Agosto Foundation

 

Flashbacks & Backlashes

Miloš Vojtěchovský
Anthology of Forgotten Thoughts
(work In process)

Classification

Article

Project

Hermit Foundation

During the 90s a number of individual and community initiatives within the "culture sector" and/or within the industrial sector emerged. Many had rather short life spans, especially if trying to reconnect to or recycle the older “alternative” or “counterculture” models and visions of parallel communities of the 1960s and 70s. In a way such a limited cycle could be a positive and enriching experience.

 

Flashbacks are noisy, dangerous, painful intrusions from the past that arise from the tension between the desire to forget and the necessity of remembering.... The linearity of perception of time, which naturally erodes memory, is interrupted by the traumatic event, disturbing the integration of the past into a narrative, its assimilation into memory systems. Out of this conflict, of the body’s re-ordering of time, the past returns repeatedly and intrusively through flashbacks in the form of auditory, visual and sensory hallucinations or dreams, sometimes precise, intensely clear and lifelike accompanied by a full spectrum of sensory and emotional associations, at other times fragmented and cloudy.

Cathy Caruth: Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History

The key point is that all systems (from the very largest, the universe as a whole, to the very smallest nano-systems), have three moments: their coming into existence, their “normal” life during which they are constructed and constrained by the institutions they have created, and the moment in which their secular trends move too far from equilibrium and bifurcate.

Immanuel Wallerstein

I presume it would be legitimate to locate those almost “historical” cultural and / or art initiatives in the proximity of the ongoing - both academic and non-academic - discussions / confrontations, which are evolving around such buzzwords as "a collective national identities", or “politics of memory” are. Because: who is allowed to speak about the past in an authoritative manner? Why do he / she assume the respective interpretive positions? What the mnemonic claims actually entail? Let's try to observe and to approach those narratives from a perspective of Cultural Wars  -  today perpetual cultural clashes, which are deeply intermingled with social, political, cultural or ideological turbulence and tensions of our societies.

At least in the last 10 years we could notice those tensions in the public sphere of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland or Hungary. In our geopolitical context it was for example the fierce media discussions, resonating in the huge part of the Czech population: what was our “totalitarian” past during the “normalization years”? Why are we witnessing such turmoil of “anti-system” protests during the demonstrations on the street and in the parliament? And - on a smaller scale – how should we interpret the “transition years”, “comeback” or “revival” of a Democracy after the Velvet Revolution?  In Poland are the conflicts and discussions evolving around similar topics, only tempered by dominant position of the neo-nationalists in the government or the power of the Catholic church, and same rhetorics are present in Hungary, to a certain extent probably as well in Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Such controversies are sometimes violent, sometimes milder confrontations of the opinions or ideologies, fostered by lack of a common sense and by general insecurity concerning the way how to "get over" our common recent “small” histories? In fact are we not here rather addressing our future than the past? Such waves of flashbacks haunt us with “burning” questions like: who I am, who are we? What is my real identity? How integral my ethical intransigence was as an individual and as a part of a class or community of nation? The flashbacks can disturb us and bring our bad feelings, wake our suppressed, rejected memories, the deeds we prefer to forget. Flashbacks can influence our mode of perception; Flashbacks can induce an altered, trance-like mindsets, and dissolve our sense of reality. If we don't know how to cope with them, they would infest our volition. They get suspended and we become vulnerable and easily exposed for emotional chantage from extreme political opinions.

The main goal and time-span of the Olomouc gathering was to reflect several topics of  marginal histories, culture and durability in the framework of artists' usual private archives which survived from the period between 1989 and 2000. The exhibition Hermit Flashback became a model of a small-scale assemblage of historical documents, derived from a particular initiative, which almost disappeared already 25 years ago. Nevertheless in memory and in documentation its aura survived even if it was by "chance”.

The state of vulnerability / fragility / temporariness is not necessarily endemic for the situation of a “transformation period” of the 90s and for the situation of former East Block countries. Let's presume it is symptomatic of the times of shifting from the ancient regime to the new regime. I  argue that Hermit was interwoven with a heterogenous asynchrony textures of alike (both ancient and postmodern) narratives, thoughts and ideas, reaching beyond limitations and restrictions of individual or singular “strivings' ', or “achievements'.

For the gathering at the end of the exhibition we invited those who we believed could contribute towards the bedrock of the present situation in art and culture in Central Europe. We were discussing their personal experiences and opinions with Gertrude Moser Wagner, Martin Zet, Tomáš Ruller, Michal Murin, Michael Delia, Alexander Roberto Moust and David Miller who are on the list of about 400 who actively participated in the Hermit events in the 1990s. Marina GRŽINIĆ, Jovita PRISTOVŠEK, Miklós PETERNÁK did draw a larger contours of a particular situation for both today and then in Hungary, Slovakia, or Slovenia. Petr Bergmann talked about his dream to build an “alternative” art community in Prague and about what he tried in a remote area of East North Bohemia, operating at more or less the same time when Hermit was ending. Ivan Mečl is an example of a "grassroot" cultural / artist / activist, a stubborn and independent publisher, who succeeded to adjust to the changing times of the Czech society for 30 years.

