Postwar. Art and Architecture

Con­fer­ence date:

9–12 October 2024

Venue:

Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw / Muzeum Ar­chitek­tury we Wrocławiu, Bernardyńska 7

Every war was sup­posed to be the last one. None of them ac­tu­ally was. All of them brought not only suf­fer­ing and de­struc­tion, but also changes unimag­in­able ahead. Efforts have been made to tame them through new nar­ra­tives and in­ter­pre­ta­tions, such as his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal ac­counts, and to ar­tic­u­late them through various forms of art, in­clud­ing ar­chi­tec­ture, urban plan­ning, paint­ing, drawing, and graphics.

The fol­low­ing 31st con­fer­ence of the Pol­ish-Ger­man Working Group for Art History and Mon­u­ment Preser­va­tion builds on last year’s dis­cus­sion on ‘Art and War’. The con­fer­ence ad­dresses the role of art and ar­chi­tec­ture in post-war re­al­i­ties, a topic that remains rel­e­vant in face of de­pop­u­la­tion, loss of her­itage, eco­nomic crises, changes in social re­la­tions, and in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive traumas re­sult­ing from armed con­flicts through­out history. The sit­u­a­tion of art is un­doubt­edly chal­leng­ing under such cir­cum­stances. However, history proves that artis­tic ac­tiv­ity does not come to a com­plete stand­still during or im­me­di­ately after wars. On the con­trary, it often flour­ishes as a result of wars.

The con­fer­ence will discuss artis­tic phe­nom­ena that arise in the af­ter­math of war con­flicts in dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal periods, po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, and ge­o­graph­i­cal con­texts. The aim is to con­sider both the unique­ness and the shared fea­tures of these phenomena.

The con­fer­ence lan­guage: English.

The com­plete pro­gramme of the con­fer­ence you will find HERE

Con­fer­ence programme:

DAY 1 – 9 October 2024 (Wednesday)

• 15:00 opening of the con­fer­ence, wel­com­ing guests, in­tro­duc­tory remarks
• 17:00-18:30 keynote lecture: Andrew Demshuk, “Wrocław, Leipzig, and Frank­furt/Main: Re­demp­tive Re­con­struc­tion” across Cold War Borders”
• Mod­er­a­tion: Paul Zalewski

DAY 2 – 10 October 2024 (Thursday)

• 11:00-12:40 PANEL 1: In­sti­tu­tional strate­gies towards new reality

• Mod­er­a­tion: Beate Störtkuhl

• Mag­dalena Białonowska (Car­di­nal Stefan Wyszyński Uni­ver­sity of Warsaw, Royal Castle in Warsaw): “New museums in new ter­ri­to­ries. On some early Polish ideas con­cern­ing the issue of museums in the so-called Re­cov­ered Territories”

• Joanna Jaku­tow­icz (Freie Uni­ver­sität, Berlin): “Un­mit­tel­bar nach dem Krieg. De­f­i­n­i­tion und Sicherung von be­weglichen Kunst­werken auf dem Gebiet des ein­sti­gen Ostpreußens in den Jahren 1945-1946 / Tuż po wojnie. Definicja oraz zabez­pieczenia ru­chomych dzieł sztuki na terenie dawnych Prus Wschod­nich w latach 1945-1946”

• Mariana Levyt­ska (Ukrain­ian Academy of Print­ing, Ukrain­ian Na­tional Academy of Sci­ences in Lviv): “Art history in the postwar L’viv (1946-1950s): Re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of the Dis­man­tling of the in­sti­tu­tional struc­ture and its con­se­quences for Ukrain­ian and Polish Scholarship”

• Susanne Müller-Bech­tel (Saxon Academy of Sci­ences and Hu­man­i­ties in Leipzig; Julius-Max­i­m­il­ians-Uni­ver­sität, Würzburg): “Re­build­ing Museums and Cul­tural Iden­tity in Postwar Era”

