Workshop: Spaces of late socialism

University of Exeter, Monday 25 March 2013‌

Overview

This workshop considered the different ways in which social groups, activists, professionals, and socialist regimes in seven east-central European countries conceptualised social space and its relationship to political conformity or opposition in the post-Stalinist period between the 1960s and 1989. Speakers considered issues such as the relationship between architecture and opposition, clashes between regimes and societies' conceptions of how socialist spaces could be used, the emergence of political, sexual and cultural 'undergrounds', the importance of the Communist Youth as a space of toleration and experimentation, and the post-Communist mythologies of space and their relationship to resistance.

Timetable

11.30 am-11.45 am

Introductory Remarks 

11.45 am-1.15 pm

• Josie McLellan (Bristol), To scale? Gay and lesbian spaces in East Berlin, 1968-1989
• James Mark (Exeter), Where to be political? The Challenge of Revolution in Hungary 1965-75

1.15 - 2 pm

Lunch

2 - 3 pm

David Crowley (Royal College of Art) , Architecture at the Limits of Critique in Late Socialism in Eastern Europe

3 - 5.15 pm

• Agata Drelova (Exeter), Re-producing the 'Underground' in post-Communist Catholic Memory
• Anna Kan (Bristol), How Leningrad became a city of rock
• Ljubica Spaskovska (Exeter), 'Pockets of freedom': subversive youth institutions and narratives of freedom in late socialism

5.15 - 5.45 pm

Closing discussion