It would be dull to discuss the place and role of art in the post-socialist societies in 1989–2000 and not reflect the present situation of Europe in 2024. How has the CE landscape and its geopolitical setting in the course of the last 30 years transformed? Does something remain similar as it was in the times of the Iron Curtain? Are we not just now walking on the path of new curtains, erected from ruins and toxic remnants of the failures in communication and ignorance about history? If we compare the current situation of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland or even Austria, it seems that those “cosmopolitan” liberals who in the 1990s managed to win over communists, over national conservatives and populists, are slowly retreating and those who seem to be defeated are coming back to take revenge. Often they became the alliance of a global, anti-liberal turn, of the retro-avant-garde rising populistic, neo-nationalistic, neo- fascist or neo-liberal conservatism we are witnessing all over!

Victor Orbán famously stated back in 2017: ‘In 1989 we saw our future in Europe. Now we are the future of Europe.’ And It sounds almost like the words of a clairvoyant prophet.

The current wave of neo-nationalistic / ultra-conservative resentiments in Central Europe seem not to be just a product of the traumatic memory, or endogenous dynamics of "post-communist" societies, or the clash between the "totalitarian" (adolescent) past and "democratic"(adult) futures. It seems rather as an integral part and inherited parcel of the pan-European identity, maybe our anxiety from globalisation and same time from the anti-globalist movements. It looks like a battle for our common identity as a human race. When the machine of market economy and the tools of liberal democracy in Central Europe during the 90s were established, the fragile balance between the "cosmopolitan-liberal" and "nationalistic-conservative" camps lost its raison d’être. Can we find again the hidden gate to the “promised land”? Can we replace the xeno-utopia of the Global West with a "horizontal" East-West-South-North Union?

Miloš Vojtěchovský
November 2024

 

Backflash

Last updated: 2025-07-19

"False conclusions are being drawn in the (ex-)Communist world, where the magic of the market is supplanting the magic of planning, whereas the market will by and large be no more efficacious an instrument of economic welfare for these states that had been planning, since the primary economic difficulties of these states derived (and derive) not from their internal economic mechanisms but from their structural location in the capitalist world-economy.”

Immanuel Wallerstein: Geopolitics and Geoculture: essays on the changing world-system (1991)
https://archive.org/details/geopoliticsgeocu0000wall

"The same incidentally is also true for Western art. If the world were not so much interested in what’s going on right now in New York and Los Angeles and if contemporary American art did not act as a source of information about the current state of affairs in American society, then this art would lose much of its attraction.
Likewise, Eastern European art is seen, and must be seen, as Eastern European; if the Eastern European artists like it or not - and most do not, you know. But it doesn’t change things. They are looked upon as being part of their society, as being sources of information about their society in general. So Eastern European art is first and foremost an art that is subjugated to the external point of view, – and every point of view is an external point of view on art.

Being subjected to this external judgment on it, this art becomes Eastern European; becomes informative about what Eastern Europe is, what Russia is, what the Czech Republic is. So we can’t ignore that. And in this sense, Eastern European art is really Eastern European art and nothing else."

Boris Groys: East of Art: Transformations in Eastern Europe: “The Complicity of Oblivion” (2003)
see:/east-of-art-transformations-in-eastern-europe-the-complicity-of-oblivion/

In our imagination, Eastern Europe was always black and white. Travelling to East Germany or Poland meant suddenly leaving colourful Western Europe and entering a movie from the forties or fifties. Later we simply couldn’t remember having seen any colour, not the green of the trees, nor the red of the brick buildings. When we went to the movies to see a film by Wajda, Kieslowski or Tarkowsky, the filmmaker’s experiments with colour only reinforced our image of the East as grey. Europe clearly had an ideologically motivated neurosis when it came to the perception of colour.This particular brand of European Orientalism has now grown tired. Nearly ten years after the social upheaval in Eastern Europe, these countries have ceased being part of an ‘Eastern bloc’. Each is stepping out of the shadow of the Soviet empire and taking on once again its own particular face in the international arena. Each is becoming recognisable as a participating unit of the European patchwork.

 
Inke Arns: A Toolbox of Everyday Media in Eastern Europe,
in “Small Media Normality for the East’,( P. Schultz/D. McCarty/ G. Lovink / V. Cosic (eds.) Ljubljana: Digital Media Lab (1997)

"Civil disobedience represents perhaps the fundamental form of political action of the multitude [ … ] It is not a matter of ignoring a specific law because it appears incoherent or contradictory to other fundamental norms, for example to the constitutional charter. In such a case, in fact, reluctance would signal only a deeper loyalty to state control. Conversely, the radical disobedience which concerns us here casts doubt on the State’s actual ability to control."

