Minorities as Hubs of Cultural Transfer: The Bosch+Bosch Group

Abstract As a post-68 phenomenon of the Yugoslav cultural scene, the Bosch+Bosch group was established by young artists from the multicultural Vojvodina in 1969. In addition to generational cohesion, the group's identity was defined by the conceptual and experimental agenda of the New Art Practice and the hybridity of languages and cultures. Although most of them belonged to the Hungarian-speaking minority culture, their intellectual horizon was defined by the majority Yugoslav culture, which was open to international trends. To approach this subversive minority condition, the essay uses Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's theoretical framework about the “revolutionary” minority language and its traversability, openness, and nomadism. It reveals that minority cultures can intervene in the relations of majority culture through dialogical mechanisms of cultural transfer across borders. In the context of Cold War power relations in Eastern Europe, the Bosch+Bosch group represented the emancipatory aspirations of semi-periphery, transcending the limits of given marginal conditions.