Crisis

Notions of crisis have long charged the study of the European avant-garde and modernism. Throughout their history, avant-gardists and modernists have faced crises, be they economic or political, scientific or technological, aesthetic or philosophical, collective or individual, local or global, short or perennial. Modernists and avant-gardists have in turn continually stood accused of instigating crises, whether artistic or cultural, sensorial or conceptual, incidental or intentional, far-reaching or negligible, representational or other. The very concepts of ‘avant-garde’ and ‘modernism’ are time and again subject—or subjected—to conceptual crises, leaving modernism and avant-garde studies as a field on the perpetual brink of a self-effacing theoretical crisis. The 7th biennial conference of the EAM intends to tackle the ways in which the avant-garde and modernism in Europe relate to crisi/es.