Yana Milev is a German cultural theorist, sociologist, ethnographer, and curator.
Life Yana Milev was born in Leipzig, East Germany, as the first child of the Bulgarian physician and anthropologist Gancho Milev, who had immigrated to the GDR in the early 1960s, and the Leipzig-based translator and interpreter Karin Fahr-Mileva. Upon completing secondary school in what was then still the GDR, she began a course of study in scenography and costume design at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (HfBK), which she ultimately completed with a diploma conferred after German unification. Thereafter, she undertook postgraduate study as a master's student of Günter Hornig. In the final years of the GDR, Milev was active in the country's subcultures. She became known for independent films, performances, and conceptual art.Claus Löser, Strategien der Verweigerung / Untersuchungen zum politisch-ästhetischen Gestus unangepasster filmischer Artikulationen in der Spätphase der DDR. Schriftenreihe DEFA-Stiftung, Berlin 2011, S.243-254. ISBN 978-3-00-034845-7.Claus Löser, Gegenbilder – Filmische Subversion in der DDR 1976–1989 (Hrsg. mit Karin Fritzsche), Janus Press, Berlin 1996, S.56, 57-58, 123-124, 157. ISBN 3-928942-38-7.
Beginning in 1992, she was visible on the international art market as an artist affiliated with the Galerie EIGEN+ART (Leipzig and Berlin). In 1995, she became the first GDR artist to receive the Max-Pechstein-Prize.Preisträger, Kunstsammlungen Zwickau. Retrieved 23 June 2021. Likewise, as the first GDR woman artist to do so, Milev exhibited work at documenta X in 1997.documenta X, Teilnehmende Künstler. Retrieved 23 June 2021.Henning Ritter, Der Sozialarbeiter als Dandy, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.8.1997, Nr. 187, S. 29. Retrieved 23 June 2021.Johannes Kirschenmann, Konstruktionen auf der Baustelle des Subjekts. Überlegungen zur documenta-Arbeit von Yana Milev, in: Bernhard Balkenhol, Heiner Georgsdorf (Hrsg.), x mal documenta x, Kunsthochschule der Universität Kassel, 1997. Retrieved 23 June 2021. With the support of a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Milev traveled to Japan, where she conducted ethnographic studies and trained in the traditional Japanese martial arts Kyudō and Aikidō in Kyōto. In 1999, she earned the Sho-Dan of the Zen Nippon Kyudō Renmei (全日本弓道連) in Tokyo.
Upon her return from Japan in 2003, Milev was released by her gallerist, Gerd Harry Lybke. Her top career as an artist was ending promptly, and she was forced to embark on a new life course. Milev completed under the advisorship of Peter Sloterdijk a doctoral studies in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). To finance her PhD studies, in 2004 she became an instructor and project leader at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), initially at the Institute for Design Research and, in 2013, at the Institute of Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS).Anthropodesign. Zur Konzeptualisierung eines komplementären Designbegriffs, ICS, ZHdK, 2013.Retrieved 23 June 2021. Simultaneously, she was active in undertaking curatorial projects at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM).Talks in-between Emergencies. Ausnahmezustand Kunstmarkt - Ausnahmeraum Kunst, ZKM Medientheater, 07.03.2009. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
In 1989, Milev met the violinist and photographer Philipp Beckert, her partner in collaborative projects to the present day.Philipp Beckert, Yana Milev, Das Sound-Gelände Berlin, in: Positionen. Texte zur aktuellen Musik. Retrieved 23 June 2021.Entkoppelte Gesellschaft. Zeugnisse des sozialen und kulturellen Verschwindens in Ostdeutschland seit 1989/90, Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS), ZHdK.Retrieved 23 June 2021. In 2020, Milev got her Settlement permit for Switzerland. She lives in St. Gallen and Berlin.
