COURAGE

łączymy kolekcje

Jan Vladislav was a Czech poet and translator. He became a “banned” author after 1948. He contributed to the founding of the “Kruh nezávislých spisovatelů” (Group of Independent Writers) in 1968 and became editor-in-chief of the Světová literatura (World Literature) magazine in 1969. However, in 1970 and 1971 he was stripped of all his functions and was restricted from publishing. He founded a samizdat edition called “Kvart” in the mid-1970s (more than 120 titles were published in this edition) and became one of the first  to sign Charter 77. In 1981 he was forced to emigrate from Czechoslovakia and, thus, settled in France. He took part in the founding of the Czechoslovak Centre for Documentation of Independent Literature in Hannover in 1986. He then lived permanently in Prague after 2003 and  was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1991), the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1993), the PEN Club Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) and the State Award for Translation Work (2001).

Gordana Vnuk graduated with a degree in English and comparative literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb; she is a dramaturge by profession and a member of the Croatian Association of Dramatic Artists (HDDU). She earned her master's degree on cultural policies from the University of Burgundy (Université de Bourgogne) in France. Her theatre engagement started in secondary school, in the 16^th English Gymnasium, where she was a member of its drama group. During her first year at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, she became a member of the Coccolemocco theatre company, which at the time launched the festival Young People’s Theatre Days. Parallel to her work on the festival, she also participated in the theatre performances - One Day in the Life of Ignac Golob and in the recital You Don't Renounce What You Haven't Got! Later, Gordana Vnuk worked on films in international co-productions between Jadran Film and Hollywood production companies (MGM, Paramount Pictures, etc.). The money she had earned she invested in travel and watching performances throughout Europe, where a new generation of artists began to radically change the European theatrical landscape. The opportunity to show these innovations in Zagreb was the Universiade (World Student Games). She offered an already finished programme to the Steering Committee which thus became a part of cultural events during Universiade. That is how the first Eurokaz was held in 1987. For the next 30 years, Vnuk was its artistic director, and this theatrical engagement would mark her professional career, which also included her posts abroad: theatre programmer at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff (Wales, UK) as well as the position of the intendant of one of the largest cultural centres in Europe, Kampnagel in Hamburg (Germany). In 2013 she was made a Knight of the Order of Art and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres) which is one of the highest French acknowledgments for public activity and contributions to the arts. Since 2009 she has lectured at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

In her social engagement Gordana Vnuk refused partisan and factious uniformity, she was fond of left-anarchism and the staunchness of the Praxis philosophy, and even today she does not see anything negative in early Marxism. Working in theatre she tried through her theatre company to influence society and affirm their views of the world: “one socialism, but with a human face in which goods are more justly distributed and in which people feel better" (Vnuk, interview, January 26, 2018).

For Gordana Vnuk, the cultural opposition is "every opposition against human stupidity, but primarily against mediocrity, regardless of the ideological affiliation. While in politics half-knowledge and half-talent, as measurable signs of mediocrity, bring benefits, and even against human stupidity, in culture these two signs work in favour of disagreement, in the sense that one group doesn't want to or doesn't know how to agree with the other one. In Croatia we lack a culture of (such) agreement more than disagreement. There is a quote (so dear to Branko Brezovec, the head of Coccolemocco) by the legendary Croatian theatre director Branko Gavella, who, in truth, was referring to literature, but it can be extended to culture in general: ‘I think that the unevenness of development is typical of small literatures, and not their quantitative backwardness.’ In theatre, everyone has been uptight about disagreeing with the prevailing politics; it would be better to agree, in the way a skilled poker player shuffles the deck: the stack on left and the stack on the right hand are merged into one deck. So the face of one card looks at the back of another. And the game begins" (Email to Lidija Bencetić, February 25, 2018).

Petar Vodenicharov (PhD in General and Comparative Linguistics), is a professor (Assistant Professor, 1990; Associate Professor, 2001) at Neofit Rilski South-West University -  Blagoevgrad, where he lectures on Ethno-, Socio- and Psycholinguistics. He is also deputy dean of the Faculty of Philosophy (since 2001), was a graduate lecturer in ethnolinguistics at the Paisii Hilendarski Plovdiv University (1995-1997) and he guest lectures at a number of European universities. P. Vodenicharov has many specializations from various European academic institutions (North Caucasus Federal University, Zagreb University, Graz University, Copenhagen University, Bergen University).

A leading Bulgarian language policy specialist, P. Vodenicharov examines language power relations by focusing on the language of marginalized, stigmatized groups. Vodenicharov defines the Anti-Sprache of these "dumb"/speechless/sprachlosige or "not heard" groups as a form of resistance.

As a member of the board of directors of the International Balkan Seminar in Blagoevgrad (1991 -) and of the non-governmental organization the Balkan Society for Autobiography and Social Communication (BSASC; since its foundation in 1996), Vodenicharov actively participates in the creation of "identity archives" of oral life histories, visual materials, unknown documents from state archives of specific “minorities” (sexual, social, ethnic, "racial" groups). Such “identity archives” present alternatives to the dominant "monumental” state representations on history.
P. Vodenicharov participates in a number of regional, national and international projects (Digital Archives - Science and Information Complex, Shared Memory Places - Digital Map of Monuments - projects for the Science Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science, To Come Out of the Shadow Supporting the Social Integration of People Threatened with Marginalisation Caused by Their Nationality (2011-2013, Grundtvig Program), Politics of Memory Cultures of the Russian-Ottoman War 1877-1878: From Divergence to Dialogue 7th Marie Curie Framework Program (2012-2016, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IRSES Marie Curie Action International Research Staff Exchange Scheme), Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th - 21st Centuries (2017-2020, Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Rise), among others.

