so much as a strategy. The text by Karel Císař entitled "The History of Contemporary Art within a Narrow Field" is a critique of Czech theoretical reflections on postmodernism in the visual arts provoked by the anthology Czech Art 1980-2010. Finally, in his extensive essay "'Marks of Indifference': Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art", Jeff Wall highlights the historical paradoxes involved in the search for the artistic status of photography. |
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2011 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 11 The eleventh issue of Sešit features another three texts that were originally contributions at this year's annual AVU Research Centre conference "The Consequences of Conceptualism". In his essay "Photography after Conceptual Art", Karel Císař compares two ways of interpreting the impact of conceptualism on photography; one outlined by Jeff Wall in his influential text "Marks of Indifference" and the second prepared by Rosalind Krauss in works from the past decade. In his article "Breakpoint. In Search of a Social Change in Czech Art" Jan Zálešák focuses on exhibitions from 1997 to 1999, which in his view represent an essential milestone in the legitimisation process of overtly socially and politically engaged art projects. Daniel Grúň writes on different ways of working with the medium of the artist archive in Central and Eastern Europe in his text "The Artist Archive - A Parallel Institution or the Means for Self-Historicisation?" The issue concludes with a translation of a text written by a Parisian collective of artist using the pseudonym Claire Fontaine that critically analyses changes in artistic subjectivity through the influence of market conditions of the worldwide art business. |
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2011 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 10 In this year's first Notebook there's an increased emphasis on the "related zones" mentioned in its title. This issue opens with Karel Stibral's take on BioArt. Another "related zone" is represented by two texts from the theory or philosophy of literature. Petr Koťátko's study, which finds in literature approaches akin to conceptual art, is derived from the contribution that the author gave at the "Consequences of Conceptualism" conference organized by the AVU Research Center in the spring of that year. Tomáš Koblízek's essay "Testimony and Singularity" elaborates on a vision of the study of literature, drawn from the concept of testimony developed by Émile Benveniste, but also takes into consideration the concept of a unique sign formulated in Barthes' Camera Lucida. By including a translation of Nicolas Bourriaud's "Altermodern" we continue to publish recent programmatic curatorial writings. Václav Magid's review is on the anthology What Is Art? published last year and mapping the discussion of possibilities for defining art in the Anglo-American philosophy of the latter half of the twentieth century. |
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2010 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 9 The theme of reflection upon the history and the present state of the relationship between Czech visual arts and society passes like a red thread through the ninth issue of Sešit. In his essay Czech Art around 1980 as a Field of Cultural Production Josef Ledvina draws from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's work Rules of Art (Brno: Host 2010) as a methodological manual, through which he presents an institutional analysis of the Czech art scene circa 1980. In her overview Czech Art During the Transformation Period. The Relations of Art and 'Engagement' she interprets the development of the Czech art scene from the 1980s to the end or the century through the prism of art engagé. Martin Škabraha's essay What the Eye Doesn't See. Aesthetic Politics and the Politics of Aesthetics in the Planetary Age presents an attempt to apply a question regarding the possibilities of and reasons for a state's subsidizing of art to the context of dramatic changes which the traditional post-Westphalian concept of a sovereign national state is undergoing in globalization. Milena Bartlová's contribution Cultural Politics and the Politics of Culture. Czech Republic 2010, a Questionnaire assesses the current state of Czech cultural policies against the backdrop of changes that Czech society has undergone over the past twenty years. In his review of Dorothea von Hantelmann's book How to Do Things with Art, Jakub Stejskal analyzes the author's attempt to join art's social function with its performance aspects. |
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2010 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 8 This issue features three original reviewed specialised studies. Sylva Poláková's text focuses on the convergences of film and architecture that she follows, for instance, in works on the streets of Prague in recent years. In his study on "critical curatorship" Jan Zálešák writes on the transformations of roles of the artist and of the curator in the era following institutional criticism. Tereza Stejskalová analyses the situation of three female artists and their departure from the art scene, as well as the attention that is given to it within this sphere. Her text refers to Hal Foster's well known article "What's Neo about the Neo Avant-Garde", whose Czech translation immediately follows. A manifesto by the curators of this year's Manifesta is printed as a document of contemporary art and curatorial practices. The issue concludes with a review of the exhibition Gender Check that was held at the beginning of this year at Vienna's MUMOK. |