Academic degrees and alleged plagiarism In 2008, Milev earned a doctorate with a dissertation in the field of political philosophy, evaluated by Peter Sloterdijk and Elisabeth von Samsonow (2nd reader) and awarded the summa cum laude honor. In 2022, the plagiarism platform VroniPlag Wiki published a report on multiple cases of alleged plagiarism in Milev's dissertation Emergency Empire published in 2009. According to the report, the book plagiarizes articles from the German Wikipedia. In 2010, Milev became visiting research fellow at the Research Institute of the HfG Karlsruhe,Marc Jongen, HfG Forschungskolleg: Yana Milev, in: Jahresbericht, Annual Report, HfG Karlsruhe, 2012/13, S. 182-183. Retrieved 23 June 2021. and in 2012 was approved to undertake Habilitation with the Seminar for Sociology at the University of St. Gallen (SfS-HSG). In 2014, she received Habilitation with a thesis on the topic of political design sociology, mentored by Franz Schultheis and refereed by Sigrid Schade, Oliver Marchart, and Ulf Wuggenig.Habilitationen/Dissertationen, SfS, Universität St. Gallen. Retrieved 23 June 2021. In 2023, VroniPlag Wiki published a plagiarism report on her Habilitationsschrift.
In 2016, she held her inaugural lecture (Antrittsvorlesung) as an outside lecturer (Privatdozent) in cultural sociology at the University of St. Gallen, with the title "On Being Precarious in the Society of Symptoms.".Einladung zur Antrittsvorlesung PD Dr. Yana Milev, Kultursoziologie, 10 May 2016, HSG. Retrieved 23 June 2021. At this time, Milev observed that academics socialized in the GDR and born between 1945 and 1975 were excluded from pursuing careers. In 2017 she initiated the research project De-Coupled Society: Liberalization and Resistance in East Germany since 1989/90, which has appeared in multiple volumes with Peter Lang since 2018. To undertake this project, Milev founded the independent platform AGIO | Social Analysis and Political Education.Entkoppelte Gesellschaft – Ostdeutschland seit 1989/90, Edition in mehreren Bänden, Verlags HP. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
Work
Arts At the end of the 1980s, Milev enacted performances and produced experimental films, visual works, installations, and urban interventions. In the serial multimedia productions on the theme Horror Vacui, such as In Aspik, Einneonopern, Second Up, and Eine Messe, Milev worked in opera-like jam sessions with the musicians Bo Kondren (Ornament & Verbrechen), Paul Landers and Christian Lorenz (both members of Feeling B at the time, and now in Rammstein), André Greiner-Pol (Freygang), Taymur Streng (9 Tage alt), along with the poet Johannes Jansen and the performer Matthias Baader Holst. Films such as raster+psyche and irreversible were accompanied by live sounds, and mounted as concert-like performances in the context of different events, including in such venues as the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, the Exhibition Center at Fučíkplatz, the House of Young Talents in Berlin (today: Podewil), and the Lindenpark in Potsdam.Seth Howes, Film Experiments, Design Anthropology, and the politics of Vision: Yana Milev Moving Images on the Margins. Retrieved 23 June 2021.Ronald Galenza, Die Hosen haben Röcke an. Female Voices der DDR Subkultur, in: Alexander Pehlemann, Ronald Galenza, Robert Mießner (Hg.), MAGNETIZDAT DDR. Magnetbanduntergrund Ost 1979-1990, Verbrecher Verlag, Berlin, 2021, ISBN 9783957324764
In the 1990s, the focus of Milev's work shifted to spatial installations, with the collapse of the Eastern bloc thematized in her serial media installations under the title Exodus (I to VII). Milev continued working with elements of film and projection, and created projected spaces, or Projection Forums, that could be entered. These Projection Forums were featured at the Grand Exhibition Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf (1993), in the Leonhardi Museum in Dresden (1995), in the City Museum of Zwickau (1995) and in the Gallery EIGEN + ART in Berlin (1996). In 1997, Milev was invited to documenta X by Catherine David, and