UMPRUM Visiting Artist Studio Program in Fall Term 2023/24

East-South: Transnational Exchanges between the Central and Eastern Europe and Africa

This interdisciplinary fine arts studio questions the exchanges between the countries of the Eastern Bloc and the newly independent African states; it studies the impact this transnational dialogue had on the art production during the Cold War era. In the 1960s, Czechoslovakia was one of the major sponsors of the development aid in Africa; the University of the 17^th of November (1961–1974) provided fellowships to students from various countries of the Global South. The goal of the course is to place these debates in a broader context of an emergent field of academic scholarship and art projects questioning the exchanges between the countries of the Eastern Block and the countries of the Global South as well as the way this geography of the networks of artistic, trade, and intellectual exchange transformed after 1989. The goal of this seminar is to avoid simplistic applications of the post-colonial concepts on the exchanges between the socialist states of the Central and Eastern Europe and Africa. By analyzing classical texts of the thinkers of the Independence era, students will be incited to think about a more appropriate conceptual framing of this research material.

This studio will be taught in English.

The studio is connected to a lecture series including prominent international artists, scholars, curators, and filmmakers (Manthia Diawara, Terri Geis, Vanessa van Obberghen, Luc Tuymans, Mamadou Diouf, Łukasz Stanek).

The UMPRUM Visiting Artist for the 2023/2024 fall semester is JANA NDIAYE BERANKOVA 

JANA NDIAYE BERANKOVA is an art and architecture theorist, philosopher, writer and publisher. She studied art and comparative studies at École Normale Supérieure and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France) and architecture at Columbia University (New York, USA), where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the dialogue between French Philosophy and the Theory of Architecture 1965–1990: “A Productive Misunderstanding? Architecture Theory and French Philosophy 1965 to 1990” at Columbia University (New York, USA). Her research interests include French philosophy, the links between continental philosophy and architecture theory, social movements of 1968, West African Modernist architecture, Central European architecture and Karel Teige. She is active as a writer and a publisher; she is the founder of the non-profit publishing house Suture Press / éditions Suture (www.suturepress.com).

The structure of the program

The visiting lecturer and guests will give a theoretical and practical course structured in regular weekly in-person sessions and additional lectures, workshops, screenings and other events.

Applications 

The program is part of the Fine Arts Department of UMPRUM and is primarily reserved to its students but offers places to the students of other departments of UMPRUM too. Students of the bachelor, master and PhD programs can apply.

All students apart from the students of the first year of Bachelor Program and the students currently graduating from Bachelor and Master Program are encouraged to enroll.

To apply, students must have completed their previous semester and enrolled in the next semester. For applications please contact the UMPRUM Study department.

For more information and/or applications please contact the program’s coordinator Sláva Sobotovičová, ssobot@vsup.cz, +420 737 620 381. Deadline for applications is the 11th of September 2023.

In the past UMPRUM has hosted courses of the following visiting artists:

spring 2023/2024 Özlem Altin: Draw a Map to Get Lost. A Topography of Relating to The World.

fall 2022/2023 Marwa Arsanios: Building a structure. Self-organizing.

spring 2021/2022 Viktor Timofeev: Process Soup. Sustainable Artistic Development.

fall 2021/2022 Matt Mullican: Details from an Imaginary Universe

spring 2020/2021 Maja Smrekar: Dialogues with Different Kinds of Interlocutors

fall 2020/2021 Sam Lewitt: Scales

spring 2019/2020 Tyler Coburn: Counterfactuals

fall 2019/2020 Justin Fitzpatrick: Critical Aspects of Painting

spring 2018/2019 Nina Beier: Cultural Meanings of Material and Objects

fall 2018/2019 David Maljković: Crossovers of Installation

spring 2017/2018 Marie de Brugerolle: The Legacy of Performance