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2009 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 6-7 The double issue 6-7 of Notebook focuses on aesthetics and its complicated relationship to contemporary visual art and culture in general. Aesthetics professes the conviction that there exists a specific mode of a man's relationship to the world that artists strive to mediate. Expressions such as detachment, beauty, purposiveness without a purpose, aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgement have been traditionally linked to this relationship. Over the past fifty years these terms have been exposed to harsh criticism in the area of art theory. The history of Western art, as it were, charged aesthetic theory with being obsolete. But an unavoidable choice awaited art theory, which wanted to free itself from aesthetics. either defend the existence of its subject in radically new terms, or resign itself to the fact that its subject is something specific that requires its own category. Both possibilities offered both promises and pitfalls. Attempts at giving new responses to "What is art?" proved extremely unsatisfactory. And the increasingly apparent limitations of such responses led some to go back and rethink the configuration of modern art and the aesthetics line of discourse in which this configuration was formulated. The intellectual frame of modernist art is actually created by modern aesthetics. Therefore, if we want to understand what it means to be modern in art and whether it is good or bad, we must consider the vocabulary that is created in thinking through problems that may seem to us today to be beyond the realm of relevance. That is, at least the view shared by most of the authors represented in this issue of Notebook. |
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2008 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 4-5 The subject of the double-issue, Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zone 4-5 for 2008 is the legacy of the Situationist International art-political movement (1957-1972) and its relevance for today. The issue contains one primary and three secondary texts on the subject (one original and two translations). The issue also contains articles (four original and three translated) that expand on several motifs related to the subject (the issue of representation, intervention in everyday life, the political involvement of art), both in the context of the reflection of art and everyday life in real socialism and within the framework of criticism of certain manifestations of contemporary Czech art. |
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2007 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 3 The Notebook N. 3 is dedicated to the three questions comprising leitmotifs of the twelfth documenta exhibition in Kassel: "Is modernity our antiquity?" "What is bare life?" and "What is to be done?". These three questions were put to selected Czech thinkers and publicists for their thoughts who are active outside the sphere of contemporary art. Along with the original contributions by Michael Hauser, Martin Škabraha and Tomáš Samek, we are including several translated texts from the documenta 12 magazines project, selected to illuminate, deepen or problematize the three leitmotifs. |
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2007 / Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 1-2 The theme of the first double issue of the Notebook is collaboration and participation in current socially engaged art. Inside you will find the translations of texts by art critics Claire Bishop, Maria Lind, Christian Kravagna and Grant Kester, the presentations of artists Jan Mlčoch, Thomas Hirschhorn, Alfredo Jaar, Kateřina Šedá and of Ládví art group, an academic text by Peter Bürger and an interview with a philosopher Jacques Ranciere. |
VÍT SOUKUP: EVERYTHING! Films and Theater Performances 1993-2003 DVD from the VIDA series was released.
New number 13/2012 Notebook for art, theory and related zones
The VVP AVU lecture cycle on-line: Nov 7, Nov 21, Dec 12 and Jan 9
A new programme from the VVP AVU videoarchive on-line at Artycok.tv
The editorial board of The Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones is accepting essays and reviews for the upcoming first issue of 2013
Published exhibition catalogue The Islands of Resistance. Between the First and Second Modernity 1985-2012
Published anthology of texts Czech Art 1980-2010. Texts and Documents
The B-Movie DVD was released.
Exhibition The Islands of Resistance. Between the First and Second Modernity 1985-2012
Jan Zálešák, The Art of Collaboration
The
AVU Research Center's on-line video-archive database
In May 2010 the AVU Research Centre's on-line video-archive database was launched
as part of the i-datum
contemporary art database.
Bibliobase part of the Subject Gateway ART
