Difference between revisions of "EastUnBloc"

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nGbK work group: [[Dušan Barok]], Friedemann Bochow, [[Natalie Gravenor]], [[Sarah Günther]], [[Zsuzsa Berecz]].
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nGbK work group: [[Natalie Gravenor]], [[Sarah Günther]], [[Zsuzsa Berecz]], Friedemann Bochow, [[Dušan Barok]].
  
 
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion in Berlin.
 
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion in Berlin.

Revision as of 13:49, 19 November 2025

EastUnBloc 2025.webp
nGbK am Alex
EastUnBloc
Reclaiming Experimental and Subversive Media art Practices from Central and Eastern Europe, 1958 to the Present
Group exhibition
nGbK, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 11/13, 10178 Berlin 
29 November 2025 – 15 February 2026
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 12:00–18:00, Fri 12:00–20:00
Admission: free

35 years into the post-socialist transition in Europe, images of the “former East” are often still rendered in shades of gray. Only recently, Cold War scholarship is beginning to move away from a view of two monolithic opposing blocs, instead exploring the concept of alternate or parallel modernities rather than the idea of lack and lag in the former Eastern bloc. To add color to these images, explore the ruptures and permeability of the “Iron Curtain” and blast apart pre-conceptions, the group exhibition EastUnBloc presents subversive and experimental media art works and practices by more than two dozen artists and collectives from socialist and transition-era Central and Eastern Europe as well as the production contexts in which they were created. Beyond presentation, the exhibition seeks to reclaim these works, as “artistic intelligence”: inspiration and toolkits to respond to current challenges.

  • Aleksandra Domanović, From yu to me, 2013/14.
  • Aleksandra Domanović, From yu to me, 2013/14.
  • Vákuum Tv, 1996.
With contributions by

nGbK work group: Natalie Gravenor, Sarah Günther, Zsuzsa Berecz, Friedemann Bochow, Dušan Barok.

Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion in Berlin. Supported by the German-Czech Fund for the Future.

Curatorial text

The five curators of the exhibition grew up in different countries along both sides of the former Iron Curtain. They experienced – firsthand or with the critical distance passed time allows – the social situation which shaped the exhibited works.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the late 1980s and early 1990s were marked by two intertwined paradigm shifts: the dissolution of state socialism and the dawn of the digital and internet age. This simultaneity brought about a diverse body of media works. EastUnBloc “reverse engineers” the underlying principles of these works and their production processes. Borrowing a term from computer programming, these principles and strategies are referred to as “scripts”.

They invite visitors to connect with the exhibited works and reflect their own past, future and present through the exhibits’ lenses.

Instead of insisting on a spatial, chronological or geographical dramaturgy, the scripts guide visitors to encounter works in an optional order, revealing themselves through color-coding and other clues in the exhibition design.

A cooperation with Wiki-based arts online library Monoskop provides background information throughout the exhibition.

Turn shit into chocolate

using limited resources for maximal effect

Resources are generally scarcer for independent artists and activists, and that was certainly the case in socialist and transition-era Central and Eastern Europe. Combining available materials with ingenuity and imagination, the works applying this script are provocative, humorous and even trailblazing. They use lo-res formats like 16 mm, Super 8 or VHS, U-matic low band and Hi8 video, basic video signals, minimal computer code, such as the four kilobyte size digital animations of the Demoscene, ASCII characters, and GIFs. Found footage becomes raw material. Editing takes place in camera or with rudimentary cuts, or films are shot in one take. Props and sets are handmade; trash becomes costumes; minimalism becomes virtuosity. The “turn shit into chocolate” script echoes in for example the Dogme 95 manifesto’s creative restraints and permacomputing (see the accompanying program), a concept and community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.

Reality bending

hacking the system with pranks and hoaxes

Analogous to the musical practice of circuit-bending – creative manipulation of circuits in electronic devices to get an output that was not intended by the manufacturer – the exhibition uses the term “reality bending” to highlight works that hijack power structures. Through parody, overaffirmation, or unexpected disruption, these works reveal hidden truths, empower the powerless (if only for a brief moment), and show that a different situation is possible.

While reality bending is a practice adopted for progressive and emancipatory aims, some works also deal with ethical questions and possible unintended adverse effects.

Media artists and activists in Central and Eastern Europe frequently used reality bending as an underlying “script.” Some works ruptured rigid and oppressive state media, in particular television, through illegal and high-risk actions or, as in the Slovenian art group Laibach, by parody or détournage of official symbols and messages. Others, like Krzysztof Wodiczko with his Lenin Monument, used media as interventions in public space.

Make your own media

self-empowerment through media production

Bertolt Brecht famously said in the early 1930s, with the advent of radio as a mass medium, that radio not only allows one sender to reach a broad audience in a top down fashion, its technology also has the potential for each receiver to broadcast their own programming.

Then 16 mm and Super 8 film emerged which could be developed at home – crucial particularly in Central and Eastern Europe to avoid state control through film labs. Later video formats such as VHS, Video / Hi8 and (Mini)DV became accessible, empowering more people to create their own media. Non-conformist self-expression, aesthetic exploration, and sharing suppressed information were some of the aims of this practice.

