works and words

This publication is a compendium of documentary materials produced in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Foundation Holland Experimental Film in collaboration with De Appel.

The project presented avant-garde film- and video-based works by artists associated with Conceptual Art, Action/Body Art, and Land Art, with a particular focus on Dutch artists and artists from Central and Eastern Europe.

The exhibition formed part of an international ten-day art event held in September 1979, comprising lectures, discussions, performances, installations, video and film screenings, historical documentation, and a photographic exhibition. Central to the project was De Appel’s sustained engagement with artists from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia—regions whose avant-garde practices were largely absent from Western European and North American exhibition circuits at the time.

The catalogue explicitly positions the project as an intervention into this imbalance, seeking to counter the one-directional flow of artistic exchange by providing a platform for artists from Central and Eastern Europe within a Western institutional context. In doing so, it documents a moment of transnational encounter shaped by political division, restricted mobility, and informal artistic networks.

Featured artists include Zoran Belić, Jerzy Bereś, Gábor Bódy, Miklós Erdély, Tomislav Gotovac, Ágnes Heller, Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis, Dóra Maurer, Józef Robakowski, Mladen Stilinović, Endre Tót, Jiří Valoch, Natalia LL, Karel Miler, among many others.