Freedom of the Arts: Sandra Frimmel Event

Freedom of the Arts • Public Lecture Series • Winter 2023/24

Lecture #3 — December 18, 2023, 18:00–19:30
Sandra Frimmel
Why and How the Freedom of Art in Russia Plays a Significant Role in National Security Policy

The general constitution of a society, its tolerance or intransigence, can be read on the example of artistic freedom. Based on art court trials in Russia in the early 2000s, the lecture aims to trace the interactions between court trials, art practice, and legislation. How did individual lawsuits against artists and curators cause a change in legislation and thus lead to an increasing restriction not only of artistic freedom? Which social and political groups are responsible for this norming process in the field of visual arts? How does this affect art production and exhibition practice? Using selected works of art as examples, we will also look at the absurdity of trying to reconcile juridical and aesthetic speech in court, because the value systems they refer to are hardly compatible. It will be all the more revealing to trace a historical transformation on the basis of court records and to show how, in the course of the last two decades, supposed individual cases have led to a standard legal procedure and how the gradual restrictions on artistic freedom are linked to developments in society as a whole as well as to security policy interests.

Dr. Sandra Frimmel is an art historian and research associate at the Slavic Department as well as coordinator of the Center for Arts and Cultural Theory at the University of Zurich (CH). She is currently working in the SNF research project “Arts and Disinformation”. She is also president of the Commission for Visual Arts of the City of Zurich. Her research focuses on Russian and Eastern European art from the 19th to the 21st century, especially the relationship between art, law, society, and power. Sandra Frimmel is the author of ART JUDGMENTS: Art on Trial in Russia after Perestroika (Vernon Press, 2022 [2015]) and editor of several books, including Kunst vor Gericht: Ästhetische Debatten im Gerichtssaal (with Mara Traumane, Matthes & Seitz, 2018).