Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COART-INT (Decentralizing Conceptual Art's Internationalism: Latin American artists in Western Europe, 1968-1979)
Période du rapport: 2019-09-01 au 2022-08-31
The project had four key objectives. The first was to: expand our understanding of Latin American and European conceptualist art practices through a transnational context. Second: comprehensively reassess regional art histories – Belgian, Dutch, English and Latin American – of this period, giving a more layered history of the semi-peripheries’ importance in the formation of Conceptual art, with a focus on the way artists acted on local scenes. Third: identify and analyse specific artworks within a framework of Conceptual art’s internationalism and to discuss how these works are intricately defined by and vehicles for artist’s nomadic condition and spatial exploration within it. Finally: map out different models, meanings and discursive constructions of internationalism in the 60s and 70s.
The project resulted in establishing a decentered, transnational network of artists in Belgium, the Netherlands and England, but also Italy and German Democratic Republic, who were connected through their art practices and work. My findings established that their histories of migration were propelled by a multitude of professional and personal factors and that once in Europe they formed a diasporic community of art marginal to but linked to the dominant centers of conceptual and fluxus art. This knowledge is significant in the writing of narratives that foreground transnational mobility and migration, diasporic identity, relational histories across borders through artistic and cultural production.
Since 2021 the preliminary results and emerging developments have been shared on an ongoing basis through presentations, open access and other public facing publications in Europe, Latin America and the United States. These presentations and publications have shared new and critical insights into the histories of migrant artists in Europe and their impact on the transatlantic relations with students, academic scholars, museums professionals and a wider readership. These publications have brought public attention to the existence of significant archival material and its usefulness. In one case, the publication on the artist David Lamelas and his work in Belgium generated public attention that influenced a museum’s conservation of his public artwork. The communication of the project’s results has also highlighted broader issues of migration, diaspora, national borders, transnational identities and methodological problems within art historiography. Finally, the academic events (workshop and the forthcoming international symposium) have drawn audiences outside of academia and facilitated productive conversations across regional borders on the important ties between Europe and Latin America. Further exploitation of the results are foreseen with a publication of the conference proceedings with Amsterdam University Press, the forthcoming publications in the journals: Stedelijk Studies and Modos, as well as the book monograph. These publications will generate more visibility of the project’s results, but also ongoing conversations and hopefully further research on the topic.American and European conceptualist art practices through a transnational context.