Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)functionality

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)functionality was a workshop at the University of Amsterdam conceived by art historian Susanne Altmann and co-facilitated by Altmann and Hoetger, which invited students to critically reflect on the concept of ‘the collective’, as it was ideologically envisioned through texts, as well as visually represented across films, in the period 1949-1989. Directors and artists under discussion included: David Maryan, Lev Kuleshov with Aleksandr Rodchenko, Kira Muratova, Jürgen Böttcher, Evelyn Richter, and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group (Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt).

Following the workshop, Hoetger created three online ‘seminars’ in conversation with Altmann, which open up visual and textual materials from Altmann’s research process to audiences beyond the classroom setting. Each seminar shares a different facet of her research on women’s artistic practices in the early Soviet Union (c. 1917) and late East Germany (c. 1980s). Each seminar also features an episode of the podcast series Talk Me Through…, which takes listeners inside Altmann’s method of close reading analysis.