Messages in bottles: documented performance and performative photography in Romanian art during late socialism

Cristian Nae

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2019, vol. 27, issue 1, 81-97

Abstract: This text analyses specific type of Romanian performances that were produced in order to be looked at and to be circulated as photographs during the 1970s and 80s. Contrary to the live and ephemeral character of performance art, after 1971, harsh political, economic and cultural conditions forced performance art into the private sphere, again entailing the necessity of self-historicization and self-promotion. A context like this transformed photography from a documentary evidence into a conceptual medium that could circulate as an object. The author proposes several categories according to which photography functioned as an iconic supplement of the missing action, and an attempt to reveal and question on how photographic images re-enact the past event for the contemporary observer. However, the text argues that, despite the important influence of social and institutional conditions of production, these artworks focused primarily on the artistic process and its aesthetic autonomy, and less on a political agenda beyond them.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/25739638.2019.1643075 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cdebxx:v:27:y:2019:i:1:p:81-97

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cdeb20

DOI: 10.1080/25739638.2019.1643075

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe is currently edited by Andrew Kilmister

More articles in Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().