PrintCHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION 1989-2009
You won’t fool the Children of the Revolution.
(Marc Bolan, 1972)
Revolution is like Saturn: she devours her own children.
(Georg Büchner, 1835)
Over the course of 1989, from June to November, and on into 1990, the cold-war status quo was radically brought to an end by a series of revolutions and political transformations that swept across Central and Eastern Europe. From the shipyards of Gdańsk, via Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and Prague’s Wenceslaus Square, to the boulevards of Bucharest, the ‘people’s democracies’ of the region were brought face to face with the democratic will of their own people on their own city streets and squares. Children of the Revolution 1989 - 2009 is a series of events taking place this year London, twenty years on. Through these events we invite you to join us in examining these revolutionary happenings and the legacy that they have left to their children. In public discussions that will range from philosophical speculation on the idea of revolution to careful analysis of what made the changes of 1989 possible and a reconstruction of the visual landscape of the experience of those changes, we shall be looking back into the past to ask a question that points into the future: Have the children of the revolution been devoured, or do they remain unfooled, ready to change the world once more?
Children of the Revolution 1989-2009 is a series of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1989 democratic transformation in Europe:
SOLIDARITY/solidarities
International conference at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 5-6 June 2009
Designing Democracy: Posters and the Political Transformation of Europe 1989-1991
Research project at the Poster Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum, June-November 2009
Revolution we love you
Public debate at Tate Modern, 21 November 2009
Children of the Revolution 1989-2009 was initiated and is co-ordinated by the Polish Cultural Institute in London, and organised by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Tate Modern, and Victoria & Albert Museum in collaboration with EUNIC London (Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria London, Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in London, Czech Centre London, Estonian Embassy in London, Goethe-Institut London, Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and Lithuanian Embassy in the UK, Polish Cultural Institute in London, Romanian Cultural Institute in London). Children of the Revolution 1989-2009 is supported by the European Commission Representation in London and M.B. Grabowski Fund, and is part of POLSKA! YEAR.
Project coordinator
Magda Raczynska
magda.raczynska(at)polishculture.org.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 207 440 0246
For more information visit also: http://www.europe.org.uk/1989