EAN: 9780262046633

PARALLEL PUBLIC - SARA BLAYLOCK GEBUNDEN

How East German artists made their country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public
life. Experimental artists in the final years of the German Democratic Republic did not
practice their art in the shadows  on the margins  hiding away from the Stasi’s prying eyes. In
fact  as Sara Blaylock shows  many cultivated a critical influence over the very bureaucracies
meant to keep them in line  undermining state authority through forthright rather than covert
projects. In Parallel Public  Blaylock describes how some East German artists made their
country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public life  creating an alternative to
the crumbling collective underpinnings of the state. Blaylock examines the work of artists who
used body-based practices—including performance  film  and photography—to create new
vocabularies of representation  sharing their projects through independent networks of
dissemination and display. From the collective films and fashion shows of Erfurt's Women
Artists Group  which fused art with feminist political action  to Gino Hahnemann  the queer
filmmaker and poet who set nudes alight in city parks  these creators were as bold in their
ventures as they were indifferent to state power. Parallel Public is the first work of its kind
on experimental art in East Germany to be written in English. Blaylock draws on extensive
interviews with artists  art historians  and organizers  artist-made publications  official
reports from the Union of Fine Artists  and Stasi surveillance records. As she recounts the
role culture played in the GDR’s rapid decline  she reveals East German artists as dissenters
and witnesses  citizens and agents  their work both antidote to and diagnosis of a weakening
state.

Aktuelle Preise zur EAN 9780262046633

Produktinformationen zur 9780262046633