Recalling Avant-Garde Moments, Reconnecting Avant-Garde Scenes International Conference Dedicated to the Centenary of the H2so4
9-11 October 2024, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
09. Okt. - 11. Okt.
Historical avant-garde contains forgotten moments and scenes that still need to be rediscovered or reconnected with other, central or peripheral scenes of the European avant-garde. Avant-garde moments would not occur in different national cultures without the strong desire to connected with the wider web of aesthetic searches and experimentation, happening in various European cultural loci. However, due to historical changes, some moments/scenes were disconnected from the web, staying unrecalled for decades.
One such forgotten moment was that of the Tbilisi modernism/avant-garde (1917-1918) and the Futurist group H2SO4 (1920s), which has been erased from the Georgian cultural memory by the Soviet power while the country was disconnected from European cultural context. In the post-Soviet decades, Georgia had to reclaim this legacy. The present centenary of the Futurist group and journal H2SO4 (1924) is a good reason for discussing different, though often comparable avant-garde cultural experiences.
Understanding Avant-Garde as a constellation of different moments we will examine the specificity of each locality in their transcultural entanglement. To reconstruct these scenes, the conference will elaborate on networks, relationships, groups, and collaborations, on their coming together, forming, evaporating, and diverging again. What is the transformational power of Avant-Garde alliances, past and present, within the artistic and the societal field? How have ways and forms of life been shaped throughout the Avant-Gardes? What are the gendered social and spatial structures, in which groups test and create forms of community through their artistic practices? The aim here will be to render visible realities of those groups and alliances that have not yet been acknowledged, due to geographical, institutional and/or political conditions.
The conference is organised by the Institute of Comparative Literature and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ilia State University, in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.
The Plenary Lectures/Talks:
Günter Berghaus, University of Bristol
International Futurism and Its Cross-Fertilizations in the Historical Avant-garde
Artist Talk: Beate Söntgen, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, with Anuk Beluga & Mari Kalabegashvili
Gia Jokhadze, Ilia State University
Mandelstamiana: The Fragments from the Cultural History of Russia and Georgia
Lecture / Book Presentation
See the Programme for the detailed information.