Figure 7.1 Alex Mlynárčik, Eva’s Wedding, photo-documentation of the happening, Žilina, 1972.
Photo: Miloš Vančo. Courtesy: Slovak National Gallery.
“For us, appearance – something that is being seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves – constitutes reality” (Arendt 1958, p. 50). This was written by Hannah Arendt on the topic of the public sphere in 1958. In my essay, I am going to investigate the question of what public space meant in the era of centralized supervision of the cultural field and social life during former Czechoslovakia’s “normalisation”. In what way did unofficial artistic interventions in the public space constitute reality? Can we speak of a public space at all?
Before answering this latter question, it is important to sketch the context of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies on August 21, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, which deeply affected cultural life and led to a renewed dominance of the doctrine of socialist realism. In December 1970, a book entitled Learning from Crises Developments in the Party and in Society after the 13th Communist Party Congress (Počenie z krízového vývoja strany a spoločnosti od XIII. Zjazdu KSČ) was published and became the ideological reference point for activities in the entire cultural field. According to Milan Šimečka, Czechoslovakia turned into a planet which lost its trajectory, and which, through the process of consolidation, had to be led back to it (1984, p. 7). In November 1972, another important and even more directive document was published, a resolution of the Congress of the Slovak Visual Artists’ Association. It condemned and labelled as destructive the development of the dissembling tendencies in the art scene, which meant all alternative artistic forms of expression other than socialist realism; the process of normalisation began. It was considered by Šimečka a “restoration of the order”, achieved through focusing all attention on centralizing the ruling principles of the communist party. A small circle of people, that is the political elite, took on the role of rulers, while the party base functioned purely as a receiver of instructions, ideological directives, so that the centre of power could create the illusion of a mass foundation (ibid., p. 34). The centralisation of power was implemented through inspections directed against “enemies” of the regime who were to be expelled from the party. In his book of essays Restoration of Order (Nastolení pořádku, 1978) Šimečka analysed the mechanisms of inspection on all levels of society with a special focus on the exclusion of certain types of people – people who were active, had a conceptual way of thinking and were able to think independently (ibid., p. 39). By restoring order, the ruling party of really existing socialism became an avant-garde of mediocrity, obedience and fear (ibid., p. 42).
In his essay “Story and totality” (1987) Václav Havel reflects on this situation and describes the first half of the 1970s in Czechoslovakia as the time when “history stopped” because the “story was destructed”, which refers to a logical interruption in a storyline, the lack of the plurality of truth and the betrayal of existing attitudes, ideas and traditions. Havel argued that the basic pillar of the totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia is the existence of one central and monopolist subject which incorporates all truth and power and which becomes the only subject of social events. Havel claims that in such a social system everything is calculable: “the property of the complex truth means that we know everything in advance. And when you know everything in advance, no story can emerge” (Havel 1987, n.p.). This predictability and uniformity curtailed citizens’ engagement and led to mass apathy. After visiting Czechoslovakia in 1983, Timothy Garton Ash wrote that he had never been to a country where politics and public life were the object of such complete disinterest: “Czechoslovakia nowadays could be compared to a lake, which is permanently covered by a strong layer of ice. On the surface does not move anything. But under the ice among philosophers-workers, journalists-window cleaners and members of order-night watchmen, everything is in motion” (1992, p. 59). The paradox of a steady water surface and an “underground” in motion turns our attention towards the complexity of public spheres as well as the question of how political circumstances shaped the cultural field. For the present essay, the most important aspect is the question of what consequences these two issues had for artistic freedom of expression in the so-called second public sphere.
As a result of the political and cultural constraints, an unofficial art scene emerged “under the surface” in the 1970s. The common denominator of unofficial activities was a deviation from the mainstream of socialist realism (Rusinová 2014, p. 100), while social normalization and consolidation amounted to establishing political (post-)totalitarianism.1 But what was it that had to become normal again? The political repression of art rejecting the ideas of socialist realism turned out to be impossible, especially after the liberalization of the 1960s, as it would inevitably have caused resistance among certain circles of artists who did not comply with the changes and transgressed the boundaries violently and artificially. The ascendant culture of socialist realism appeared to be fully absurd. As Miroslav Kusý argues, it was obvious to both the representatives of power and the powerless that the process of normalisation had no future (e.g. within the “Chartist movement”2) (1985, p. 152). Both non-conformism as it related to the ruling ideology of totalitarian socialism and the functional mechanisms of official state-sponsored art were highly problematic, as they generated resistance even among artists who were not very popular or even recognized officially. The whole socialist society became schizophrenic (ibid., p. 158). The “as-if ideology” (ibid., p. 163), a term coined by Kusý to describe a specific set of social conditions, created a parallel and alternative existence of a so-called as-if loyalty, with the result that few people really identified with the ideals of socialist realism.
