Introduction to Issue #9

Anna Zilahi, Oct, 2020Oct, 2020

Back in 2017, increasingly worryingly, a most pressing theme was completely missing from the literary and art discourse in Budapest. There was very limited reflection upon the challenges of climate change or the much debated notion of the Anthropocene, and even if there were artists […]

The World as Contingent Space

Anna Zilahi, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader Modern thought does not bear the unpredictability of nature. Throughout the history of philosophy, many thinkers have warned that we should handle the factuality of our knowledge with reservations, but contemporary thought is determined by the common beliefs rooted […]

The Politics of Susceptibility

Héla Hecker, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader When we speak about climate change and its more and more obvious presence in our lives, we also criticize our relationship to the Earth in two respects. Firstly, humans have exploited nature. Secondly, humans thought this kind of exploitation […]

Climate Change, COVID-19, and the Space Cabin: A Politics of Care in the Shadow of Space Colonization

Réka Patrícia Gál, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader Space exploration is often heralded as the greatest scientific and technological achievement of humankind. Since inhabiting the International Space Station in late 2000, astronauts on board have been working, sleeping, eating, and living in microgravity, 400 km above the […]

Between Two Giants: Materialism and the Social Imaginary in the Energy (Transitions) of Hungary

John Szabo, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader Power lines, reactors and radioactive waste repositories, generators, furnaces, and photoelectric cells: citizens may think that they have little to do with these infrastructures but they have defined social relations for decades. Energy systems play a prominent role in […]

Beyond the Postcard: an Ecocritical Inquiry on Images of Nature

Rita Süveges, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader Contemplations of nature continue to be dominated by “factfulness-organizing” Western notions of modernity – in other words, scientificity, infinite development and capitalism’s unrelenting urge to grow. As nature takes form in the Enlightenment’s worldview and becomes the culturally passive […]

The Long March through Social Imagination

Márk Losoncz, Oct, 2020Nov, 2021

xtro realm / Climate Imaginary Reader Social imagination appears to be suspicious – engagement with it may be easily questioned, as if it naively suggests that the social being of humans can be significantly determined by arbitrary association and the chaotic connection and disconnection of […]

Preface

Dóra Hegyi – Eszter Szakács, Aug, 2020Sep, 2020

This thematic Mezosfera issue examines the shifting paradigms of regional art history writing, globally. Which Past the Present Stands On? studies how, for what reasons, and with what ramifications the histories of art are rewritten, again and again, along various concepts and from different perspectives […]

Constructing the Heritage: Patriotic Field Trips and National Style in Romanian Nineteenth-Century Architecture

Ada Hajdu, Aug, 2020Aug, 2020

This study[1] discusses the role of field trips in shaping the architectural heritage at the end of the nineteenth century, taking primarily into account the case of Romania, within the broader local context. Throughout the nineteenth century, architects across Europe focused upon inventing national styles […]

The Obscure Object of Desire

Edit András, Aug, 2020Aug, 2020

Is there any place for Eastern Europe on the Map of World Art or Global Art (History)? Dedicated to the memory of Romanian art historian Ada Hajdu a committed advocate of regional art history writing. Naming matters The name of the region that is located […]

Unified yet one? A Continued Plea for Regionalist Art History in Southeast Asia

Vera Mey, Aug, 2020Aug, 2020

Introduction Angkor, the famed 12th century archaeological site in Siem Reap, Cambodia, attracts around 2.5 million visitors a year. Its most famous attraction is the ancient temple complex, Angkor Wat, which has been imaged multiply: on the country’s flag, on postcards and through replicas, including […]

and this is the object that I found

Shuruq Harb, Aug, 2020Aug, 2020

Like many others in Jericho, Montasir was born a farmer by lineage, but eventually settled on the profession of “taxi driver.” He was not fortunate enough to be from a family of landowners. Instead, he was one of generations of farmers mitigating their lives in […]

First as Yugoslav Revolution, then as Post-Yugoslav Art: History and A(na)estheticization around 1968 and Now

Ivana Bago, Aug, 2020Nov, 2020

Contributing editor: Jelena Vesić [1] 1. Post- If postmodernity was, as Fredric Jameson argued, characterized by a global spatialization and flattening out of time,[2] the past decade would have marked a shift towards what could be called a deep temporalization of the globe. Even beyond […]

The Past and Present of Queer Art in India through Bhupen Khakhar’s Paintings

Mayookh Barua, Aug, 2020Jan, 2022

In June 2019, Business Review put up the headliner “Bhupen Khakhar sets new record as painting fetches over 22 cr at Sotheby’s sale.”[1]This painting here refers to Khakhar’s 1982 oil on canvas titled Two Men in Benares.[2] The painting has broken records as being one […]

Past Contemporary: The Politics of Memory in Social Museums and Public Spaces

Dóra Hegyi – Eszter Szakács, Nov, 2019Dec, 2019

An Introduction to Issue #7 The point of departure for Mezosfera’s thematic issue is the 30th anniversary of the 1989 regime change in Hungary and Eastern Europe. While it was already clear in Hungary in the mid-2000s that what was celebrated in the 1990s as […]

The Offended Hungary. The House of Terror as a Demonstration of Objects, Memorial, and Political Rite (2002)*

Zsofia Frazon-Zsolt K.Horvath, Nov, 2019Nov, 2019

Foreword to the 2019 Republication of “The Offended Hungary” This essay was originally published in 2002 in Hungarian about the House of Terror in Budapest, which was established by the (first) right-wing government of Viktor Orbán (1998–2002). The set objective of the House of Terror […]

Performing Future Affiliations in Argentine Spaces of Memory[1]

Ceclilia Sosa - Philippa Page, Nov, 2019Feb, 2020

Introduction In the aftermath of devastating military dictatorships, one of the most substantial ways in which Latin America’s Southern Cone has worked to cultivate a dynamic and politically significant memory of its traumatic recent past is by transforming former sites of repression and political terror […]

Activist Museology. The Museum of Free Derry

Sara Greavu, Nov, 2019Dec, 2019

The Museum of Free Derry (MoFD) is one of a number of projects in the north of Ireland, including interpretive centers, historical museums, and political tours,[1] that attempt to articulate an alternative, counter-hegemonic history of the conflict in Ireland. Opened in 2007, the museum is […]