Artpool40 – Active Archives and Art Networks

The international conference celebrates the 40th anniversary of the foundation of Artpool and its concurrent relocation to the Central European Research Institute of Art History of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
It aims to map the cultural-political-historical contexts of Artpool’s activity by bringing together scholars and practitioners interested in transnational research on artist archives, progressive curatorial and museological practices, and the historiography of Cold War art scenes and networks.

The conference takes Artpool’s 1979 concept of an “Active Archive” as a starting point to explore its contemporary interpretations and applications, and its similarities with and differences from other artist archives. As Artpool’s founder György Galántai puts it, an active archive “generates the very material to be archived” through calls for participation, co-operation, exchange, and building of non-hierarchical networks, as well as through combining art historical and artistic methodologies of research. An active archive is future-oriented and employs a dynamic approach to history “as an open artwork and as an activist artistic practice”. The main activity of Artpool to this day is conducting non-medium specific research into the role of art in ever-changing social and political contexts.

In this spirit, we invite scholars and practitioners to propose new museological, curatorial, academic, or artistic perspectives and methodologies that allow the consideration of archival practice as a creative and active form of researching art and artistic visions of the future.

The conference is organized by Júlia Klaniczay, Dr. Emese Kürti, and Zsuzsa László from Artpool Art Research Center – Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with Dr. Judit Bodor (Glasgow School of Art) and Dr. Beáta Hock (Universität Leipzig), and is realized in the framework of the COST Action New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent (NEP4DISSENT) generously supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.

See the conference webpage for programme and further information: https://www.artpool.hu/institute/artpool_40-conference.html