One of the consequences of the cultural shift in former Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the 1970s was that many alternative artists were excluded from the Association of Slovak Visual Artists and gained unofficial status unwillingly. Some of them retained their membership in the Association but kept their alternative activities secret, living the schizophrenic life described by Kusý. The unofficial activities took place either in privacy (studios, homes, nature), that is, outside the view of the cultural apparatus, or on some alternative platforms within the system. The limited popularity of such places, their gallery-like character and their position on the margins of the official cultural field or beyond the spaces defined by artistic institutions set the framework for several unofficial artists exhibiting semi-officially during that decade. The underground could appear above the ground because ruptures and cracks in the system made its existence possible.
I attempt to analyse three performative strategies of confrontation in public spaces. In order to understand their essence, it is important to link them to the phenomena of ritual and panorama. These terms are taken from Havel’s famous essay “The power of the powerless”. In this paper, Havel referred to the idea of “parallel structures” (in line with Václav Benda’s “parallel polis”) and Ivan Jirous’s idea of the so-called “second culture”. As Havel argued, culture is the filed in which it is possible to find parallel structures at their highest level of development (1980, p. 71). For him they represent the most articulated level of “living in truth”.3 Havel explains the phenomena of ritual and panorama by telling the story of the greengrocer who hangs out the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” in his shop window (Havel 1985, pp. 27–29). This slogan is a symbol of an opinion the greengrocer did not truly identify with. He only put it in the window of his shop to demonstrate his silent acceptance of the ruling regime (ibid., p. 31). In this case, ideology functioned as the main instrument of ritualized communication within the authoritarian system.4 The slogan captures what Havel calls the “panorama of everyday life”. It is not only the greengrocer who takes the slogan to be an empty decoration, but also the passers-by, who while looking at the window, may not have any deeper thoughts about the true meaning of the slogan. And it is quite possible that they overlook it entirely (ibid., p. 35).
The spheres of the official and unofficial culture in 1970s Czechoslovakia were overlapping. Havel says that no matter how developed a lifestyle within the parallel structures is and whether it is the ripest stage of the “parallel polis”, in the post-totalitarian condition they only co-exist with the official (or first) public sphere.
When considering the public space, the fact that it is publicly accessible is of course a key aspect. But even more importantly, within it a certain social order is being constituted which represents a specific system of functioning – in our case, this is the order of the late socialist state. By public space I mean the domain that society considered an “as-if-public”. The latter emerged through self-censorship in public life. Self-censorship meant that citizens acted as if they were free while knowing that they were expected to behave in a specific way. A real public space, understood as a discoursive field of free dialogue, as defined by Jürgen Habermas, was non-existent. Unofficial and alternative artists frequently positioned their activities in socialist everyday life, though their participation often remained invisible or did not seem obviously “deviant”. Artists engaged with traditional, habituated social practices, everyday situations and actively shaped what Havel calls the “panorama of everyday life” by using its surroundings as a backdrop, a platform or a springboard for their individual activities (Lefebvre 2008, p. 29).5 Through their ideas and projects, they explored the prevailing social structures, the ruling conventions, the standards and codes of the dominant public sphere.
This raises the following questions: What kind of public spaces were used by unofficial artists for their activities? Which strategies and tactics did they apply to behave “a-normally” within the process of “normalization”? How did unofficial activities relate to the surrounding space and to the prevailing social and political order? In what follows, I will focus on performances of unofficial Slovak artists who confronted the surrounding reality by 1) maintaining, 2) partially disturbing, and 3) disrupting the prescribed ritual and the panorama. These three categories are not meant to suggest a strict differentiation between private and public, but to help us understand the relationship between official and unofficial scenes and, above all, to grasp the status of unofficial activity in an official context and a pseudo-public space.
The strategies I describe in this section include mimicry, camouflage and the creation of situations open to ambiguous interpretation. Their most important aspect is the combination of one space, one activity and one process with multiple possible layers of meaning. Michel de Certeau argued that our everyday actions can multiply space and add meaning to them (2009, p. 120). How can one interpret the artistic strategies in the first public sphere that are seemingly identical with the dominant and expected actions, but are simultaneously confronting the ruling system?
