State-Independent Art Institutions in Unsteady States: Con/Divergences of Postsocialist and Postcolonial Contexts

State-Independent Art Institutions in Unsteady States: Con/Divergences of Postsocialist and Postcolonial Contexts

postsocialism

postcolonialism

decoloniality

state-independence

art

creative institutionalism

grassroots organizing

funding

This essay looks at an ethnographical study of a grassroots, state-independent art initiative in postsocialist Hungary together with some aspects of the anthropological analyses of a few independent art initiatives in the postcolonial contexts of Tanzania and Senegal. By drawing comparisons between state-independent art institutions in postsocialist and postcolonial regions, where similar creative institutional experiments are at play, I will show how bottom-up art institutions in these two regions can and cannot be considered to be sharing corresponding strategies. This comparative, ethnography-based study between state-independent art institutions allows for a more critical understanding of the intersections of the postsocialist and the postcolonial conditions. My argument is based less on applying a specific theory (such as “Post-Cold War studies” or “decolonial aesthesis”) to both contexts but rather, as I will discuss, on explicating emerging practices as a result of unsteady states.

Szakács, Eszter

Artha Journal of Social Sciences; Vol. 20 No. 2 (2021): Artha Journal of Social Sciences; 37 - 56

0000-0000

0975-329X

Centre for Publications, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore

2021-12-03

Copyright (c) 2021 Artha Journal of Social Sciences

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

application/pdf

eng

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Peer-reviewed Article

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