Beáta Hock has an interdisciplinary educational and research background. She studied Comparative Literature and Art Theory at Eötvös Lóránd University Budapest, specialising in the intersection of avant-garde theatre and happenings, performances, and action art. She did research work at the Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest, working on these performative art forms in Hungary in the 1970-80s. Extending her study of post-war art and culture with a focus on gender, Béata completed her doctorate in Comparative Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest. She was co-editor of Praesens: Central European Contemporary Art Review between 2003–06 and member of the Editorial Board of ARTmargins: Art – Curating – Media – Politics – Transition (MIT Press) in 2012-14. Beáta is currently Research Associate at the Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, contributing to the work of the research cluster “Transnationalisation and cultural identities”.
She lectured at the Central European University, the University of Fine Arts, both in Budapest, and the University of Leipzig. Béata occasionally works as independent curator; a recent major international exhibition project was Agents and Provocateurs (on view in Hungary in 2009, in Germany in 2010, co-curated with Franciska Zólyom).
Béata currently works on two projects entitled “Inscribing Eastern Europe into a socialist world through art” and “Art-Artist-Politics: Icons in shifting relationship”. Her areas of research and teaching include art history, women’s and gender history, feminist cultural theory, and the cultural dimensions of the global Cold War.
Additional Interests
Teaching
- Motesiczky collaborative MA: Central European Art and Culture 1918-1956: A Minor Modernism? (with Dr Klara Kemp-Welch)