RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02903, USA

VIDEO IN PROGRESS

Special Edition: New Video Art from Central Europe

The RISD Museum presents a rotation of 3 programs guest-curated by Viera Levitt, recently relocated to the U.S. from Slovakia, where she was the director of Jan Koniarek Gallery, a contemporary art museum in Trnava. In this series, Levitt introduces contemporary video art produced in Central Europe by a new generation of artists from the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Each program centers on emerging questions seen from the angle specific for this post-communist region.

Tuesday, April 17-Sunday, May 13

New Video Art from Central Europe, Part 1: Art Power

With an eye for Central European artist's marked sense of irony and sarcasm, this program explores contemporary art's social side, its relationship to power and how it can be used or misused by artists. Artists include the Azzoro Group (with artists Oskar Dawicki, Igor Krenz, Wojciech Niedzielko, Lukasz Skapski) of Poland, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova of Slovakia, and Little Warsaw (with artists Andras Galik and Balint Havas) of Hungary.

Tuesday, May 15-Sunday, June 10

New Video Art from Central Europe, Part 2: Global Impact

Are artist from the Central European region dealing with the same issues as Americans? This program underlines the connections between Central Europe and United States, looking at omnipresent globalization and notions of civilization. Artists include Ilona Nemeth (Slovakia), Pavel Mrkus (the Czech Republic), and Juraj Dudas (Slovakia).

Tuesday, June 12-Sunday, July 8

The final installment of this series, featuring artist Pavlina Fichta Cierna (Slovakia), looks closely at the stories of those who live on the margins of society; and forgotten histories from the communist past in Zbynek Baladran’s video-collages using the archive materials (Czech Republic).

Video in Person: Viera Levitt, Curator

May 17, 6:30-7:30 pm

Viera Levitt talks about issues in contemporary art from the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. These countries have had similar upheavals in their recent history and are now confronting a newly emerging capitalism that is creating an interesting cultural clash. How is the contemporary art from this region different from that of Western Europe or the USA? Do artist express their experience or try to forget it in order to become global citizens? Is this concept of "region" still legitimate or important?

Viera Levitt (formerly Viera Jancekova) worked as a curator in one of Slovakia's leading Contemporary Arts Museum, the Jan Koniarek Gallery located in the historic town of Trnava from 1997-2005. She became director of this space in 2002, as the youngest director ever in a public art museum in the Slovak Republic. Since 1996, she has curated or co-curated more than thirty exhibitions in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and the USA. She gave lectures or presentations about contemporary art in Bratislava, Berlin, Rotterdam, Hiroshima, New Delhi, Caracas or Providence, RI.
From January 2006, she has lived in Rhode Island, USA as an independent curator.

This Project is part of the network culture festival Multiplace, organized in the Slovak Republic.

Contacts: Viera Levitt:

RISD Museum, Maya Allison, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art, www.risd.edu/museum.cfm