Calvert 22 invites you to join us on Wednesday, 20th July, 6.30pm for the first event in the series:

‘Archiving as Strategy - Conversations around self-historization across the East’.

Please join us for the first event in ‘Archiving as Strategy - Conversations around self-historization across the East’, a two year-long series of events, presentations and meetings at Calvert 22. The series takes as its point of departure a particular commonality which characterised the artistic conditions across the former East over the past three decades. At different points throughout this period communities of artists and intellectuals across the region faced parallel states of precarity which profoundly affected the ability of ‘official’ art institutions to perform the traditional duties of supporting, archiving, historicising and providing a critical framework for local artistic outputs. As a result, artists often stepped into the roles of historians, archivists and curators, taking it upon themselves to document and develop systems of archiving not only their own practice but that of their peers as well. This series aims to connect the histories across our chosen region via an examination of key self-archiving initiatives and to, in turn, map these activities from the particular perspective that Calvert 22 occupies.

The series will take place at regular intervals and each event will focus on one particular self-archiving project. The series is deliberately envisaged as open-ended and the shape and frequency of events will be determined in the first meeting. The events will take the form of screenings, curator or artist presentations and discussions. They will be documented on video or audio and made available online. The collated materials, conversations and documents over the next two years will result in a reader published by Calvert 22.

Wednesday 20th July 2011, 6.30 pm

Archiving As Strategy - Innovative Forms of Archiving in Moscow Conceptualism And Beyond

Curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez in conversation with Calvert 22 Curator Lina Džuverović

Co-director of Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers and independent curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez will be in conversation with Calvert 22 Curator Lina Dzuverovic about the significance of archiving and documentation in the work of Moscow Conceptualists. The recording, documenting and cataloguing of events and actions was an important aspect of the Moscow Conceptual School. Some of the aesthetics of ‘Field Of Action: The Moscow Conceptual School in Context’ are centered around and embrace this aspect of the practice. Petrešin-Bachelez will also present her research into innovative forms of archiving across Eastern Europe and beyond.

Speaker Biography

Born in 1976 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez is an art critic and independent curator. She was recently appointed co-director of the

Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Since 2006, she has worked with Patricia Falguières, Elisabeth Lebovici and Hans Ulrich Obrist on the seminar series “Something You Should Know: artists and producers today” at EHESS, Paris. She was recently associate curator of the exhibition The Promises of the Past, Centre Pompidou, April – July 2010, co-curated by Christine Macel and Joanna Mytkowska, and the guest curator of Paris Photo in 2010, with the focus on Central Europe.

Petrešin has also curated the following exhibitions: Conspire, festival transmediale.08, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2008 / Distorted Fabric, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2007 / Participation: Nuisance or Necessity, Iaspis, Stockholm, 2005 / Our House is a House that Moves, Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana and Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, 2003-2006. She was also co-curator of the project Société Anonyme (Le Plateau, Paris, 2007-2008, with Thomas Boutoux and François Piron), and of the exhibition In the Gorges of the Balkans (curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2003).

Petrešin-Bachelez contributes to many international art magazines (e-flux journal, Springerin, Parkett, Bidoun, Sarai Reader, Framework : Finnish Art Review) and is also part of the editorial board of several magazines such as ARTMargins, Contemporary Central and Eastern European Visual Culture (UC Santa Barbara) and Maska (Ljubljana).