Highly Curved Loops of Space-Time: Art History in Regional Perspective

Dr. Suzana Milevska, was appointed the first Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In her first public lecture at the Academy she will address the methodological issues related to teaching art history courses that focus on art produced in certain geo-political regions. She argues that although in the period of globalisation it became obvious that the discipline of art history is influenced by other fields and disciplines (e.g. cultural geography, visual anthropology and visual culture studies) that inevitably take into account of different pace of the uneven development of different cultures and regions, the main question still remains how to balance the global, specific and singular art phenomena. The lecture will discuss the interdisciplinary methodology and other socio-political and cultural issues such as the urgency of taking into account feminist and queer research methodology as a relevant starting point for the offered "reversed perspective" in teaching art history. Particular focus will be put on specificity of research methods and teaching art history in the context of art academies.

Dr. Milevska taught various courses on history and theory of visual art, visual culture and gender at the University Ss. Cyril and Methodius and other academic institutions in Skopje. From 2006 to 2008, she established the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research at the Euro-Balkan Institute in Skopje and was its first Director. She was a guest lecturer at various universities and art institutions: Alvar Aalto University-Helsinki, SOAS-London, Oxford University-Oxford, The School of Art Institute - Chicago, Columbia University-New York, Gothenburg University, Vienna Technical University, Academy of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Akademie der Kunst-Berlin, IUAV-Venice, Moderna Museet-Stockholm, TATE Modern, KIASMA-Helsinki, MUMOK-Vienna, CAMK-Japan, etc. In 2004, she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Library of Congress. She holds a PhD in visual culture from Goldsmiths College-London. Her long term interdisciplinary project The Renaming Machine (2008-2010) consisted of a series of exhibitions and conferences (Ljubljana, Skopje, Pristina, Zagreb, Vienna, etc.) and the publication The Renaming Machine . Milevska also published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2010). She worked as a researcher for the projects Gender Check and Call the Witness - Roma Pavilion at the 54 International Art Exhibition -Venice Biennale-Collateral Event, 2011 and curated the exhibitions Call the Witness, BAK, Utrecht,and Roma Protocol at the Austrian Parliament. For her work as curator and theorist of art and visual culture that focuses on research of art in post-socialist and transitional societies, collaborative and participatory art practices, feminist and queer contexts in 2012 she received the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory and the ALICE Award for political curating.

The Endowed Professorship for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories is a co-operation between the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and ERSTE Foundation.