Lifting the Curtain

The exhibition “Lifting The Curtain: Central European Architectural Networks” has arisen from the belief that still very little is known or acknowledged concerning Central Europe’s relationship to the development and spread of modernism.

The reason for this situation is the long period of isolation that these countries experienced during the years of the Iron Curtain. This lack of acknowledgment in turn fuels the nationalistic tone of the discourse regarding modernism that dominates today in post-socialist countries.
For the organisers therefore, this role needs to be pointed out and the exhibition does just this, presenting moments, episodes and players considered fundamental for the architectural culture of Central Europe and organised into different areas: Knowledge Networks, Exiles, Institutes/Agencies, Events, Publicity, Shared Vocabulary.

For us it is an interesting opportunity for discovery. The installation conjures up a landscape, with thematic islands that together form an archipelago and with recurring elements. Many of the leading figures appear simultaneously in different sections underlining the shared climate together with the dense network of relationships and transnational collaborations between Austria, Hungary, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzogovinia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

The project continues with a rediscovery of history and geography, highlighting consecutive phases, protagonists, recurring themes; avant-garde movements, their leading figures; publications and their role; the interdisciplinary convergences between architecture and art in its diverse forms; the value attributed to what is collective and the vision of new man.

Projects are revealed for the Adriatic coast of the former Yugoslavia and for Skopje, almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1963, the debate on the suburbs and on the public. Through a series of stages, the exhibition takes us up to the present and offers itself as the first chapter of a long-term research project conducted by a number of architecture organisations from across Central Europe: the Polish Modern Art Foundation (PMAF) that is also organiser of the event along with WarsawTRACE – Central European Architectural Research Think-tank; CCEA – Centre for Central European Architecture, Prague; KEK – Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, Budapest; ÖGFA – Austrian Association for Architecture, Vienna; Platforma 9,81 – Institute for Research in Architecture, Zagreb/Split.

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Until 23 November 2014
Lifting The Curtain. Central European Architectural Networks
Collateral Event of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition
Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli (Sala Tiziano)
Dorsoduro 919 Venice