1. FORMER WEST
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          1. Research Congresses
          Congress

          1st FORMER WEST Congress

          5–7 November 2009

          Ottone, Utrecht (NL)

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          1. FORMER WEST: INTRODUCTORY NOTES
            Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova
            1989!So what is it that happened in 1989?However naive this question might sound—as one would assume it a commonplace to know that this year, full of both aspiration and anguish, transformed our world forever—the meaning of the year 1989 remains strikingly unacknowledged in most of what we intuitively refer to as the “West.” Germany and (to some extent) Austria might be, for obvious reasons, …
          2. Only Winners? No Answers, Just Questions at the First Day of the 1st FORMER WEST Congress
            Jeroen Boomgaard
            What are we doing here? I mean here in the so-called former West at the first congress on the former West talking about the former West. Where are we when we are in the former West and what has changed since the time when the West was still safely the West because the East was the East and the rest just was the rest? Can we start to get a grip on the changes that have occurred, and on the fact …
          3. Report Day 2
            Nathalie Zonnenberg
            The second day of the 1st FORMER WEST Congress concentrated on “Art, its Discourses and the World at Large (1989/2001/2008),” as the title of the day’s sessions announced. Pretty much about everything one could assume—if it weren’t for the additional years in between parentheses. In the first session with Tom Holert and Pablo Lafuente, the latter concentrated precisely on these years, …
          4. Response, Day 3
            Steven ten Thije
            There are three questions or ideas that somehow form the coordinates which for me need to be grouped together in response to the last day of the 1st Former West Congress. One is the statement from a hostile colleague recounted by Simon Sheikh: “I hate discursive exhibitions.” The second is the point of precision—precision in research and posing the question—briefly referred to by Okwui Enwezor …
    2. This site is the web platform of the FORMER WEST project. The project is organized and coordinated by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst. BAK is responsible for the website content.