12:40-13:20 discussion

13:20-14:30 break

• 14:30-15:20 PANEL 2a: “New ter­ri­to­ries and the taming of the foreign space”
• Mod­er­a­tion: Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel

Adri­anna Brechelke (Poznań Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy) - “Ide­o­log­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions of post-war urban plan­ning in Kołobrzeg”

Barbara Szczepańska (Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wrocław, Uni­ver­sity of Wrocław) - “The origin of the city. Ostrówek in Opole and its po­lit­i­cal and iden­tity sig­nif­i­cance post 1945”

15:20-15:40 discussion

15:40-15:55 short break

• 15:55-17:10 PANEL 2b: “Ar­chi­tec­ture as a tool of cre­at­ing and trans­mit­ting new narratives”
• Mod­er­a­tion: Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel

Se­bas­t­ian Bi­eten­hader, Matthias Moroder / Büro Bi­eten­haden Moroder (Vienna Uni­ver­sity) - “Eman­ci­pa­tory Ar­chi­tec­ture of Vi­en­nese Public Housing. The Built Re-Eval­u­a­tion of Red Vienna in the first Decade after World War II”

Fanni Magyaróvári (Hun­gar­ian Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture and Mon­u­ment Pro­tec­tion Doc­u­men­ta­tion Center, Bu­dapest) - “Pro­cess­ing trauma and prepar­ing for the new war. Mod­ernism in Hungary through the life­work of ar­chi­tect Zoltán Révész”

Michał Chadera (Museum of Ar­chite­cure in Wrocław) - “To the queen of Arts a museum in Wrocław” - the origins, vision and the for­ma­tive years of the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture and Reconstruction’.

17:10-17:40 discussion

DAY 3 – 11 October 2024 (Friday)

• 9:00-10:00 EX­CHANGE PLATFORM

• Mod­er­a­tion: Barbara Szczepańska

• Gloria Köpnick (Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Düssel­dorf): “Con­ti­nu­ity and new be­gin­nings at the Old­en­burg State Museum 1945 to 1950”

• Jan An­drze­jew­ski (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw): “Lost ma­te­r­ial context of his­tor­i­cal objects: an attempt at digital re­con­struc­tion and arrange­ment in museum space on the example of wooden sculp­tures of the four Evan­ge­lists from the pulpit of the Church of the As­sump­tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nawaria near Lviv”

• Anna Pi­lawska-Sita: “Imag­i­na­tion towards a mon­u­ment – the Cu Chi tunnels”

• Romana Kálnai-Petráková (German His­tor­i­cal In­sti­tute in Warsaw): “Re­gions­bil­dung und Repräsen­ta­tion­sstrate­gien in den schle­sis­chen Herzogtümern des oberen Oderge­bi­ets im 15. und 16. Jahrhun­dert / Re­gional for­ma­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion strate­gies in the Sile­sian duchies of the upper Oder region in the 15th and 16th centuries]”

• Ag­nieszka Gąsior (Sile­sian Muzeum of Görlitz): “Radical change. Sile­sian Artists between Memory and New Be­gin­nings – Pre­sen­ta­tion of an ex­hi­bi­tion project”

10:00-10:30 coffee break

• 10:30-11:45 PANEL 3a: “Between reap­praisal and re­pres­sion – artists in the face of the past war”

• Mod­er­a­tion: Alek­san­dra Lipińska

• Eckart Gillen (Fil­mu­ni­ver­sität Konrad Wolf, Pots­dam-Ba­bels­berg): „Mein Thema war der Krieg”. Der Maler Bernard Heisig und sein künst­lerische Sprache für den trau­ma­tis­chen Er­fahrun­gen im Zweiten Weltkrieg / „My subject was the war”. Painter Bernard Heisig and his artis­tic lan­guage for the trau­matic ex­pe­ri­ences of the Second World War]”