As Inke Arns and Sylvia Sasse claimed, since the early 1970s affirmative elements have been present in all areas of unofficial art in the former Eastern Bloc. These strategies, which initially emerged out of necessity but were later chosen voluntarily, led to a special “art of critique” (Arns and Sasse 2006, pp. 444–455), the so-called subversive affirmation: “Subversive affirmation is an artistic/political tactic that allows artists/activists to take part in certain social, or economic discourses and to affirm, appropriate, or consume them while simultaneously undermining them” (ibid.).6
Theoretically, we could identify the maintenance of the prescribed ritual and panorama with the phenomenon of subversive affirmation. The ideal manifestations of active participation in the creation of ritual and panorama were state holidays and ceremonies. As Kusý argues, in real-existing socialism nobody relied on spontaneous expressions of socialist consciousness, because these events were regimented by tight monitoring and strict legal sanctions (1985, p. 12). Holidays and ceremonies as the primary expressions of the citizen’s political engagement were the testing ground for their conviction and loyalty. In a society ruled by ideology and controlled by the state apparatus, the May Day parade, for instance, was seen as the major opportunity for a mass demonstration of common values, shared ideals and happy life in the socialist state. The commitment to the communist party was to be shown publicly, but also the consensus of the nation expressing its collective homage to the representatives of political power sitting on the tribunal. Against this historical background, it is hardly a surprise that these kinds of mass activities opened the stage for artists and their subversive interventions in public space.
In 1980 Vladimír Kordoš realized his performance Jánošík by participating in the May Day parade as an incarnation of Juraj Jánošík, the Slovak national hero of the 17th century. Photographs of the performance show the artist in traditional costume with a hat and a typical weapon called “valaška” engaged in interaction with other (mostly unknown) participants of the parade. The people are singing, drinking, making photos with the attraction “Jánošík”, posing in front of a bank and the tribunal full of banners containing the famous communist slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”.7 Kordoš’ participation in the parade appears to be ironic because he embodies a historical person known to the masses, while simultaneously being an alienating element in the crowd subverting the official occasion for his own ludic purposes.
Another strategy of subverting the May Day parade was Ľubomír Ďurček’s project Mechanical Views. May 1st (Mechanické pohľady. 1. máj, 1980). As art historian Richard Gregor writes, this project addressed marginal matters, hidden issues of everyday life, and things that cannot be captured in any statistics (Gregor 2014). Ďurček participated in the parade “as if” being like every other citizen, but at the same time he fixed a camera to his hand and walked through the crowd for an hour taking random photos in regular intervals. The collection of 28 images is completely free of any directed gaze, they are instead “directed” by the movement of a human arm. The views range from photos of legs and of the asphalt shot from a child’s perspective to images of an old wall. The photos of the project were mixed after production and presented as a slide show. By using it as a platform for an impersonal, mechanical act of creation, Ďurček broke with the logic of regulated demonstration: he contrasted the dynamics of controlled behaviour with uncontrolled creative production.
A series of other performative practices partially disturbed the prescribed ritual and the panorama of everyday life through their ambiguity and by simultaneously affirming and undermining the mechanisms of the state apparatus. This included the creation of extraordinary events, experiences and situations under the cover of official, institutionalized activities. In contrast with the activities aimed at maintaining the panorama, these actions were significant because they had a surplus of activities, forms of expression or their appearance.
Eva’s Marriage (Evina svadba), organized by Alex Mlynárčik in Žilina in September 1972, belongs to the most spectacular happenings in the country. It was built upon a real wedding with hundreds of participants which Mlynárčik turned into an art action. After the wedding in the City Hall there was a procession through the streets of the city centre that stopped to perform folkloristic Old Slavic customs and rituals. Thus, many passers-by participated in the happening accidentally, too (Euringer-Bátorová 2012). The last stop of the whole cavalcade was a restaurant situated outside the town where the celebration went on.8
Paradoxically, despite the prevailing censorship the whole happening was authorized after Mlynárčik had managed to get different permissions from the town hall. The artist had to ensure that the procession would follow traffic rules and that no interruption and misuse occurred beyond Mlynárčik’s planned procedure. Police officers accompanied the celebrating mass and made sure that only invited guests could attend the ceremony. Ironically police officers functioned as assistants of the happening securing its course of action. The representatives of the socialist state took on the double role of harrassers and constitutive participants.
