The publication documents the eponymous exhibition and includes a selection of previously unpublished documents from archives in Russia, Italy and the United States with the aim to shed light on the unknown aspects of the struggle between capitalist and socialist modernities through the means of traveling exhibitions during the Cold War. Vladislav Shapovalov’s artistic research “Image Diplomacy” compares neglected cultural and political heritage of the Soviet exhibitionary complex with the story of the world tour of The Family of Man exhibition, nowadays reconstructed at Clervaux Castle, Luxembourg and included in the UNESCO Memory of the World list. The book combines documentary materials with the original contributions of renowned scholars and offers a new perspective on the topics of display and politics of representation from the time when visual culture and exhibition design were capable of shaping political imaginary and forming transnational communities. This book is produced in collaboration with Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck.

Vladislav Shapovalov is an artist and researcher. He is working on projects that focus on rethinking images, cultural artefacts, and the construction of narratives as a way to construe and analyse geopolitical configurations. His undergraduate work in Moscow was in cultural and he received his MA in visual arts and curatorial studies at NABA–New Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. His long-term project “Image Diplomacy” was presented in two solo exhibitions at Moscow Museum of Modern Art (with V-A-C Foundation) and ar/ge kunst, Bolzano. He has exhibited widely, most recently in: The Fabric of Felicity, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); Holes In The Wall. Anachronic Approaches To The Here-And-Now, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2018); A Thousand Roaring Beasts: Display Devices For A Critical Modernity, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (2017); Atlas [of the ruins] of Europe, CentroCentro, Madrid (2016); The School of Kyiv. Kyiv Biennial 2015. He is a former fellow at the International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory 2016–17 at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck.

Emanuele Guidi is freelance curator, writer, and artistic director at ar/ge kunst, Kunstverein of Bolzano (Italy) where he carries on a program of productions, exploring the mutual relationship between visual art and other disciplines such as publishing, design, architecture, live arts, and theory. Central to this research are positions that focus on the politics of display and exhibition-making as practice for knowledge production and circulation. Among his publications: Spaces of Anticipations (with L. Sandoval, OnCurating, Issue 36,April 2018); The Variational Status (with R. Giacconi, Humboldt Books, 2017); Negus (with Invernomuto, Humboldt Books, 2014); Rehearsing Collectivity–Choreography Beyond Dance (with E.Basteri, E.Ricci, Argobooks, 2012); Between Form and Movements (Galleria E. Astuni, 2012); Urban Makers, Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions (bbooks, Berlin, 2008).

Andrei Siclodi is a curator, writer, editor, and cultural worker based in Innsbruck. He is director of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck and founding director of the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory which takes place there. He is also editor of the publication series BÜCHS‘N’BOOKS–Art and Knowledge Production in Context and producer of the monthly radio broadcast Büchs’n’Radio on Radio Freirad.

ar/ge kunst, Bolzano’s Kunstverein, was founded in 1985. The name ar/ge kunst is an abbreviation of the German word “Arbeitsgemeinschaft” (working group), which was chosen to promote the idea of collective work on the language of contemporary art and on its relationship with disciplines such as architecture, design, performance, and cinema. The institution’s mission is to produce and present regional, national and international artistic practices and to conduct critical research on the role of art and its relationship with the social and political sphere within which it operates. In recent years, ar/ge kunst has turned its attention toward the idea of the exhibition as a medium. This has involved various formats including workshops, residences, lectures and performances, which all take place in parallel with the exhibitions so as to expand the scope of research and facilitate the transmission of knowledge.