As if Communism Never Happened: Culture and Politics in the 1980s and Beyond

A Sneak Peek at the Performing Revolution Festival


Presented by The Harriman Institute at Columbia University in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, and Austrian Cultural Forum


This panel brings together intellectuals to discuss the role of the performing arts in the region in the wake of the revolutions of 1989. What were the driving forces illuminating and directing intellectual and cultural dynamics in Eastern Europe in the 1980s? How have the events of 1989 changed the role of artistic communities in shaping society and politics? How have communist-era legacies influenced current intellectual and cultural practices? These are some of the questions to be tackled during the two-hour interactive panel.

This special pre-festival event is a preview of a larger symposium scheduled for February 26-27, 2010.

Panel participants include: Jeffrey Goldfarb, Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research, author of eight books, including The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times (2006) and The Persistence of Freedom: The Sociological Interpretation of Polish Student Theater (1980); Elzbieta Matynia, Associate Professor and Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research, author of Performative Democracy (2009), and Furnishing Democracy at the end of the Century: Negotiating Transition at the Polish Roundtable & Others (2001); Robert Misik, Austrian journalist and author of eight books, including Politics of Paranoia (2009), two-time winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book, regular contributor to the Austrian periodicals Der Standard, Profil, and Falter, and the Berlin-based Die Tageszeitung; and Professor Nic Ularu, writer, director, Head of Design at the University of South Carolina's Department of Theater and Dance, and one of Romania's most important set designers in the 80s and 90s. The panel will be moderated by Bradley Abrams, who has taught modern Eastern European history in Columbia University's Department of History and served for several years as the Associate Director of the Harriman Institute; he is currently President of the Czechoslovak Studies Association.


[Image: Art work by Ciprian Muresan]