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David Crowley’s talk will explore the ways in which cultural opposition found alternative platforms for the dissemination of unlicensed ideas and cultural practices in Eastern Europe under communist rule. Seemingly marginal spaces – like apartments, parks, student clubs, abandoned chapels and active churches – were employed by non-conformist and oppositional artists and theatre groups as places in which to produce and disseminate culture which escaped state censorship and control. Without the resources of the state, these exhibitions and performances required considerable improvisation.
The activity of consuming alternative media forms – such as watching an unlicensed performance or visiting an exhibition in a private apartment – involved personal risk for participants too (many of the most vivid reports of these events are to be found in the secret police files). Here, the consumption of culture was, itself, a productive act in the sense that these spaces were central to the formation of what has sometimes been called the Second Public Sphere.