The book project A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe by Brill includes studies of avant-gardes in a wide transnational perspective. It discusses the role of the avant-gardes not only within the aesthetic field, but also within broader cultural context: its media, its locations, its reception and audiences, its politics and gender perspectives, the transmission between local and international avant-gardes, and the cultural consequences of avant-garde movements.

The section of this multi-volume project, Modern Spaces and Objects, now solicits contributions that focus on the construction of avant-garde spaces in two periods, between approximately 1880s and 1925, and between 1925 and the 1950s in central and eastern Europe. The geographical area is defined loosely to accommodate the avant-garde’s transnational and interdisciplinary condition.

The section concentrates on the avant-garde impulse to modernise everyday life, broadly comprising the metropolitan lifestyle, urban spaces and the built environment, the architecture of public buildings and private dwellings as well as exhibition spaces. The concern is with approaches to the three-dimensional forms, ranging from interior product design and fashion to interior, theatre and exhibition design. The section therefore considers a wide spectrum of environments associated with urban modernisation and popular culture, such as cinemas, theatres, automat bars, dance halls, shops and shop windows, or factories, as well as the more intimate interiors of private homes. The focus of contributions can be on a single case study which will be used to comment on the broader role of the avant-garde in constructing modern spaces and objects across different media and geographies. This will be done by locating modern spaces and objects in the context of the political transformation of central and eastern Europe, the changing ethnic composition in the region and developing attitudes to other countries, including non-European locations. We especially welcome contributions that are not limited to a single country but take a comparative approach. The scope of the final contributions will be 5-7,000 words.