A similar tactic was adapted by Ľubomír Ďurček in his performance Visitor (Five visits) (Návštevník [Päť návštev], 1980) which took place in Bratislava. The artist rang at the doorbell of his friends, stayed in front of the door for about twenty seconds with his mouth open but saying nothing. In his mouth, he had scrunched a copy of the newspaper Pravda (Truth) (Keratová 2013, p. 51). Providing a sensitive critique of the fact that it was the leading newspaper of the Communist Party with a highly ideological content, he pointed out the relativity of everyday propaganda. In his analysis of the socialist state, Jozef Vohryzek indicated a total vacuum of civic will, a perpetuum silentium, passivity and quiescence: the silence stood for “a quiet agreement – one of the pillars of totalitarian power” (Vohryzek 1985, p. 200) that secured the smooth existence of social resignation. In this sense, it is not only the articulation of the relativity of truth with the above-mentioned connotations that appears to be important in Ďurček’s performance, but also the fact that he remained silent during the action. The materialization of a “quiet agreement” with the enforced opinion was put into the mouth of someone who was completely silent. For we should remember that any citizen, who opens their mouth to talk had to adjust their speech to the “truth” of the Party. Another interesting fact is that the artist did not enter people’s homes intentionally, that is he realized the event in a semi-public space located on the border to the private sphere where, perhaps, he could have acted or talked more freely (Bartošová 2011, p. 214).
Figure 7.1 Alex Mlynárčik, Eva’s Wedding, photo-documentation of the happening, Žilina, 1972.
Photo: Miloš Vančo. Courtesy: Slovak National Gallery.
Figure 7.2 Alex Mlynárčik, Eva’s Wedding, photo-documentation of the happening, Žilina, 1972.
Photo: Miloš Vančo. Courtesy: Slovak National Gallery.
The third group of artistic interventions in the public space represents the activities which were obviously and directly confronting common reality by inserting unusual situations directly into the heart of society, masking them as street events in the centre of Bratislava. The confrontation was direct, obvious, open and intentionally “different”, atypical, combative and therefore dangerous to the totalitarian regime. Young artists like the members of The Temporary Society of Intensive Experience (Dočasná spoločnosť intenzívneho prežívana – DSIP) did not aim to act like harassers but, as Ján Budaj argues, they did not want to live with compromises and wished to experience individual freedom (Budaj [no date]). Their attitude had its roots in the desire for intellectual autonomy as described by writer and journalist Miklós Haraszti: “They seem to be heretics against the new consensus; however, their place is defined less by their political ideals than by their refusal to relinquish their intellectual autonomy… . This attitude automatically excludes them from the new culture and is the negation of the ethos that informs and sustains state socialism“ (Haraszti 1988, p. 10).9 The positioning of these kinds of activities was clearly beyond the regime’s limits of acceptance. Miroslav Kusý points to the same direction when stating that “anyone who is atypical, and yet exists, is ‘evil’ reality and has no place in real socialism. Anyone who is not a socialist man, therefore, can only be a residuum of the past, an agent of imperialism, a dissident. In any case, he or she is a foreign element” (Kusý 1985, p. 158).
The DSIP was a group of young people who were not satisfied with life in a socialist state and therefore turned into “foreign elements”. They created actions, events and situations to be experienced “authentically”, aimed at individual transformation. Their program was reminiscent of the Manifesto of the Situationist International: “moments constructed into ‘situations’ might be thought of as moments of rupture, of acceleration, revolutions in individual everyday life” (Situationist International 1960, pp. 10–11).10 The DSIP created several interventions in which passers-by were confronted with unusual situations. An example of their significant projects was building a living barrier in one of the narrow streets in Bratislava’s old town during the Street Theatre Week (1979). The participants belonging to the theatre companies Labyrint, Faust, Pegasník and Pomimo lay down on the pavement blocking the way for passers-by so that they were forced to interact with the “actors” (Straus 1990, p. 21) in this unusual situation. According to Tomáš Štrauss, the purpose of the activities of DSIP was not to present a ready-made art piece produced in the past, but to evoke a new quality – “an action as creative act or even the sense of the creation on itself” (ibid., p. 20). The intention of DSIP was to reveal the routine and habituated manners of the citizens by acting directly in the public space, getting the attention of passers-by randomly and in the environment of everyday life.
