cfp: CONSTRUCTED HAPPINESS, The Domestic Environment in the Cold War Era

[anna balint]

Call for papers

CONSTRUCTED HAPPINESS
The Domestic Environment in the Cold War Era

The Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn 
is organising a conference, Constructed Happiness - The Domestic
Environment in the Cold War Era, in 20-21 May 2004.

The divided world of East and West after World War II, was constantly,
either openly or covertly, ready to clash. An important feature of 
this rivalry was the promise of happiness; who can build a more 
prosperous life for their citizens, either the communist East or the 
capitalist West? One of the primary sites for this happiness to appear 
was in the home; the private sphere and the domestic environment. 
Could these new homes bring the expected happiness?

The conference addresses this politically and ideologically
controversial period from the everyday level through the domestic
environment as one of the central topics in the genesis of modern
architecture. Focusing on the domestic environment of the Cold War era
as a multidimensional social space we will look at the intertwined
network of power relations, islands of private life and the unseen
barriers and prescribed identities that homes contain.

* Building industry and the society
Mass housing and the industrialisation of the building process in the
post-war years was seen as an opportunity for overall improvement of 
the living environment. Simultaneously, the private builder carried 
out a mass urbanisation outside the confines of the city centres. What 
were the differences in regard to the image of the ideal home and 
public housing schemes between the East and the West? What were the 
different means for financing them?

* Barriers, borders, identities
In addition to seen physical boundaries that define spaces and operate
in houses, homes are structured by unseen orders of social relations,
gender representations and power networks. Together they define the
conventions of the domestic everyday. This leads to questions on the
relationship between the housing industry and its imagined subject, on
the constructed architectonics of the family and the architecture of 
the home. Also, what kind of identities, gendered spaces and new
territorialisations evolved in different cultural contexts?

* Islands of private life
The retreat into the private sphere is generally considered as a
strategy for staying outside the reach of the ideological public life.
In the Cold War climate the private sphere acquired significance as a
site of pretended autonomy, of tactical gestures slipping through the
fingers of big politics. Was such a concentration on the private 
sphere impelled by political distress or the radically transformed 
living environment? Was the private sphere a site for resistance or a 
place for escape?

The conference wishes to gather together the different experiences of
the home environment and the everyday during the long period of the 
Cold War (1947-1989), to combine different disciplinary understandings 
and to bring together scholars from both sides of the former East - 
West divide.

Abstracts consisting of the title, text of no more than 250 words and
brief information about the speaker should be submitted by 1 December
2003. Speakers will be notified of the acceptance of their papers by
12th January 2004. Abstracts or queries should be sent, preferably by
e-mail, to:

Prof. Mart Kalm
e-mail: kalm at delfi.ee
Institute of Art History,
Estonian Academy of Art
Tartu mnt.1, 10 145
Tallinn
Estonia
Phone 372 6267 325
Fax 372 6267 328