International Workshop

Date & Venue: 27 February 2020, Prague
Deadline for applications: 15 November 2019
Organizers: Institute of Art History (CAS) & CEFRES
In partnership with: Institute of Contemporary History (CAS), Université Paris-Nanterre
Language: English

Interwar East-Central Europe gave rise to an international movement of left-wing activist photographers, whose aim was to expose the workers’ living and working conditions through mass-produced documentary photographs. Despite growing research in the wake of the landmark exhibition “The Worker Photography Movement” in Madrid in 2011, we still have difficulties grasping this photographic production in its full scope because the conditions in which it was preserved and transmitted over generations have not been systematically explored.

Originally, social, proletarian, or worker photography, as named by its proponents, was presented by the Communist propaganda as a weapon in the class struggle. It was meant to supply left-wing printed media with images documenting the life of workers in order to counteract the influence of “bourgeois” illustrated magazines. Therefore, some of the photographs were kept in the picture archives of newspapers, while others remained in the hands of their authors. The Nazi occupation of Europe brought about a shift in the conservation of worker photography by leading the Communists to hide or to destroy archives that were deemed compromising. As a result, picture archives in journals such as Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung in Germany, Regards in France or Rudé Právo in Czechoslovakia, as well as other archives of press agencies and leftist organizations across Europe, disappeared.

After World War II, however, many of these photographs resurfaced and were granted a second life. Some were moved to documentary collections of the Communist historical museums which blossomed in countries of the Eastern Bloc in the 1950s, while others were included in the photographic collections founded in art museums from the 1970s. Such transfers brought about shifts in the status and uses of these images. Worker photographs turned into historical documents or works of art, despite having been originally conceived of as news or reportage photography and mass-reproductions. Having become cultural objects in their own right, they were used for political or historical purposes. Today, this visual material still raises issues of status and past political uses, which art and history museums in East-Central Europe have to address through new museum practices.

This international workshop examines the legacy of worker photography as museum object, cultural heritage and history in East-Central Europe from 1945 until today. How was worker photography preserved, historized, and mediated in East-Central European museums? The goal is to provide a multifaceted perspective on worker photography by confronting its political and historical uses and its musealization (van Mensch 1992) after 1945 on the one hand, and the memory issues it raises today on the other.

The workshop is part of the interdisciplinary and international sessions organized by the Photography Research Centre at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences (https://www.udu.cas.cz/en/photography-research-centre/). Established in 2018, the Centre ambitions to become a singular platform for interdisciplinary research in the Czech Republic, with the objective of overcoming national, branch-based and mono-institutional approaches of photography and photographic history in Central Europe.

Papers are sought on worker photography in museum collections in East-Central Europe, addressing the following questions :

• Contextual and ethical reasons that led to conserving worker photography;
• Actors and institutions involved in this process;
• Conservation and cataloguing procedures (themes, metadata and documentation);
• Exhibition, mediation and display practices;
• The political, ideological and cultural uses of worker photography in museums;
• Historiography: uses of worker photographs as illustrations of official narratives, or worker photography histories, be they local or transnational;
• Worker photography as evidence, historical document, work of art;
• Shifts observed: from the private to the public sphere, from one medium or format to another;
• Material forms: analogue (prints, photomechanical reproductions) or digital;
• International exchanges between institutions and circulation of photographs;
• Comparative outlooks on worker photography collections in East-Central Europe and beyond.

This call for papers welcomes presentations from scholars, curators, archivists and collection managers who engage with the questions of the preservation, collection, exhibition and historiography of worker photography in East-Central European museums after 1945.

Deadline for submissions: 15 November 2019

Paper proposals: abstract of up to 300 words for 20 minute talks and a short biography (c. 150 words) can be sent to Fedora Parkmann (parkmann@udu.cas.cz).

Conferences costs: Help with travel and accommodation costs may be offered to participants who are not able to secure funding from their institutions.

The workshop will take place in Prague on 27 February 2020 at the CEFRES (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences). The workshop language is English.

Organization:

• Fedora Parkmann (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences/CEFRES)
• Christian Joschke (Université Paris-Nanterre, Paris) – scientific collaboration

Scientific committee:

• Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)
• Petr Roubal (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
• Petra Trnková (Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester/Photography Research Centre, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)

Post-revolutionary hopes and disillusions. Interpreting, promoting and disqualifying revolutions.

International Conference – Doctoral and student workshop

Date: 6 & 7 December 2019
Venue: Prague
Deadline for the applications : 30 October 2019
Organizers: CEFRES, Faculty of Arts of Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the ERC Project„Tarica“
In partnership with: French Institute in Prague, Centre of French civilization and francophone studies (CCFEF) of the University of Warsaw, Centre of Polish Civilization of Sorbonne University, Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Paris, CNRS research unit LADYSS (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Polish Institute in Prague
Language: English

Under the frame of the international conference “Post-revolutionary hopes and disillusions. Interpreting, promoting and disqualifying revolutions” is organized a special workshop for PhD students and Master students to debate about issues and perceptions of post-revolutions’ situations in Central and Eastern Europe or elsewhere. This session will be held beside an academic debate, as well as a large public discussion about the topic.

2019 represents an important symbol and a major commemorative moment in Europe. Marking thirty years since the collapse of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as fifteen years since their European integration, this anniversary gives rise to political, memorial and academic initiatives throughout Europe. In a way, it does undoubtedly crystallize the tensions and controversies surrounding the “1989 event” interpretation, as it renews the assessment of countries transformations in the region since the Velvet Revolution.

