From the documenta archiv #13

Thursday, October 28, 2021, 6:30 pm

Venue: Rotunde of the Museum Fridericianum

Admission free

In her lecture, the Hungarian cultural scientist Andrea Pócsik will show how the art world of the former Eastern Bloc state Hungary is represented in the holdings of the documenta archiv. She will focus on archiving as a process of producing of knowledge.

On the one hand, she examines artists such as the Hungarian-born Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), participant of documenta 1-4, on the other hand, she focuses on case studies of Hungarian coneptual art such as the "Foot Art Project" by László Lakner (b. 1936) and the intervention of the "true Hungarian artists" in the period of 1971-72. Above all, she sheds light on the nature of the so-called "double-speak" and its historical forms in a specific socio-political situation in both the East and the West. Using figures that do not appear in the narratives of the documenta exhibitions, she provides new insights that illuminate the contradictions of cultural-political decisions.

Andrea Pócsik holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and teaches at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest in the department of "Media and Communication Studies." She is the first recipient of the 2020 joint fellowship of the Goethe-Institut, the Kunsthochschule Kassel and the documenta archiv. From June until the end of October this year, she has been conducting research at the documenta archiv.

The fellowship is aimed at international scholars and researching artists and curators. The international fellows benefit from the comprehensive holdings of the documenta archiv as well as from the exchange with the teams of the documenta archiv, the Kunsthochschule Kassel and the University of Kassel and their academic environment. The multi-year fellowship program makes it possible to investigate a wide variety of art historical, contemporary historical, interdisciplinary, and international references to the documenta exhibitions and thus to contribute to expanding the still Western European/North American art historical canon with new perspectives.