Avant-Garde and War

 Cracow, Jagiellonian University , 17-19 September 2024

The term avant-garde – ‘advance guard’ or ‘vanguard’ – suggests military language and contexts related to violence, destruction, demolition, rebellion, and revolution. Descriptions of the historical avant-gardes as artistic and ideological formations accordingly often emphasize the turn against tradition, the rebellion against stagnant categories, the destructive potential of certain ideas, and the constant attempts to violently transgress boundaries in art. The substrate of the avant-gardes, also in the later 20th century and in our own, is conflict and destruction one of the guiding principles of avant-garde and modernist thought and practice being to build and create on the ruins of the past. War indeed is rarely absent from the avant-garde community of experience – whether as world wars, civil wars, terror, revolutions, totalitarianism, occupation, liberation struggles – so much so that some scholars see these events, especially the destructive power of the war machine, as the ‘tragic defeat of modernity’. However, our models of avant-garde and modernist practices across all of the arts up until the present day should not be limited to the self-image of the avant-gardes as revolutionaries, rebels and demolitionists.  Wars have also ushered in new beginnings, offering opportunities for avant-gardes to further their missions, or causing them to re-appraise and adapt to changed circumstances.

 

How, then, do the avant-gardes inhabit war – and how does war inhabit the avant-gardes?

 

The organizers invite innovative and freshly-researched proposals for creative and critical presentations – in all areas of avant-garde and modernist practice across all of the arts – which frame and re-frame our thinking about avant-gardism/modernism and war. Suggested topics include:

 

war as a catalyst for the avant-garde
avant-gardes as a catalyst for conflict
avant-gardes at war
avant-garde as a militaristic cultural formation
the relation of artistic and social programs in times of war
antiwar avant-gardes
wartime fate of avant-garde artists
military service and the home front
national culture in times of civil war
art across the frontline: the internationalism of art in times of division
political and social instrumentalization of the arts during wartime
avant-gardes and propaganda
responses to the brutality of war
the trauma of violence, rape, displacement and loss in avant-garde practice
avant-gardes and the challenge of Shoah
modernist identities and bodies in times of war
feminist writers and artists on war
industrial war
the music of war
avant-garde spaces in wartime
living with/resisting occupation
the end of war and the ‘rappel à l’ordre’
defeat as a topic, problem and challenge
avant-gardes and reconstruction in postwar societies
avant-gardes in the nuclear age and during the Cold War
avant-gardes in the struggle for decolonization
war and revolution in the avant-garde imaginary
anticipations of peace and war in avant-garde and modernist writing