Launch of the book Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects by Suzana Milevska
March 7th, 2024 from 5 – 6:30 pm
Gallery MC and Kontrapunkt are pleased to invite you to the launch of the book Participatory: Art A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects published by ZG Kontrapunkt – Skopje in the edition Punctum. The launch will comprise an introduction by Iskra Geshoska, cultural theorist and publisher, and a conversation between the book’s author Suzana Milevska, a visual culture theorist and curator from Skopje, North Macedonia, and Zhivka Valiavicharska, Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, New York that will be followed up with a response by Tijana Ana Spasovska, an art historian. Artan Sadiku, a cultural and political theorist will moderate the entire event that will conclude with an open Q & A session.
Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects gathers a selection of fifteen essays about participatory art with a focus on art and artists in South-Eastern and Central Europe. Milevska wrote and published these texts in English in different publications over a period of more than fifteen years. For the first time, the essays are published together in this collection starting with the first essay written on this topic back in 2006. Parallel with the English edition the book was published in Macedonian. All essays were translated into Macedonian and edited by Ana Dimishkovska, Dean of the Institute of Philosophy and professor of logic and philosophy, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje.
Suzana Milevska is a theorist and curator of visual art and culture. Her theoretical and curatorial interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power regimes of representation, gender difference in visual culture, and feminist, participatory, and collaborative art practices. Milevska was a Principal Investigator of the Horizon 2020 project TRACES, at Polytechnic University Milan, and in 2019 she curated its concluding exhibition Contentious Objects/Ashamed Subjects. In 2013 she was appointed the first Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna (2013 – 2015). Milevska holds a Ph.D. in visual cultures from Goldsmiths College University of London. In 2004 she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at Library of Congress in Washington D.C. She curated numerous international exhibitions and initiated the project Call the Witness–Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2010-2011). Her texts have been translated into Bulgarian, Croatian, English, French, Hungarian, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, etc. Her authored and edited books amongst others include Gender Difference in the Balkans, 2010, The Renaming Machine: The Book, 2010, and On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency, SternbergPress, 2016. In 2012 she won the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory.
This book is published within the project Peripheral Visions – towards a trans(l)national publishing culture, which strives to develop international exchange between small cultural and linguistic contexts in the Euro Semi-peripheries, supporting each other through co-production, co-creation, knowledge transfer and resource sharing. Through multilingual publishing, transdisciplinary cultural production, alternative distribution, exchange of knowledge, digital content, open-source digital technologies, and new game formats, the project creates an international space for creation and experimentation in the publishing process. Peripheral Visions is a joint project of Kulturtreger, Maska Ljubljana, eipcp – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, kuda.org, Kontrapunkt and Multimedia Institute, and associated partners Kulturföreningen Glänta and EUROZINE.
The publication is financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia and the Creative Europe Program of the European Commission. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