Paolo Virno: A Grammar of the Multitude, Semiotext(e) /Foreign Agents, The MIT Press, Cambridge, and London, 2004

“What has happened to the utopia of the Velvet Revolution over the 20 years that have elapsed since November 1989? Human experience teaches us that the surest way to kill a dream is to make it happen. It was no different in this case. In line with the degree to which we have come close to becoming integrated into Western structures, we have begun to realize that the West is not the Promised Land and a final destination beyond historical time and space, but rather a concrete historical formation, burdened by many as yet unresolved contradictions and thus also open to an unknown future. As time has passed, the contradictions of the West have also progressively begun to penetrate our political scene. Up until accession to the EU in 2004, however, they were dampened by agreement on the main point of the political agenda—EU accession as such. With it we crowned the post-November transformation. Despite our original expectations, however, we have not actually entered a safe and calm harbor, but on the contrary have found ourselves in the uncertain waters of the open ocean, where we are being confronted with issues that we had previously been protected from within the framework of the post-November consensus. We had considered some of them to have been resolved, such as the future of global capitalism or the transatlantic alliance. There were other issues about which we had not the foggiest idea at the start of the 1990s—because at that time our entire horizon was occupied by the West, we did not consider the relationship between the West and the non-Western world to be an issue. With our return to Europe, we have thus paradoxically not confirmed the end of history, but instead have rediscovered history with an open ending.”

Pavel Barša: How To Kill a Dream: Our Life after 1989 in the Limbo of the End of History, 2009 

"But the Syndicate was much more than a piece of software: it was a network of people. The Syndicate was founded in January 1996 on the last day of the Next 5 Minutes 2 Festival in Rotterdam. It was a network which devoted itself to fostering contacts and co-operation, improvements in communication and an exchange between institutions and individuals in Eastern and Western Europe active in the media and media culture. By allowing regular e-mail communication between participants regarding forthcoming events and collaborative projects the Syndicate mailing list developed into an important channel and information resource for announcing and reporting new projects, events and developments in media culture. The complete mail archive is kept at http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/"

"Since the first meeting in Rotterdam in 1996, which was attended by 30 media artists and activists, journalists and curators from 12 Eastern and Western European countries, the Syndicate network grew steadily. In August 2001, it linked over 500 members from more than 30 European and a number of non-European countries. The original idea was to establish an East-West network as well as an East-East network. In the meantime, however, the Syndicate had increasingly developed into an all-European forum for media culture and art. Over the last few years the division between East and West had been growing less important as people cooperated in ever-changing constellations, in ad-hoc as well as long-lasting partnerships."

Andreas Broeckmann, Inke Arns: Rise and Decline of the Syndicate

13 Nov 2001 15:52:49 +0100
www.tacticalmediafiles.net

"That day, we had scheduled-announced a late evening-night party at the Hybrid Workspace with music, more performances, projections, beer, etc. All documenta X visitors who wanted to come to the party had to have an invitation (or rather, a visa). And, by the way, all visitors to documenta X - who had paid their 25 or whatever DM - wanted to see everything there was to see and get their money's worth. However, the only way to get an invitation to the party was to apply for it much in the way we, here in Eastern Europe, would need to apply for an entry visa whenever we have to go to the West. Basically, the idea was to make the visitors feel with their own bodies what it actually means to live behind the Schengen Curtain. Visitors were meant to "suffer" all kinds of humiliations and arbitrary judgements based on absurd rules. And eventually, to experience the "depths of Europe" first-hand."

Luchezar Boyadjiev: Overlapping Identities, 1998
http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors2/boyadjievtext3.html

 

Coming back to possible joint ventures with the “new federal states,” some initiatives dwindled because the themes endorsed by tranzit were unlikely to be of interest “over there,” as the same Dresden colleague once surmised. This supposition is corroborated by the observation that, in the wake of the revolutions of 1989, the former Communist Bloc became fragmented from the perspective of art and cultural history. If so, this fragmentation contributes to the multiplication of post-transformation narratives: the GDR and the Soviet Union came to form their own research fields, while the countries in between still remain fairly invisible to international scholarship. At the same time, a formerly dormant cross-regional interest in the contemporary art production of neighbouring countries has started to gradually develop in the past ten-fifteen years. I want to suggest that this new dynamic of cultural exchange was partly the result of the initiatives of Soros and especially the ERSTE Foundations, aiming to facilitate a shared understanding of the present, growing out of the experience of the recent past. At the same time, they also branded East-Central and Southeastern European art on the international market and in the professional community. The former East Germany has been largely left out of this new regionalism and, consequently, the art of the GDR remains largely unknown to specialists of Eastern Europe and beyond. The new federal states and post-socialist Eastern Europe are seldom viewed in the same conceptual framework: after all, East Germans did not return to the “West” as citizens of a post-communist state, but as members of a new Germany.

Beáta Hock: Evolving networks: International sponsors of postsocialist art scenes, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, (2023) 95-108, DOI: 10.1080/25739638.2023.2182507

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