COURAGE

connecting collections

Andrei Siniavskii was a Soviet dissident, writer and literary critic and student of literature. The bulk of the collection includes his writings, correspondence and photographs. It is an extensive collection, containing material that he produced and collected over his lifetime, together with his wife Mariia Rozanova, who was lesser known but also a significant figure in the dissident movement. These include his writings, diaries, correspondence, interrogation and records from the 1966 trial of Siniavskii and another writer Yuli Daniel, printed matter, sound recordings, photographs, and memorabilia relating to Russian literature, civil rights in the Soviet Union, political trials and conditions of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and Russian émigré affairs. This collection also includes records of the Russian-language Paris journal Sintaksis, published and edited by Siniavskii himself.

Künstlerzeitschriften verbreiteten sich überall in der Welt ab Ende der 1960er Jahre. Sie waren ein Mittel der Kommunikation zwischen Grafikern, Schriftstellern, Fotografen und Künstlern, die mit neuen Medien arbeiteten. Auch in der DDR wurde dieses Medium von der jüngeren Künstlergeneration entdeckt, die sich selbst vom sozialistischen Realismus distanzieren wollten und nicht nur ihre künstlerischen Ideen, sondern auch oppositionelle Meinungen teilten, was schnell die Stasi auf sie aufmerksam machte. Die Sammlung "Künstlerzeitschriften der DDR" in der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) hat ihren Ursprung zu Zeiten der DDR, als Künstler der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek Grafiken zum Kauf anboten.

Artpool is an archive, library, documentation center and place of research concerning the progressive, non-official trends in Hungarian art in the 1970s and 1980s (including alternative art scenes and groups, underground art magazines, samizdat publications etc.) and contemporary avant-garde tendencies.

Artpool – beside being a research institute - defines itself as an active archive: seeks out new forms of societal activity, takes a formative role in processes, organizes events, documents, archives them and freely distributes information.