«We were creating culture; it was the authorities who were creating counterculture.». Tamás St. Auby, one of the most radical Hungarian artists of the Eastern European neo-avant-garde, expressed this sentiment in his 2013 commentary on the 1966 performance Il pasto – In memoriam Batu Khan, an orientation that could be extended to much of the artistic production featured in the exhibition Poetry and Performance. The Eastern European Perspective, curated by Tomáš Glanc and Sabine Hänsgen, with Diego Giannettoni and Valentina Parisi as co-curators, on display at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan from 5 to 17 December 2025.
Orbitā, “Fm slow show”, 2012, color, sound, 04:57 min., video still, courtesy: Orbitā
This distinctly anti-historical vocation of artistic practice intertwines very different experiences that animated the varied landscape of Eastern Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and which the exhibition summarises, structured around the relationship between performance art and poetic expression. The video testimonials of the various experiences, twenty-five different photos are on display, alternate on six screens, with a few minutes’ pause between each one; the viewer is thus led from one landing to another, encouraged to take an active part in the exhibition and compose their own special mosaic of impressions and perspectives. It is a process that requires a certain degree of attention, but one that is highly rewarding once you fully embrace the “underground rave” atmosphere typical of the neo-avant-garde adventure, which the exhibition faithfully reflects.
Katalin Ladik, “Poemim”, 1980, color, sound, 10:41 min., video still, courtesy: Katalin Ladik, abc Gallery, Budapest
Thus, as if entering an underground, clandestine geography finally brought to light, visitors learn about a series of experimental investigations that still speak to them today with the anarchic spirit of an impossible revolution, and therefore one that is still alive: against authority, against History. Andrej Monastyrskij, a seminal Russian artist and poet, is brought to the stage in Conversation with the Lamp (1985), a poetry reading that revives the practice of Russian-language writers such as Puškin, Mandel’štam and Chlebnikov, who read their works to small audiences in order to circumvent censorship. Monastyrsky joins these giants, now recognised even by institutions, with readings by friends from the Moscow scene of his own generation, levelling the literary plane to that of a new subversive canon
Dezider Tóth (Monogramist T.D.), “A book in its prenatal state”, 1982, photography, b&w, courtesy: Dezider Tóth
The tribute to poetry written in Russia since the early 20th century, to its immense popularity and the thankless fate of its authors, also underpins Roman Osmikin’s performance Reasons why some poets left us immediately and why other poets have no intention of leaving (2013), a sort of cynical lament that questions the possible outcomes of contemporary poetry. Further variations on the relationship between words and commitment are explored in Live long, die young (2012), created by poet and activist Kirill Medvedev, also Russian, which focuses on the “deconstruction” of Medvedev’s poem of the same name in the form of graffiti. The act, in response to the Artprospekt festival organised by the St Petersburg authorities, was intended to reaffirm the political significance of poetry by making publicly readable a poem with a still controversial tone, centred on a failed interview with director Claude Lanzmann about the “Holocaust Industry” and the justification it aroused towards Israel. Medvedev aligns himself with radical left-wing demands.
Ewa Partum, “Active poetry”, 1971-1973, b&w, silent, 05:53 min., still from video, courtesy: Ewa Partum
An artist like Tomislav Gotovac, from Zagreb, reports a cynical approach, sadly more in line with current times. In works like Point blank. War art (1992), the artist’s historical pessimism ultimately reaches the point of a spasm of rejection of socialist utopias: I’M FULL OF communists and Serbs, the artist writes on a public wall; only to then, a few months later, definitively recognize himself in the newborn Croatian nation through other graffiti, created in the controlled space of a gallery. Finally, Katalin Ladik’s deeply introspective feminist research (Poemim, 1981), a deforming reinterpretation of the female body that arrives in the present in all its power, and the eclectic improvisations of the Orbitā collective (FM Slow Show, 2012), which enhanced the exhibition opening with a live performance.
Pavel Arsen’ev, “Poem on Commodity Fetishism”, 2009, color, sound, 4:07 min., video still, courtesy: Pavel Arsenev / Laboratory of Poetic Activism
The invitation, therefore, is to experience first–hand an exhibition of rare depth, which has the added merit of bringing non–conformist and disinterested experiences back to the centre of the discourse, which can serve as a timely example today.
Info:
AA.VV. Poetry & performance – The Eastern European Perspective
Audiovisual and photographic archive of poetry and performance from Eastern Europe
Exhibition curated by Sabine Hänsgen and Tomáš Glanc
with the co-curation of Diego Giannettoni and Valentina Parisi
5 – 17/12/2025
DiDStudio – Fabbrica del Vapore
Via Procaccini, 4 – Milano
www.fabbricadelvapore.org
Born in Venice in 1998, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan where he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2023 he published his first essay for the Calibano series by Prospero Editore: “Tradizione e Trasgressione. Note dall’India per un’arte indipendente”. In 2024 he won the Europa in Versi Giovani prize, which was followed by the publication in 2025 of his anthology “sillabario del terribile incanto” by Quaderni del Bardo Editore. He is currently attending the two-year course in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at Naba in Milan.
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