In December 1979, the citizens of the housing estate Kútiky in Bratislava could witness the following scene: a group of young people sat down around a small table in front of one of the buildings, ate lunch and invited passers-by to join and enjoy their meal. Ján Budaj, one of the initiators, described the action entitled Lunch II (Obed II, 1979) as follows: “On a small place surrounded by buildings a ‘Sunday lunch’ took place. The same situation happening simultaneously in all the flats around us, became the topic of a performance in the street. Viewers could look at it from their windows or balconies during, before or after their own lunch. An electric amplifier broadcasted sounds that were familiar to them: the jingle of the cutlery, the serving of the soup, common conversations. The microphones transferred also a Sunday radio program, which was broadcasted from a radio placed near the table and which could be heard simultaneously from many windows and opened balcony doors” (Budaj [no date], n.p.).
Lunch II represented a typical strategy of intervening in the public space employed by DSIP: the creation of a certain situation out of a usual activity while at the same time breaking the convention by adapting it with a slight difference. Placing the privacy of the family lunch in front of the house and showing it directly to the public created an unconventional moment: on the one hand it was an unusual situation for both viewers and participants, and on the other hand it functioned as a starting point for a dialogue between observers and participants. In a socialist state, any unconventional activity, any free expression was automatically suspicious. In this context a common lunch, relocated into the public space, could acquire a political dimension.
The action was the continuation of a similar event called Lunch I (Obed I), taking place a year earlier in November 1978. DSIP transferred it directly to the street at one of Bratislava’s central spots. In contrast to the first lunch event, the second one was working with anonymity: the passers-by were not neighbours, but nameless citizens. One of the main differences between these two events is the way in which the participants interacted in and with space. In Lunch I they situated the table on the street without any physical demarcation, whereas in Lunch II they rolled paper around the place, visually separating the “scene” of the event from the rest of the environment and thus generating a stage situation. However, the events had something in common too: they both broke with the classical rules and limits of the (first) public sphere. They occupied an area through an estranging activity that reappropriated and privatized the public space.
In the present paper, I described and analysed various artistic strategies that confronted the social reality of state socialism in creative ways, seeking for a position both outside and inside of Czechoslovak society. As far as the questions of public spheres and the public space are concerned, which I posted at the beginning of the essay, it is important to emphasize that the meaning of these phenomena shifts depending on the political regime and its social practices.
It is highly relevant to point out that in former Czechoslovakia, just like in other socialist countries, there was no public space in the sense in which Jürgen Habermas or Bruce Ackerman (Benhabib 1992) use the term, since that concept belongs to the liberal tradition of Western capitalism (Hohendahl 1992, p. 105). Therefore, we have to be aware of the fact that in the era of Czechoslovakia’s normalisation, there existed no publics as a sphere of discourse and free dialogue. For this reason, it would make more sense to talk about pseudo-publics in this particular context. In my understanding, the notion of pseudo-publics refers to the non-existent space of free decisions and actions in communist rhetoric. Officially, there was a public sphere, but practically it did not exist. Real publicness as a space of freedom existed in more or less invisible forms; invisible in the small, private circles of like-minded friends, and a little more visible in the actions in the domain of a pseudo-public, the performative strategies that ranged from unremarkable actions to subversive, indirect confrontation with the system.
The Communist Party in the CSSR wanted to be considered democratic from the outside, and the official rhetoric emphasized this appearance. At the same time, there were less obvious directives about what kind of social and cultural behaviour the authorities expected from the people. The establishment of soft power mechanisms for influencing people without direct orders and prohibitions led to fear and self-censorship (Šimečka 1984, p. 93). The space of the pseudo-public was constructed by a formal order expressed through an extensive system of visible political slogans and people in real existing socialism knew how to “read” them (ibid., p. 16). Basically, what Šimečka describes can be seen as an equivalent to Havel’s panorama of everyday life.
Non-official art activities emerged and unfolded in an “alternative public sphere” which existed within and parallel to the system of late socialism, sometimes even occupying official venues. Such art popped up also in private houses of a closed circle of people meeting regularly for readings and discussions. The visibility of these activities was dependent on the form of presentation and was relative to the degree of confrontation with the prevailing system.
The parallel polis did indeed have potential to undercut totalitarianism. The performative projects discussed in the present paper had one thing in common: they emerged out of the pseudo-public of the parallel polis and disappeared into it. In his analysis of parallel structures, Havel argues that those who decided to “live in truth” began to create the “independent life of the society” and begun to structure and to expand this “second” life. Its agents created elementary organisations, like samizdat editions and magazines, private theatre performances, concerts, etc. (Havel 1985, p. 70). However, Havel assumed that this second life, too, would need a kind of institutionalism resulting in the rise of a parallel political life, potentially leading to the end of post-totalitarian monopoly (ibid. p. 71).
