Ukryta dekada. Polska sztuka wideo 1985-1995 / The Hidden Decade: Polish Video Art 1985-1995, eds. Piotr Krajewski, Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska, WRO Art Center, Wroclaw 2010, 336 p.

Given the contributions of feminism or New Historicism, the statement that there is no such thing as complete and cohesive ‘”great narrative” appears to be a cliché. When writing a history, especially the first historical outline of an art field, one will inevitably get involved in the politics of inclusion and exclusion (the canon), and one will have to answer questions such as: who is speaking? and from where? Such questions evidently beset the authors of The Hidden Decade, a collection of eight texts on Polish video art spanning from the mid-1980s--when video became more accessible (replacing 16 mm films) to its rising popularization and commercialization after 1995. The editors call this decade “hidden” both because of the widespread unfamiliarity with that period, and because of its reputation as an “alternative” art form).

“Video,” writes the editor of the volume, Edit András, “was pretty much the medium of transition (…) it was the first liberal media of the period (…) the strand of visual arts that through its inherent characteristic, kept and reflected recent history to the utmost.” (p. 226). Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009, Edit András (ed.), Budapest: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art / ACAX, 2009)  András’s volume Transitland.

James Westcott, an art critic and former assistant to Marina Abramović, released his first book, When Marina Abramović Dies, earlier this year. Subtitled, A Biography, Westcott draws heavily on interviews with the Serbian performance artist and her extensive archives to pen a biography of Abramović, from her childhood to her sixties.  The publisher of the book, the MIT press, a prominent publisher of modernist, art-historical literature, very carefully qualified Westcott’s project by labeling it a biography rather than a monograph.  Interestingly, some of the strongest and weakest areas of the book originate with this distinction and Westcott’s status as a non-academic.