»Diadochic culture? - In the now independent parts of the former power blocs, a new cultural self-awareness has crystallised, largely unnoticed by the art industry, which is too busy rushing from one art fair to another. This is particularly the case in geographical spheres that were long under the influence of the former Soviet Union. Here, a new kind of cultural sensibility has developed that can no longer be adequately described within the categories of the post-colonial. The first issue of 2004 brings together images and voices from a post-communist, neo-diadochic culture.«
This is the way we tried last autumn to outline the 2004 spring issue. A particular focus was to be the variety and heterogeneity of the art scenes in post-communist countries, without our becoming completely the victims of our own projections. For to assume that there was just one sensibility was no more justified than to assume that the experience of post-communism had a similar, or the same, structure in the scenes under discussion. Rather, the intention was to examine a scattering effect under the aspect of its potential for connection and translation, not least in and with the central European context.
The articles and responses by the authors in this issue have taken a variety of forms: from Suzana Milevska’s theoretically well-founded warning against an overhasty equation of post-communism with post-colonialism to Nebojsa Jovanovic’s polemics against a continued, fairly high-level fetishisation of the East; from Boyan Manchev’s analysis of the discourses of violence and bodies, as they are often applied to »eastern European« contexts, to concrete reports on local scenes, in which the attempt at an institutional treatment of communism (Boris Buden) or the carefree approach to history in everyday Muscovite culture (Konstantin Akinsha) are subjected to critical scrutiny.
In addition, there are detailed analyses of artistic projects within the regimes of bodies and politics that determine them (Haroutioun Simonian, Karen Andreassian), which help to provide insights into the concrete meanings of »neo-diadochic conditions«. Finally, filmmakers like Hamlet Hovsepian and Artavazd Peleshian, who have until now been overlooked by the Western canon, have also been given the place they deserve in this discourse. Another proof that the geography of art is constantly in need of readjustment.