In the strongly controlled media system of the socialist era, alternative niches emerged. In state supported or tolerated experimental film and video art practices in Poland, Hungary, Yugo­slavia, and Romania, abstract visual art works flew under the radar of censors who were watching out for explicit, often verbal artistic expression. Amateur films, which occasionally tested limits of form and content, were produced in clubs associated with worker leisure time and worker creativity encouragement or, as in Yugoslavia, as part of aesthetic education.

Autonomous production occurred with Super 8 film cameras and video equipment, sometimes smuggled from the West.

This allowed the creation of a wide range of “audiovisual samizdat,” underground self-publishing practices ranging from experimental works which challenged aesthetic norms to documentations of suppressed political movements such as Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia and Solidarność in Poland.

This script also encompasses interactivity. While the audience is not completely autonomous, it is a co-creator or at least has a decision-making option within the works, foreshadowing today’s media landscape of individual prosumers. The exhibition presents Kinoautomat, the first large-scale interactive narrative film from Czechoslovakia which premiered at Expo Montreal in 1967, and DemoKino, a 21st century response exploring interactivity and political decision-making.

Furthermore, net art works follow this script, using the interactive features of the internet browser and hypertext, as well as 1980s independent computer games from Czechoslovakia, some of which had explicit political themes.

Bring a friend

creating communities by throwing a political party

As authorities in Central and Eastern Europe often sowed suspicion to better control their subjects, friendship became particularly precious. It also was a means of resistance. Long nights in pubs engendered not only hangovers but also plans for artistic and political activity. Private social gatherings became informal art exhibitions, fashion shows, concerts, poetry readings, film screenings, and happenings. Circles of friends co-created and had each other’s backs, worked and lived together. Making art became a way of life. And despite mistrust of potential secret police informers, encounters with the unfamiliar – people with different backgrounds and life situations as well as new experien­ces – were welcome.

Works using this script document avant-garde fashion which irreverently used socialist symbols. Intermedia club culture, where music, media art, design, dancing and performance merged, became labs for social change or a safe space for expressing queer identities.

Expose the seams

revealing media’s underlying processes

The persuasive effect of media often relies upon the audience’s ignorance of how it works. Official media in socialist countries also strived to remain untransparent. Particularly in the postmodern era, questioning the power of media by exposing its inner workings became a key issue for scholars and artists on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Works using this script are highly experimental and self-referential, deviating the most from conventional viewing habits. The presence of the camera is highlighted by breaking the fourth wall or showing the recording apparatus. Editing, usually invisible in classical narrative cinema, is foregrounded. Some structuralist works explore the materiality of film and video: film grain, electromagnetic signals, video dropouts, pixels, and other digital glitches. Some works walk viewers through the process of creation.

Space in time

forging connections across spatial and temporal boundaries

Geography and history, intertwined manifestations of space and time, particularly shaped everyday life and states of mind in Central and Eastern Europe. Centuries of armed conflicts, domination by foreign colonial powers, and the redrawing of national borders impacted identities. The establishment of the capitalist and socialist blocs in post-war Europe resulted in the Iron Curtain as a seemingly invincible barrier with a far-reaching shadow.

As a consequence, much artistic practice engaged with ghosts of the past and utopian or dystopian futures as they blur or battle each other in the present.

The projects in the exhibition, through networks of likeminded artists all over Europe, forged connections via the distribution of analogue videotapes through semi-official channels like Infermental. Others used TV broadcast and early internet technologies, as did Van Gogh TV with Piazza Virtuale, or created a dialogue between past and future selves. And Transcentrala by Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid explores how artist collective NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) developed a theory of history and concept of a postnational world transcending borders. In 1992, the collective founded NSK State in Time, which inspired this script’s name.

Events

Opening

nGbK. Fri, 28 Nov 25, 18:00 h

With an intervention by the art network Pneuma Szöv. (Budapest/Berlin) and special guests.

“Bring a Friend” – Early Night Show

nGbK. Sat, 29 Nov 25, 19:00–20:30 h

TV Free Europe presents:
A performance and time travel talk show by Pneuma Szöv. (Budapest/Berlin) and guests: Gusztáv Hámos, Mike Hentz and Benjamin Heidersberger. – Live at and from nGbK!

Entropy Coding – Experiments with Video and Permacomputing

nGbK. Tue, 2 Dec 25, 14:00–18:00 h

Workshop with Brendan Howell (artist and reluctant engineer, wintermute.org):
Experimenting with outmoded and low-fi digital cameras as tools for new aesthetics and narratives.

net.art Gallery Surfing Session 1

nGbK. Sun, 11 Dec 25, time tbc

with Sakrowski (curator, netzkunst.org) and Igor Štromajer (artist)

net.art Gallery Surfing Session 2

nGbK. Tue, 13 Jan 26, time tbc

with Tereza Havlíková (curator) and Andreas Broeckmann (curator and researcher)

Bye Bye My Eye: Confirmed. Understood. Over and out.

nGbK. Wed, 28 Jan 26, time tbc

Live cinema. Live performance. Half dead reality of those who sailed into the known. © D'epog.

Archival Outreach Symposium

nGbK. Thu, 29 Jan 26, time tbc

with Jennifer Helia DeFelice (Vašulka Kitchen Brno), Lucia Repašská (D'epog), and others.

Finissage

nGbK. Sun, 15 Feb 26, 18:00 h

Links

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