COURAGE

łączymy kolekcje

The twelfth issue of the “Sci-fi magazine” was published in Teplice in 1983 and was the last to be published by the sci-fi club in Teplice. In this issue, a religious story was published that caused the founder to prohibit further publishing of the magazine, which in the short term led to the club being closed. It was probably due to the story of Eva Novakova, which she called "How It Was with the Whale" and refers to the Old Testament story of Jonah and the Whale. This event did not slow the activity of others, rather the fanzines grew throughout the country.

Gojko Đogo was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for publishing a collection of poems entitled Vunena vremena [Woollen Times] in which he “metaphorically alluded to Tito’s rule as one of tyranny, indolence and ignorance” (Dragović-Soso 2002, 54). It was the first time that “poetry was being tried” and thus support for Đogo was considered to be a principled defence of the freedom of literary and artistic creation and brought together intellectuals from across the political spectrum (nationalists, the “New Left”, and liberals).

The Đogo case was significant in that it led to the first institutional base of intellectual activism since the crackdowns of the early 1970s. This is reflected in the formation of the Committee for the Protection of Artistic Freedom at the Association of Serbian Writers in May 1982.

In their smuggling operations, the Smoloskyp couriers used various ways to obtain and to transport samizdat and other materials of the Ukrainian cultural opposition from Soviet Ukraine. Manuscripts were usually copied as microfilms, hidden in luggages or parcels (in souvenir dolls, busts of Lenin or Shevchenko, etc.). In order to smuggle materials, Smoloskyp agents sometimes used official Canadian Communist delegations that visited Ukraine, as their luggage was checked less thoroughly on the border. Unbeknown to them, Smoloskyp agents attached microfilms to their luggage or talked them into carrying some souvenirs (with microfilms hidden inside).

Nowadays, two doll-containers are displayed on the Smoloskyp permanent exhibition in Kyiv as a symbol of the creative agency of both Ukrainian cultural opposition and Ukrainian diaspora in building hidden communication channels and making the case of the Ukrainian oppositional movement internationally known.

Cardboard box with a large, red, stenciled, symmetrical question mark on the outer top of one side and the inner bottom of the other side. On the outer back side, a series of ten photos arranged in a grid demonstrating the possible combinations of similar boxes in an open and closed state.

On the third photo the box on the left is marked with an arrow pointing to a handwritten caption reading “that is this box.” Under the photo appears the typewritten title of the work and the following sentence: “The aim of the experiment is to examine the sensory and esthetic effects of generally asked questions.” Beside the photos, above the label the typewritten name of the author is visible.

The handwritten commentary suggests that a box can be interpreted alone as well (this concrete example incorporates two differently positioned, painted question marks). Looking at the photos, one can conclude that more—though not necessarily identical—copies exist, which were given away (as this example got to the archive).

Politics did not constitute the primary context of Péter Türk’s oeuvre, but a subtle, sometimes ironic, criticism of the system can be observed in his works produced during the first half of the 1970s. During this period, he created geometric, but more and more conceptually oriented works, pursuing visual, semantic-logical investigations, which formed an implicit statement in the eyes of cultural politics at the time.

The question marks appearing in several series of his works are “visual conundrums,” which come into play via their color, position, material, constellation and, last but not least, their variations. Contemplating the object, the viewer becomes involved in a conceptual-associative process.

During our visit, we first wanted to define what is a generally asked question. According to professor Beke, “how are you?” or rather “what’s up?” is a good example. Hearing (or reading) a question of this type it is worth noting that this still concerns the sensory effect.