The political landscapes of post-communist countries provide contrasting situations. Democracies and the rule of law have emerged everywhere in a context of universalization of political and economic liberalism in Europe. Nevertheless, several societies are experiencing current upheavals, which are often described as illiberal, authoritarian or populist, or even as „conservative revolutions“.

Hence, the scientific production on the concerned societies, based on tried methods of investigation and analysis, invite us to think and rethink the “1989 event”, which remains a major moment in our contemporary history, and the transformations that Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the other European countries and the European Union, have undergone since the collapse of communism.

This thirtieth anniversary is a unique opportunity to think about revolutionary experiences and regime change in various historical contexts. Thereby, this conference aims at offering wider and new academic perspectives on regime transformations and democratic transitions, through a comparative approach. Post-Communist Europe will undoubtedly be one of our focus, as well as the Arab world following the 2011 uprisings or the political transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, this unprecedented proposition is to offer an equal value of those revolutions in our comparative analysis, without any ranking based on success of failure.

The chosen perspective is to question the object “revolution” in terms of contradictory investments that it is the object of a variety of actors. To analyze the multiple interpretations that the revolution raises: promotion, even sublimation; but also disqualification, even outright rejection.

In fact, the expressions of disillusionment that accompany a revolutionary episode is far from rare. If there is a law of revolutions, it may be this one. The narrative of disappointment occurs almost constantly, despite the great diversity of regime change trajectories. It emerges from democratic regressions led by new political actors, from the recycling of the old regime, a counter-revolutionary process, the lack of any major social changes, or merely because the hopes carried by the revolution were not translated into political acts. Yet common in the public space, expressions of disappointment have barely been the object of academic research.

Thus, here are some exciting questions that fully justify a comparative examination:

I-Describing and representing hopes and disappointments

• Expressions of hopes, expectations, disappointment, disenchantment, disillusion, are multiple: discursive and political, as well as artistic, literary and cinematographic. What forms do they take in the Eastern European, Arab of African context? What are their lexical and moral registers?
• How is shape disillusion following the so-called “Old regime return”? Are these objective or ideal facts?
• What is the impact of social inequalities persistence, economic reform lack, fading of sovereignty?
• Which individuals, professional and social groups are more like to express hopes and disappointment? Are hopes and disappointment expressed individually or collectively?
• What are the post-revolutionary disappointment temporalities: immediate or differed?
• Are all kind of disappointments expressed?

II-Understanding and explaining hopes and disappointment

• It goes without saying that the expression of hope or disappointment is not only a matter of individual and collective psychological mechanisms.
• What are the mechanisms by which hope and disappointment is built? What are the specific actors, strategies, circumstances into play? What are the particularities of the moral, ethical and political framework from which disenchantment is deployed?
• As Bronislaw Baczko mentioned, recalling the “emotional climate created by the revolutionary fact, the upsurges of fears and hopes (which) necessarily drive the production of social imaginaries”, to what extent is emotional over-investment part of political effervescence?
• Is disillusionment only the natural product of prior illusion? Disappointment would then impose itself as a mirror of revolutionary hope, but it is not reduced to it as long as one is not the natural consequence of the other: it is the moment where some create and exploit the disappointment that must be the object of the investigation.
• What is the materiality of disappointment? How do political, emotional, psychological, social vectors articulate themselves?

III- Uses and Effects of Disappointment

• What are the social and practical practices of disappointment? Does all or part of society share it? How do some political entrepreneurs exploit it as a strategy?
• What are the disappointment consequences on scholars and experts’ perception of the post-revolutionary process?

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Thanks to the richness and diversity of these questions, this conference will gather specialists from several disciplines of social sciences and humanities without borders, neither temporal nor spatial. We will still be dedicated to contemporary Central Europe, the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa. The papers will have to mobilize original sources and be based on a clearly exposed method (literary analysis, oral history, political sociology, social psychology, etc.). PhD students and young researchers are particularly encouraged to propose a paper.

Schedule

Deadline for paper proposals (max 500 words) : 30 October 2019

Selection of contributions and feedback from the conference organizers: 10 November 2019

Paper proposals (max 500 words) must be sent to jerome.heurtaux@cefres.cz, by 30 October 2019 at the latest.

This international conference is organized by CEFRES, the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the ERC Project„Tarica“.

In collaboration with the French Institute in Prague, the Centre of French civilization and francophone studies (CCFEF) of the University of Warsaw, the Centre of Polish Civilization of Sorbonne University, the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Paris, the CNRS research unit LADYSS (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and the Polish Institute in Prague.

This conference is the third in the framework of a cycle of three conferences, entitled “1989-2019: Beyond the Anniversary, Questioning 1989”, held consecutively in Paris, Warsaw and Prague, coordinated by Maciej Forycki (Scientific Centre in Paris of the Polish Academy of Science), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES–French Research Centre in Humanities and Social Sciences), Nicolas Maslowski (Centre for French Studies (CCFEF), University of Warsaw) and Paweł Rodak (Centre of Polish civilization, Sorbonne University).

Conferences costs

Due to limited funding, the organizers will be able to support some prospective or underfunded participants. Hence, conference attendees are advised to start exploring financial support from their home institutions or outside sponsors.

Scientific Committee

• Jérôme Heurtaux, Cefres
• Michal Pullmann, Charles University
• Miroslav Vaněk, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Pavel Mucke, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Eliška Tomalová , Charles University
• Alia Gana, ERC « Tarica »