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BIRMAC Book Launch: What Will Be Already Exists

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Venue: Online

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BIRMAC in association with Artpool, is delighted to celebrate the launch of 'What Will Be Already Exists', an edited volume emerging from a conference organised around Artpool's 40th anniversary. The book was published by Transcript Verlag in 2021, edited by Emese Kürti and Zsuzsa László and features essays by Zdenka Badovinac, Judit Bodor-Roddy Hunter, David Crowley, Lina Dzuverovic, Daniel Grún, Emese Kürti, Karolina Majewska-Güde, Kristine Stiles, Sven Spieker and Tomasz Zaluski.

For this event, invited respondents, art scholar, critic, and curator Ieva Astahovska (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia) and art historian and curator, Cristian Nae (George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi, Romania), will offer their responses to the publication, which will be followed by a panel discussion with the editors and a number of contributors. Chaired by Dr Sophie Hope (Department of Film Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck College).

How do artist archives survive and stay authentic in radically changed contexts? The volume addresses the challenge of continuity, sustainability, and institutionalization of archives established by Eastern European artists. At its center stands the 40th anniversary of the Artpool Art Research Center founded in 1979 in Budapest as an underground institution based on György Galántai's 'Active Archive' concept. Ten internationally renowned scholars propose contemporary interpretations of this concept and frame artist archives not as mere sources of art history but as models of self-historicization. The contributions give knowledgeable insights into the transition of Cold War art networks and institutional landscapes.

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