Between 2011 and 2015 the project “OwnReality. To Each His Own Reality” held several research workshops, and in April 2013 a three-day international meeting. The best papers given, which have been complemented by articles commissioned from international specialists, were first published in the online series OwnReality on perspectivia.net (the site that holds the publications of the Max Weber Foundation, on which the DFK Paris depends).

This collection of writings, here finally set out in chronological order, edited and introduced by Mathilde Arnoux and Clément Layet, illustrates the importance of the notions of the real and reality in the art debates and relations between East and West. In this collection of studies by thirty authors of different language and historic culture, the many and diverse works and tendencies examined offer a variety of new perspectives on the artistic practices in France, FRG, GDR and Poland during the Cold War.

The articles are published in two languages: French and either German, Polish or English.