T. G. Ash argues that the history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1970s is to be characterized as the history of the fight for a citizens’ society (1992, p. 19). In his essay “Does Central Europe exist?” he analysed the writings of Václav Havel, György Konrád and Adam Michnik. Ash pointed out that all three authors agree that moral changes could influence politics, that consciousness determines being and that the key to the future does not lie in external conditions, but in the internal conditions of an individual (1992, p. 18). Staying outside of state and party structures, people who “live in truth” could unite by constituting a “society of citizens” (“občanská společnost”). The aim is not the reformation of the state, but the reconstruction and revitalization of society and culture through the independent activities of citizens beyond the official structures. Havel, Konrád and Michnik optimistically believed that if this strategy was successful, the party and state would be forced to adapt to these new circumstances.11
In this sense, the parallel culture of Czechoslovakia was similar to the understanding of public space in the Arendtian sense, an “associational space” that emerges whenever and wherever “men act in concert” (Benhabib 1992, p. 78). This model of public space is the one “where freedom can appear”. As political scientist Seyla Benhabib argued, it is not a topographical or institutional space: “But a private dining room in which people gather to hear a samizdat or in which dissidents meet with foreigners become public spaces; just as a field or a forest can also become public space if it is the object and location of an action in concert … These diverse topographical locations become public spaces in that they become the sites of power, of common action coordinated through speech and persuasion” (ibid.). The parallel polis had a dynamic character and was moving from one geopolitical place to another. The case studies of the present paper were sites of the parallel polis, the articulations of portable “islands of positive deviation” emerging from and disappearing into real existing socialism’s sea of social and cultural life.
1In Havel’s words: “Between the aims of the post-totalitarian system and the aims of life there is a yawning abyss: while life, in its essence, moves towards plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution and self-organisation, in short, towards the fulfilment of its own freedom, the post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity, and discipline. While life ever strives to create new and ‘improbable’ structures, the post-totalitarian system contrives to force life into its most probable states… . this system serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it. Anything beyond this, that is to say, anything which leads people to overstep their predetermined roles is regarded by the system as an attack upon itself” (Havel 1985, p. 30).
2By chartist movement, Kusý means the Charter 77 (Charta 77) – an informal civic initiative fighting for human rights in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977.
3Havel’s term “living in truth” refers to an individual within the post-totalitarian state who does not hide what he or she really believes or desires. In communist Czechoslovakia, an individual had to live a lie. The “living in truth” is, according to Havel, the best way to resist oppression by the regime. The power of the state functions so far as people are willing to submit to it. Basically, in “living in truth” Havel sees the potential to overcome the ruling post-totalitarian system by creating an independent social life.
4“It begins (ideology, A.B.) to function as the principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of power” (Havel 1985, p. 31).
5“It surrounds us, it besieges us, on all sides and from all directions. We are inside it and outside it” (Lefebvre 2008, p. 29.).
6I. Arns and S. Sasse describe the term in the context of Moscow conceptualism and especially the texts of Vladimír Sorokin.
7It is important to mention that during the political celebration folklore played quite an important role, so wearing a traditional costume was not exceptional at all.
8An interestig thing was also that art theoreticians like Pierre Restany or Jindřich Chalupecký participated on the happening as well.
9“Naturally, under totalitarian socialism, as in any ascendant culture, anachronistic characters can be found. They rebel against prevalent values, or they look for a nook in the institutional shadows where they can indulge their ideals. Only when the state criticizes or punishes them do they achieve a certain fame. But even that recognition cannot be seized; it is only awarded. Publicity given to resistance is usually decided by those in power, for pedagogical purposes. If we get to know these people, it is not because our controlled culture is too weak to digest them thoroughly. They can be born, survive, and be known to us because there are two civilisations – one of the West and one of the East… ” (Haraszti 1988, p. 10.)
10“Moments constructed into ‘situations’ might be thought of as moments of rupture, of acceleration, revolutions in individual everyday life” (Situationist International 1960, p. 11)
11Ash reminds us also of the fact that a dissident acts like a “thinking root”, and his attempt to live in a truth is worthwhile on its own merits regardless of whether it has any effect on the social or political sphere.
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