The main and shared goal of the scholars united by the BSASC can be conveyed through the sub-title of one of their projects and publications: Democratic Publicity Through the Right of History.

Ondřej Vojtěchovsky, Czech historian and professor at Charles University in Prague, is a specialist in contemporary Yugoslav and Czech history, especially the post-war period. He completed his Doctoral dissertation on the topic of the Yugoslav Cominformist emigration in Prague. By virtue of his research, Vojtěchovsky met some of the members of the Yugoslav Cominformists in Prague, among them Ivan Sinanovič, who handed him over the collection of leaflets in 2011. These leaflets form now the Yugoslav Cominformists in Prague collection which is located in Vojtěchovský's apartment in Prague.

Anton Vovk was a Slovenian cleric, the (arch)bishop of Ljubljana. He was born in the same house as the famous Slovenian poet France Prešeren (1800-1849), because they were related through Vovk's grandmother. He attended Gymnasium in Kranj, and entered the seminary at Šentvid. He was ordained a priest in 1923. He served as chaplain in Metlika and Tržič. He became the pastor in Tržič. In 1940 he became a canon. Throughout the Second World War he presided over a committee tasked with helping priests who fled from the German-occupied part of Slovenia to the Ljubljana Province. In 1944 he became the rector of the seminary. 

In June of 1945 he became the vicar of the Ljubljana Diocese, because Bishop Gregorij Rožman fled the country ahead of the takeover by the communist regime. On December 1, 1946, he was consecrated as auxiliary bishop of Ljubljana. He was attacked at the Novo mesto rail station on January 20, 1952, by communist activists, who poured gasoline on him and tried to set him on fire.  Anton Vovk died on July 7, 1963. 

Vovk's primary concern and job was to lead the Ljubljana (arch)diocese as a bishop (Pope John XXIII elevated the Ljubljana Diocese to an archdiocese on December 22, 1961). He was the creator or receiver of most of the archival materials contained in the Anton Vovk Collection. He considered the preservation of the collected records so important that he kept the existence of his own diary secret even from his closest collaborators. The communist regime saw him as an enemy, so an attack was prepared against him by pouring gasoline on him and burning him. Vovk himself did not publicly challenge the regime, except when he publicly preached Catholic teachings. The purpose of collecting the materials was to preserve them for the generations.

Ivan Vrona was born on September 29, 1887 in Otrocz, Chełm county in the Lublin guberniia of the Russian Empire. After spending two years in exile in Siberia for revolutionary activities, he studied law at Moscow University (1910-14) and art at Konstantin Yuon’s studio in Moscow (1912-14) and later at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in Kyiv (1918-20). In 1918, he joined the Borotbist faction of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries and in 1920 the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. In 1921, he was elected to the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee.

In the 1920s, Vrona helped organize the Kyiv Art Institute and served as its first rector. He also taught there in 1930-1933 and 1945-1948. He was a founder and leader of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (ARMU), whose program he outlined in a publication titled The Art of the Revolution and ARMU in 1926. Vrona also served as director of the Kyiv Museum of Western and Eastern Art and chief inspector of art education for the People’s Commissariat of Education. His art criticism was published in the periodicals “Zhyttia I Revoliutsiia (“Life and Revolution”) and “Krytyka” (“Criticism”).

In 1933, Vrona was arrested and deported to a western Siberian labor camp. He was released in 1936 and rehabilitated in 1943. After being allowed to return to Ukraine in 1944, he became a research associate of the Institute of Fine Arts, Folklore, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and wrote monographs on the artists Karpo Trokhymenko (1957), Mykhailo Derehus (1958), and Anatol Petrytsky (1968) as well as two chapters for volume 5 of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

Gyula (Julius) Várallyay (1937–) was a second year student at the Technical University of Budapest in autumn 1956. He took an active part as a member of the student revolutionary committee and the National Guard of students. In late November, he left his native land for the West, much like the circa 7,000 students who arrived as refugees in several host-countries. He opted for the United States, where he managed to complete his studies at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the meantime, he served as elected president of the worldwide organization of Hungarian émigré students, the UFHS / MEFESZ, from late 1959 till early 1961, and later he also supported a number of Hungarian-American organizations. He spent eight years working in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and South America with an international consulting firm, and he worked at the World Bank for over 29 years. He has been a board member of the Hungarian American Coalition, and he continues to do work as an international consultant. He also writes on public issues in Hungary. Since 2002, he has divided his time between Budapest and Washington, D.C.

Visual artist, photoblogger, curator, essayist, videoblogger.  Since its foundation (1983) he is the artistic director of Liget Gallery, where he arranged more than four hundred exhibitions, and initiated numerous shows at other locations as well. As a visual artist he is a regular participant of national and international exhibitions.

He was a founding member of the group Helyettes Szomjazók (Substitute Thirsters), and participated almost all initiatives of the group until 1990, when he left the group. Between 1991 and 1995 he made a series of joint works with Ágnes Eperjesi. In 2001 he initiated the irregular, Hungarian-language, free paper Manamana, what he edited in collaboration with miklós Erhardt until 2004.