presented the interactive spatial installation Projection Forum III in the Ottoneum.Christoph Tannert, Yana Milevs «Projektionsforum III» auf der documenta X, in: Entkoppelte Gesellschaft - Ostdeutschland seit 1989/90, Band 5: Zeugnisse/Fotografie, in: Yana Milev, Philipp Beckert, Marcel Noack, Peter Lang, Berlin, 2021, S. 376-382. ISBN 978-3-631-81991-3. "The displacement of cultural spaces—in particular in Germany after the 1989 transition—is a topic that she also presented in 1997 at Documenta, to which she was invited by Catherine David as the first woman artist from a former Eastern bloc country. She calls the installation shown in the Ottoneum Projection Forum III: hanging from the ceiling, a rotating projector in a black housing casts slides of construction sites on the wall. Through the constant movement, a light frieze emerges as the individual images blend into a sort of film sequence. On the walls—dubbed a "public border" by M[ilev]—the projections remain blurry; only visitors who enter a circle inscribed on the floor—dubbed a "private border"—and hold up a piece of paper, or a scrap of the cardboard provided, receives a sharp, albeit ephemeral image. "The border," runs Milev's thesis, "is a sculpture of transition; social stability is an illusion, constructed and produced with many sacrifices." (Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online / Artists of the World Online, De Gruyter, 2020, ISBN 978-3-598-41800-6)After her long term stay in Japan, she developed new work style on the topic of Resonance Architecture. These new works and spatial installations were presented in numerous galleries and museums: "Zendō Items" at the Kunstraum Munich in 1998;Sinn im Reispfannkuchen, Der Spiegel 50/1998, 06.12.1998. Retrieved 26 June 2021. "I submit! For the Resonance!" in the Galley EIGEN + ART in Berlin in 2000; "Resonance Architectur" in the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren also in 2000; "Doublewatch" at the Gallery EIGEN + ART in Leipzig in 2001; "In the 4th Dimension" in the Academy of Arts Berlin in 2002, and "In the 4th Dimension" in the Max-Gandolph-Bibliothek in Salzburg, Austria in 2004.
A turning point in Milev's artistic work can be identified in 2005. In labor-intensive studio- or exterior arrangements, scenarios were developed for capture exclusively as photographs. Work clusters emerge such as Body Dwellings, Me Myself & I – Release Your True Image, and The Storytellers Return, all collaborations with the photographer Philipp Beckert. Here too, Milev integrates citations from the martial arts, the Zen-Mondo, or the Japanese expressive dance Butoh, combined with fragments taken from pop culture.Yana Milev Artwork. Retrieved 30 June 2021. These artworks are presented as large-format glossy photographs in the Cloister Altzella (2005), the Octogon Art Hall of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (2006), and in the City Museum of Zwickau (2014). They consciously exhibit a proximity to fashion photography.Eine für Alles. Sie sucht die Krise und findet Lösungen. Bei Yana Milev ist Kunst mehr als nur schön, ein Portrait von Bernd Skupin, VOGUE KULTUR, 12/2006, S. 204
Other exhibitions by Milev took place in the Grande Halle de la Villette (Paris, 1990), the Museum of Installations (London, 1994), the Venice Biennale (1995), the Ottoneum during documenta X (Kassel, 1997), the Goethe Institute Osaka(1997), the Gallery Fons Welters (Amsterdam, 1997), the MoMA PS1 (New York, 1999), the SCA Gallery Sydney (1999), dem Haus der Kunst München (1998), dem Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal (1998), dem Fridericianum Kassel (1999), the Museum Folkwang (Essen, 2000), the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2000), the Berlin Academy of Arts (2002), the New National Gallery (Berlin, 2003), the Max Gandoloh Library of Salzburg (2003), the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (2006), the Kunsthalle Mannheim (2011), the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2016), the Leopold Hoesch Museum Düren (2016), as well as other venues.