Publications - CEC ArtsLink

PUBLICATIONS and multiples

A Miracle or Misunderstanding

Socially Engaged Practices in the Art Prospect Network Countries: Field Reports from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan

“Socially engaged art in the former Soviet countries is either a miracle or a misunderstanding, for there are too many reasons why it should not exist.” (Viktor Misiano)

In this unique resource, artists, thinkers, and practitioners share their experience, knowledge, and research about social practice art in 11 countries, including its history, current practices, impact, perception, and documentation.

This study grew out of CEC ArtsLink’s commitment to support international cultural mobility and new models to creatively address socio-political concerns, transforming urban environments, and engaging local communities. It serves to connect the broader international arts community to the post-Soviet region and advocate for the importance of transnational cultural exchange.

We invite readers to engage with this publication, to post their impressions, to share their experiences in the region, and to ask questions. Please download the publication to enable all links.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

Three Poems

By Liwaa Yazji
Translated from the Arabic by Chip Rossetti and Samantha Kostmayer Soulaiman. Edited by Fritzie Brown and Frank Hetschker.
In Arabic and English

Limited edition © 2016
Paperback, unique photograph on cover
60 pp, 4.25 x 7 inches
Price: $15 (tax included, shipping additional)

CEC ArtsLink is delighted to offer this slim volume of poems written in 2015 by the Syrian playwright, filmmaker and poet Liwaa Yazji. Born in 1977, Yazji is among the 9.5 million Syrians who are displaced either within their own country or who are faced with making something called “home” abroad. In a very personal poem, “The Tunnel”, we enter her fragile inner world. In “The Fish; My Other Hand” we hear a more mordant voice – a writer on a personal precipice, filled with a dread of expected commitment; the reader cheers her fierce determination and independence in throwing in with Gypsies, artists and outcasts. Yet in “Soothsayers”, the poet whispers anxiously from the margins, both inflicted by history and self-imposed.

Yazji’s was an immeasurably important voice among the 2015 cohort of international ArtsLink Fellows. NYC’s Poets House welcomed her as an artist in residence and commissioned the translation of these poems. CEC ArtsLink, in collaboration with the Segal Center, is proud to co-publish this collection.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

Participatory Culture: Museum as a Forum for Dialogue and Collaboration

Compiled and edited by Daria Agapova, St. Petersburg, Russia
Published by CEC ArtsLink © 2015

The publication is a part of a one-year US–Russia Participatory Museum Exchange project implemented by CEC ArtsLink in partnership with the St. Petersburg Centre for Museum Development and supported by the US–Russia Peer-to‑Peer Dialogue Program of the US Embassy in Moscow.

For more info, please email us at skatz(at)cecartslink(dot)org

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1 - 50: CEC ArtsLink's 50 years of opening doors and changing perspectives

Edited by Fritzie Brown and Zhenia Stadnik with assistance from Tamalyn Miller, Matthew Schantz, and Megan Snowe
Essays by Ljiljana Grubisic, Michael Brainerd, and Corina Suteu, and an excerpt from Richard Lasser’s screenplay My Soviet Summer

Limited edition © 2012
Design by Michael Bierman
50 pp, 6 x 8.5 inches
Free download

CEC ArtsLink celebrates its 50th anniversary with the publication comprising the timelines of CEC and the world events, essays, images, and an excerpt from a screenplay. An excellent overview of the Cold War, it adds a strikingly human dimension to the era. “By putting thousands of Americans in the Soviet Union, and thousands of Soviets in America, it’ll make nuclear war into… a mutual suicide pact!” These were the words of CEC’s founder S. Dan James back in the sixties. The evolution of the Hostages for Peace thourgh Citizen Exchange Corps, Citizen Exchange Council, and CEC International Partners to CEC ArtsLink stands as a commentary on the geopolitical transformations of the past 50 years and is a proof of a growing significance of arts and culture in affecting them.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

house turned inside out

By Martin Papcun

With essays by Amei Wallach, Fritzie Brown and Theresa Schwarz

Limited edition © 2012
Sleeve jacket, unique binding
84 pp, 8.25 x 6.25 inches
Sold out

House Turned Inside Out intrigues the reader from page one which is numbered 37. Careful viewing of this photo book reveals a fascinating and arduous process of the actual turning inside out of an abandoned private home in Cleveland, Ohio. Czech artist Martin Papcun conceived of this project during his ArtsLink Residency at SPACES in Cleveland in the fall of 2008.

Even at the peak of the national housing crisis Cleveland stood out for the magnitude of its housing collapse and the resulting misery. House Turned Inside Out is a project deeply rooted in the community. It reflects on spaces we inhabit, boundaries, scarcity and wealth and much more. This inside out book with a secret cover hidden in the middle is a record of an amazing artistic transformation.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

the middles

By Marisa Jahn

This small volume is beautifully written and exquisitely drawn by the visual artist Marisa Jahn during a foray to Khojand in Tajikistan on CEC ArtsLink’s project Global Art Lab. The Middles is a collection of “what if?” tales about the ancient near-extinct ethnic group in modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Sogd. Once a thriving culture, the Sogd number only 13,000 today and most of them do not know the written form of their language. In 1907 archeologist Aurel Stein unearthed in China a postal bag with undelivered letters written in Sogd in the year 313 CE. The Middles is Ms. Jahn’s lyrical musings on what might have been if those epistles were delivered.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

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flipside

The catalogue of an exhibition of work by US and international artists
Artists Space, 38 Greene Street, New York City
November 2004 – January 2005

FLIPSIDE investigated post-utopian artistic practice between the era of communism and the integration of many Central European countries into the European Union. Could one utopia be simply a flipside of the other? Critical to investigating this question and its implications for the future is the examination of art practice resulting from the generative force of the cultural exchange program ArtsLink, created in 1992, which itself can be viewed as a utopian construct.

This was a rare opportunity to see work by 34 artists from across Central Europe and the United States side by side. It provided information with which to investigate critical questions about international influence, cooperation and exchange in burgeoning cultural environments that are undergoing significant political and economic change.

For more info, please email us at info(at)cecartslink(dot)org

"my america" t-shirt

This t-shirt was created by New York artist Daniel Gallegos for the opening happening of Моя Америка (My America). This installation of video, drawings and food-related performance art took place at Museum of the Moving Image in NYC on May 24-June 7, 2012. The t-shirts feature Daniel’s drawing of a vintage Soviet motorcycle Izh Planeta from the collection of Gary Shikman, a car mechanic in NYC. Моя Америка (My America) is the inaugural collaboration between Russian filmmaker Mikhail Zheleznikov and Daniel Gallegos under the auspices of One Big City, a series of collaborative residencies and events produced by CEC ArtsLink to engage New York City’s diaspora communities through international arts partnerships.

Image: Mikhail Zheleznikov (left) and Daniel Gallegos. Photo by Voice of America.