Past
The Polyphony Quartet is composed of Arab and Jewish musicians from Israel whose work aims to promote cultural exchange and understanding through music. They will perform pieces representing Israel’s diverse communities as well as a composition by Dmitri Shostakovich, whose works transcended the political division of the Cold War.
Join us in celebrating the opening of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain and to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The opening will include a guided tour, reception, and a panel discussion on The Medea Insurrection. Panelists include artists Chelle Barbour, Orshi Drozdik, Christa Jeitner, Gabriele Stötzer, and Sichong Xie. The panel will be moderated by guest curator Susanne Altmann.
What was on TV in the Soviet Bloc? If “propaganda” is your immediate response, Watching Socialism will complicate the picture with excerpts from news programs, sitcoms, cartoons, subversive interventions, and other televised content alongside TV-related magazines, artifacts, toys, and television sets from the Eastern Bloc, showing what it was really like to watch TV on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Look beyond the binary framework of the U.S./Soviet Cold War at the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), which pushed for peaceful coexistence and justice for all the world’s peoples. Nonalignment and Tito in Africa presents photographs from the 1950s through 1970s of state visits to various African nations by Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav leader who was a founding member of NAM and cultivated a reputation for transnational solidarity and hopes for a “third way” beyond U.S.-style capitalism and Soviet-style communism. Yet these carefully staged photographs of meetings of heads of state reveal the still-relevant challenges of both framing and enacting solidarity amid uneven power relations.
How can the arts contribute to a better understanding of our world and our lives? What do they have to say that cannot be expressed by other means? How can art and culture impact political realities in a culture of power politics, and what gives them the moral authority to do so? Featuring artist and writer Farrah Karapetian; artist, theater director, curator, and art journalist Ada Mukhina; architect and thinker Kulapat Yantrasast; and Patrick Scott, artistic and executive director of Jacaranda Music. Moderated by Joes Segal, Chief Curator and Director of Programming at the Wende Museum.
Videograms of a Revolution focuses on the December 1989 Romanian Revolution and reconstructs the five days of events from multiple real-time viewpoints. The film is compiled from over 125 hours of both official state broadcasts and amateur footage, filmed in both the state television studios and the streets of Bucharest. "If at the outbreak of the uprising only one camera dared to record," said Farocki, "hundreds were in operation on the following day."
Screened in conjunction with Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe, on view through October 20, the film offers a further investigation into ideas in the exhibition, and questions the relationship between power, history, and the televised image.
Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia’s political system has evolved from a communist order to a chaotic democracy, and now to an increasingly personalized authoritarian state. Its leader, Vladimir Putin, is determined to get the world’s respect, through military actions and cyber-espionage, if not through diplomacy. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, what kind of political regime has Putin built and how great a threat does he pose to the West and its allies? What is the role of the media in the current political landscape? And what are the main continuities and discontinuities between the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia?
Hanns Eisler settled in the United States in 1938 after fleeing National Socialism. In the late 1940s, he was interrogated by HUAC and blacklisted. Described as “the Karl Marx of music,” Eisler left the United States in 1948, and eventually settled in East Germany, where he composed the national anthem for the GDR. Hollywood Elegies, a program of compositions by Hanns Eisler presented by Long Beach Opera, reflects on one of the most divisive periods of the Cold War.
Step back in time and encounter the zoetrope, one of the first animation devices. Kids will make their own zoetropes and use them to animate images. Participants will also be invited to make collages à la the Russian abstract art movement
Suprematism. It's all inspired by Stas Orlovski's installation Running Man, which will transform the East German Guardhouse in the Wende garden from a symbol of surveillance into a magic lantern where histories collide.
The Wende Museum presents a lecture-performance featuring segments of the feature-length documentary film (currently in post-production) by director Mila Turaljić, in conversation with Robeson Taj Frazier, curatorial consultant for Nonalignment and Tito in Africa.
What was on view on television in socialist Eastern Europe? Which programs attracted the highest viewer ratings? How did socialist television programs differ from – or perhaps resemble – their Western equivalents? And what do they tell us about everyday life on the other side of the Iron Curtain?
Join us for a fascinating journey through socialist-era television with leading experts on socialist television history – Christine Evans (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee), Anikó Imre (USC, Los Angeles), and Sabina Mihelj (Loughborough University, UK). The event will feature clips from a range of entertainment, fictional, and educational programs broadcast in socialist Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.
Author and cultural historian Robeson Taj Frazier will discuss the role that different forms of media played in Yugoslavia's and China's efforts to represent themselves as allies of African independence and liberation movements. For China and Yugoslavia, and their respective leaders, media and representation were key tools in fostering an image of their governments as central agents in advancing a global anticolonial wave that would change the world for the better. Furthermore, such representation aided them in nationalizing and domesticating their own citizenries. In his discussion of this history, Dr. Frazier will incorporate a variety of media and artistic examples to highlight the importance that representation and culture played -- particularly depictions of Africa—in both Yugoslavia's and China's efforts to circulate particular narratives of nonalignment and anticolonial solidarity.
The Wende's August Family Day, presented in conjunction with curatorial consultant Robeson Taj Frazier, will explore the power of images. Dr. Frazier will offer a special talk for kids on how and why images have the power to influence us, which will inspire a poster-making activity in the garden.
Enjoy drinks and light refreshments in the Wende Sculpture Garden, plus a spotlight talk by the Wende Museum's Visitor Engagement Education & Volunteer Lead Henry Laurence.