BOOK LAUNCH

Ilona Németh, Eastern Sugar, edited by Maja and Reuben Fowkes. Design: Peter Liška. Published by Sternberg Press. Co-published by the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia. Cover image: The sugar factory, Sládkovičovo, 2017. Photo: Olja Triaška Stefanović

Book Launch: Ilona Németh, Eastern Sugar
With Ilona Németh, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, and Ros Gray
Thursday 28 October 2021, 6.30–8.30pm
At The Showroom
Free, but booking is essential
Book here

Join us for this special event marking the culmination of the international research project EASTERN SUGAR and to celebrate the launch of its interconnected publication; with a conversation between artist Ilona Németh, editors Maja and Reuben Fowkes and respondent Ros Gray. 

Eastern Sugar was the name chosen by Générale Sucrière and Tate & Lyle for their joint venture to acquire sugar factories across Central Europe after the fall of communism in 1989. This book takes as its starting point artist Ilona Németh’s long-term research into the history of sugar production in the region, from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the rapid decline of the industry in the era of peak globalisation. Contributions dealing with the social and environmental legacies of Caribbean sugar plantations further situate the sugar histories of Eastern Europe within the spread of a monocultural system based on (neo)colonial extractivism.

Through critical texts, conversations, and artistic interventions, Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar restores complexity to the history of the Slovak sugar industry, and by extension the wider social and economic infrastructure of transition in Central Europe, while at the same time opening up planetary trajectories for postcapitalist alternatives.

The book is edited by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, and Ilona Németh with contributions from Edit András, Rado Baťo, Fedor Blaščák, Johanna Bockman, Kathrin Böhm, Anetta Mona Chișa, Cooking Sections, Annalee Davis, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Ferenc Gróf, Dušan Janíček, Katarína Karafová, Peter Liška, Jason W. Moore, Ilona Németh, Michael Niblett, Raj Patel, Józef Rosta, Joanna Sokołowska, Olja Triaška Stefanović, Imre Szeman and Raluca Voinea. 

The conversation between Ilona Németh, Maja and Reuben Fowkes and Ros Gray, convened by Lily Hall, will be followed by drinks at The Showroom.

Copies of the book will be available to buy on the night at a special launch price of £20.

A recording of the talk will be made available in The Showroom Library online after the event.

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