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Modern and Contemporary Artist Networks, Art Groups and Art Associations. Organisation and Communication Models of Artist Collaborative Practices in the 20th and 21st Century

HRZZ project

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Project leader

dr. sc. Ljiljana Kolešnik, znanstvena savjetnica
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

Project team

dr. sc. Irena Kraševac, viša znanstvena suradnica
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

dr. sc. Petar Prelog, viši znanstveni suradnik
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

dr. sc. Tamara Bjažić Klarin, znanstvena suradnica
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

dr. sc. Željka Tonković
Odsjek za sociologiju Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zadru

dr. sc. Dalibor Prančević
Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Splitu

dr. sc. Sanja Horvatinčić
Institut za povijest umjetnosti

Artur Šilić, neovisni istraživač

Doctoral students

Nikola Bojić
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

Ivana Meštrov
Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Splitu

Sanja Sekelj
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb

Professional assistants​

Irena Šimić, IAH Documentation and Archival collections

Petra Šlosel, IAH Documentation and Archival Collections

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Project description

Research topics of this project are the organization and communication models embedded into artist networking and artist collaborative practices of the 20th and 21st century, as they are manifested in the Croatian art of that period. Project initial hypothesis is that artist networks, art groups and art associations form the most important platform of cultural exchange in modern and contemporary visual arts due to the similarity of underlying organization and communication models regardless of geo-cultural location at which they appear. A degree of their diversity in art practice of particular local community at particular historical moment is proportional to the dynamics and volume of its participation in the international/cross-cultural exchange. To prove our hypothesis and identify, describe and explain these organization and communication models as generally applicable – which is the main objective of the project – we shall investigate Croatian artist networking and collaborative practices on the background of similar phenomena in other European countries and with regard to poetic requirements of different periods in modern and contemporary art, conventions of social interactions and available techniques/technologies of communication. As the methodology of art history does not meet the complexity of the research topic, we shall develop interdisciplinary methodological apparatus combining knowledge and analytic tools of art history, sociology and information science. Considerable amount of data collected through the extensive infield research will be stored in Croatian Artists Networks Information System developed in the course of the project and supporting network visualization techniques as a cognitive research tool for experimental presentation of our research results framed with the appropriate structural narratives (textual, visual, GIS data). Project results will be also presented in 2 books, 7 articles, and at the closing international conference. Duration of the project is 48 months.

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Project framework

Artnet is a research project in digital art history exploring models of organization and communication embedded in the modern and contemporary artist networks. The research hypothesis is that there is a certain number of these models sharing the same characteristics, regardless of the geographical location and cultural context in which they operate; if identified, described and explained in terms of analytic patterns, they could be applied on research of artist networks in diverse national, regional, transnational and cross-cultural settings.

Artnet research group also intends to prove that the diversity of organisation and communication models underlying artist networks operational in particular art scenes, at particular historical moments, is directly proportional to the dynamics and volume of the participation of these art scenes in the international visual culture.

The theoretical framework of the project is informed by the insights of spatial art history, cultural history, theory of social networks, theory of communication, and the recent theoretical debates in digital humanities.

Digital research tools and methods applied in the research are geospatial data analysis, geospatial data presentation, social networks analysis, network visualizations, VR/AR data visualizations, topic modelling and text corpora analysis.

Keywords: digital art history, social networks; network analysis; network visualization; geospatial data visualization, interface design; modern art, contemporary art, digital media art

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Project objectives

  • to develop digital research and data presentation tools based on the interdisciplinary approach to the object of research and test their applicability in ICT environment on a diverse body of textual data
  • to develop methods of semi-automatic data retrieval, network visualizations, and multidimensional / multi-media visual data presentation
  • to take the advantage of knowledge transfer workshops in establishing the connections with the research groups in digital art history dealing with modern art and architecture with the objective of creating a virtual platform for a collaborative research of data collections at various institutions /locations
  • to develop user interfaces facilitating data dissemination tailored according to the interests of different user groups (professionals, students, wider public)

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Project methodology

Project Artnet is conducted along two parallel, and tightly interwoven lines of investigation – methodological and historiographic one. Transdisciplinary research in methodology, which brings together analytic techniques of Humanities (art history, history, cultural history), Social Sciences (sociology, economy) and Information Science, is focused on the development of digital tools allowing for data analysis and multidimensional / multi-media data presentation.

Research in history, genealogy and structure of modern and contemporary artist networks, entails the investigations in networks' organizational structure, interpersonal dynamics (structures of relations among actors), and responses to the concepts and ideas shaping its social and cultural environment.

Data on artist networks, collected both from the analogue and the publicly available digital sources, is stored in the database, which is the core of the Information system CAN_IS.

Data processing is done by the application of CAN_IS built-in tools for network analysis, text analysis, and geospatial analysis that will be publicly available at the end of the project, and allowing for data sets download in CVS and SVG formats.

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Access to CAN_IS informational system.

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Access to project's bibliography through CROSBI platform.

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    Project evaluation panel reports

    • Evaluation panel report 2016 (Zagreb, 6 – 7 September 2016)
      Panel members: Isabel Wünsche (Jacobs University, Bremen), Tania Ørum (University of Copenhagen) Tvrtko Zebec (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb), Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb), Andrej Mrvar (University of Ljubljana)
    • Evaluation panel report 2017 (Zagreb, 28 – 29 November 2017)
      Panel members: Tania Ørum (Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen), Isabel Wünsche (Social Sciences and Humanities, Jacobs University, Bremen), Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Science, Institute for Medieval Research), Vinko Zlatić (Institute Ruđer Bošković, Division of Theoretical Physics), Daniela Katunar (Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb)
    • Evaluation panel report 2018 (Zagreb, 10 – 11 November 2018)
      Panel members: Isabel Wünsche (Social Sciences and Humanities, Jacobs University, Bremen), Tania Ørum (Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen), Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Science, Institute for Medieval Research), Vinko Zlatić (Institute Ruđer Bošković, Division of Theoretical Physics)

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    Project conferences

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    Project dissemination reports

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    Communication

    Official project website: https://www.art-net-ipu.org/ [valid since April 2021]
    Previous project website: http://www.art-net-hrzz.org/ [valid until October 2020]
    Project FB page profile: Artnet_HRZZ
    Project ID: HRZZ-IP-2013-11-6270

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    Projekt se provodio uz financijsku podršku Hrvatske zaklade za znanost u trajanju od 2015. do 2018. godine.