• Mag­dalena Kędzier­ska (Sile­sian Museum in Ka­tow­ice): “Actions will set you free. Con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of freedom, re­spon­si­bil­ity and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in Józef Szajna’s un­pub­lished per­sonal writ­ings and pro­gram­matic texts”

• Irena Kos­sowska (Nico­laus Coper­ni­cus Uni­ver­sity in Toruń; Polish In­sti­tute of World Art Studies in Warsaw): “Zygmunt Turkiewicz and Józef Czapski: Dif­fer­ent Idioms of Coping with War Trauma”

11:45-12:15 discussion

12:15-13:15 break

• 13:15-14:05 PANEL 3b: “Between reap­praisal and re­pres­sion – artists in the face of the past war”

• Mod­er­a­tion: Alek­san­dra Lipińska

• Adam Pa­cholak (Na­tional Museum in Wrocław, Uni­ver­sity of Wrocław): “Con­ti­nu­ity or a new world - the first postwar years of Warsaw and Wrocław in photography”

• Emese Pal (Babeș–Bolyai Uni­ver­sity, Cluj-Napoca): “Mural Works in Romania De­pict­ing “Lib­er­a­tion” (1950–1993)”

14:05-14:25 discussion

• 14:25-15:15 PANEL 4: “Female artists in the face of war experiences”

• Mod­er­a­tion: Dietmar Popp

• Mag­dalena Kunińska (Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­sity): “The sculp­ture even very nice, close to 2 meters (…) It is as sad and full of melan­choly as I am.” Alina Sza­poc­znikow and the re­con­struc­tion of Gdańsk”

• Varvara Keidan Shavrova (Royal College of Art, London): “Fem­i­nism and Flight: how do women artists working today respond to global wars and con­flicts by reimag­in­ing flight technologies?”

• 15:15-15:45 discussion

• 16:45-16:30 coffee break

DAY 4 – 12 October 2024 (Saturday)

• 9:00-10:40 PANEL 5: “Sites of memory”

• Mod­er­a­tion: Piotr Korduba

• Małgorzata Popiołek-Roßkamp (Leib­niz-In­sti­tut für Raum­be­zo­gene Sozial­forschung, Erkner): “After the (Cold) War. Strate­gies of civil­ian re-use of post-mil­i­tary areas and prac­tices of re­mem­brance of Soviet troops in Poland and Germany”

• Giusi Ciotoli (Sapienza, Rome): “Hi­roshima post 1945. Tange, Noguchi and the A-bomb”

• Urszula Prokop (Warsaw Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy): “Every­day memory. The works of Samuel Bickels and Naomi Jud­kowski in the Lohamei HaGeta’ot kibbutz”

• Tomasz Torbus (Uni­ver­sity of Gdańsk): “Czy tylko glo­ry­fikacja poległych bohaterów? – gal­i­cyjskie cmen­tarze wojenne po 1915 roku / Just a glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of fallen heroes? War ceme­ter­ies in Galicia after 1915]”

• 10:40-11:20 discussion

• 11:20-11:50 coffee break
• 11:50-12:20 closing of the con­fer­ence, final remarks

Sci­en­tific Committee:

• Michał Duda (Wroclaw)
• Agata Gabiś (Wroclaw)
• Alek­san­dra Lipińska (Cologne)
• Ag­nieszka Patała (Wroclaw)
• Ag­nieszka Sei­del-Grzesińska (Wroclaw)
• Beate Störtkuhl (Oldenburg)
• Ag­nieszka Tomaszewicz (Wroclaw)
• Jadwiga Urbanik (Wroclaw)
• Marcin Wisłocki (Wroclaw)

Or­gan­iser: Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw

Part­ners: Uni­ver­sity of Wroclaw, Wroclaw Uni­ver­sity of Science and Technology, Uni­ver­sität zu Köln

The con­fer­ence is co­funded byFoun­da­tion of Pol­ish-Ger­man Cooperation.