Abnormal peripheries by Sam Cermak
This book traces the early history of performance art in the former Czechoslovakia, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s amid the Prague Spring and the subsequent Normalization period marked by censorship, prosecution, and state pressure on artists. Drawing on Czech and Slovak scholarship, as well as archival research, interviews, and fieldwork, it challenges Anglophone misinterpretations of the region’s visual and cultural languages. Although the Soviet Bloc is often associated with repression and limited artistic experimentation, performers in Socialist Czechoslovakia used public, semi-public, and clandestine spaces to create influential works. By examining artists such as Aktual, Alex Mlynárcik, Petr Štembera, Jan Mlcoch,, Temporary Society of Intense Living, and the Crusaders School of Pure Humour with No Jokes, the book shows how performance persisted—and sometimes thrived—through local resistance, artistic networks, and alternative interpretations of socialism.-
After-affects | after-images
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Otherwise
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The 'do-it-yourself' artwork
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Performance Art and Revolution
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Engendering an Avant-Garde
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Colouring the Caribbean
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Art + Archive
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Performance art in Eastern Europe since 1960
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I am Jugoslovenka!
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The Matter of Miracles
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Art, Museums and Touch
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Multiple and One
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Transcultural things and the spectre of Orientalism in early modern Poland-Lithuania
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Counter-realism
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Caribbean eco-aesthetics
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Contemporary art and ecological transformation in East and Southeast Asia
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Marks she made
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Lesbian bones
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Walking with the enemy
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Photographic afterlives
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Taking place
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Feminist substances
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The art of decolonisation
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Above Sea
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Vertiginous Mirrors
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Women, the Arts and Globalization
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Productive Failure
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Bound Together
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Architecture and Ekphrasis
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There is No Soundtrack
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Staging Art and Chineseness
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The Ecological Eye
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The Paradox of Body, Building and Motion in Seventeenth-Century England
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Photography and Documentary Film in the Making of Modern Brazil
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The Synthetic Proposition
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Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution
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The Face of Medicine
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Gender, Artwork and the Global Imperative
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Flesh Cinema
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Horizontal Together
Sam Cermák is a Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at the University of Edinburgh
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781526190697 |
| ISBN 10 | 1526190699 |
| Title | Abnormal peripheries |
| Author | Sam Cermak |
| Series | Rethinking Art's Histories |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Manchester University Press |
| Year published | 2026-03-17 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |