1918 European Dreams of Modernity: Building New States and Cities
Categories: Conference
Date: 16/11/2018 to 17/11/2018
Time: 0 h 00
Location: Center for Fine Arts - BOZAR
Links: iCal - Google Calendar
In the history of Europe, 1918 is primarily associated with the end of the First World War. But in Central and Eastern Europe 1918 also meant the rapid disintegration of the Russian, Habsburg, German and Ottoman empires and the birth of nine new states (Austria, Hungary, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland), wishing to build modern societies.
One hundred years on, BOZAR is revisiting this largely unknown page of European history. We examine 1918, not just as an important date in national calendars, but also as a powerful symbol of the explosion of creativity and of the social, artistic and political aspirations of many people who wanted to build a better future. Today remembering 1918 means recollecting and critically engaging with the many visions of modernity that produced, not only the most tragic twists in European history, but which simultaneously continue to inspire a better vision of Europe’s future.
The two-day international conference aims to revisit the recent scholarship and question how the history of these different cities could be written today beyond the nation-state narratives or beyond the celebration of avant-garde experimentation. Neither nationalisms, nor modernisms were unique driving forces of development of these diverse yet interconnected places.
What are other less known forces that reshaped the interwar cities across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe? What is the role of the imperial legacies in different cases? What is the role of new technologies, materials and infrastructures? How the immaterial practices inherited from the past and the intervention of new objects in the everyday life helped to forge new national versions of modernity?
With a keynote lecture by Martin Kohlrausch (KU Leuven)
