-
co01a-temra-pavlovic.jpg
Susanne Altmann, “Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions, and (Post)Socialist Spaces” keynote lecture, SPUI25, Amsterdam, November 2022. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.
-
co01b-temra-pavlovic.jpg
Susanne Altmann, “Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions, and (Post)Socialist Spaces” keynote lecture, SPUI25, Amsterdam, November 2022. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.
-
co01c-temra-pavlovic.jpg
Susanne Altmann (left) and Megan Hoetger (right). Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions, and (Post)Socialist Spaces, SPUI25, Amsterdam, November 2022. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.
-
co02a-temra-pavlovic.jpg
Left to right: Eszter Szakács, Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Susanne Altmann, Robbie Schweiger. Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions, and (Post)Socialist Spaces, SPUI25, Amsterdam, November 2022. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.
-
co02b-temra-pavlovic.jpg
Left to right: Megan Hoetger, Eszter Szakács, Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Susanne Altmann, Robbie Schweiger. Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions, and (Post)Socialist Spaces, SPUI25, Amsterdam, November 2022. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.
Picking up on a series of conversations spanning Kassel and Amsterdam around the 2022 documenta fifteen, Collectivities Otherwise was presented on the anniversary of the opening of the so-called Iron Curtain (9 November), opening discussion on the meanings of collectivity across different historical contexts and, specifically, in critical relation to media technologies and socialist memory/memories of former East Germany, post-socialist Europe and Central Asia.
The event started with a talk from art historian Susanne Altmann who presented her research-in-process for the When Technology Was Female project, focusing in particular on the entanglements of industrialisation with notions of ‘the collective’ in the early Soviet period. Altmann’s presentation was then followed by a lively discussion between Hoetger, Altmann, Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes (University of Amsterdam), and researchers Eszter Szakács (co-founder, OFF Biennial Budapest), and Robbie Schweiger (Research Collections, Stedelijk Museum) on contested notions of collectivity operative across (post-)socialist spaces then and now.
The Collectivities Otherwise event formed part of the commission When Technology Was Female with Susanne Altmann, which Hoetger led as part of the Edition IX - Bodies and Technologies biennial program (2022-2023) for If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam. It was realized within the frame of “Collectivities and Technology Entangled”(opens in a new tab), a masterclass seminar organized by Hoetger and Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes at the University of Amsterdam. Special thanks to the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture for their support of the seminar program.