In a way, was the poor condition of “The Nature” the only topic reaching above the one-party political system. The deplorable condition of polution in air, forests and water, influenced the way of life of every citisen. The System claimed to be for all "working people". Was it ment as a kind of subversion? The protesting environmentalists did not adress the Party to give up the positions, but to take a better care about our environment. Not in a formal way, since any report or any speech could lead to reduce pollution. The system was very formal and self-referential and "to control" the environment turned out to be beyond its competence. Everybody could see, hear and smell if things are getting better or worse.

I see here the actuality of this topic: we dont have any excuse not to be responsible for good condition of the Planet Earth. Thats why those who are in power are furious about environmental protests: look at the disproportionate how the police hadled the interventions and subsequent prosecutions during the Climate Action Camps in the Czech Republic and / or abroad.

LET’S FORCE THE POLITICIANS (people who got into power for various reasons) TO IMPROVE OUR FUTURE ENVIRONMENT!

I would like to mention here something I haven't talked about before. Here is the original text I wrote on August 31, 2023 reacting to the question:

“What were the crucial initiatives/events/phenomena of the nineties that influenced your perception of the art scene of the time and its further development?”

I never thought much about how to perceive the art scene or what kind of position I should take. The topic I focused on was "what kind of topic to deal with?". I started to be interested in the concept of a generation only during the period I was teaching in Brno 2010–16 and a year 2016–17 in Prague. I wanted to create environments where students would be meeting their generational mates from other countries (e.g. Kvilda Experiment 2015 and a number of bilateral international exchanges in 2011–2017). I hoped that when students would meet in person, spent some time, ate, breathed and talked together, the topics important to their generation would be generated. As for my personal position, I realized somewhere when I was about 50 year old that to be able (or even: to have the right) to talk about things I consider serious, I must avoid to be “famous”. My strategy was to participate in discussions, and not take any action that would raise my "reputation" above a certain threshold. To be heard, to be seen, but not as “authority”.

Concerning the 90ies, I think it’s a time to mention other organic structures of meetings which emerged then and which were for me important, even they were organized even with bigger naivity than it was in the case of the Hermit Foundation. As far as I know, any of the events did not received any outside funding and money was always raised by the organizers or collected among the participants. The darker effect of this “independence” was that because there was no reason to write any evaluations, we even didn’t keep any evidence, didn’t invited a photographer who would document it. We even didn't keep any lists of participants and the years when and what happened. Therefore, the following list could not be accurate. (The only person who could remember all stories but left them orally was Gennady Voronov from Moscow and he died in 2000. Because he split with his wife Lucia – also one of the core people, and she doesn’t want to remember him or anything connected to him, the greater part got lost). There can be only a partial memory: I am the person who participated in every event and I don’t remember much. Just an atmosphere. Feyhan Hellum from Viborg, Denmark, probably remembers the most, she organized one third of everything and participated in two thirds. I asked her several times to remind me how it was (becoming nostalgic) but she was very reluctant—maybe for the same unclear reason why I didn’t talked about it so far.

Similar to the Hermit networks we were charged with optimism. World was opening and we were excited to meet people we hoped to meet. Sometimes during the beginning of 1990, a friend (the architect Jiří Trojan) phoned me saying that he bought a baroque granary on the hill in Křešice village. It would be great location for gathering of international artists. At that time, I was eager and curious to meet people from all over!  I even already had some friends who would be good to invite there. That was the starting point: we named the gathering a "symposium". Because it is a word full of optimism and we used to consume alcohol as well. Already the first symposium  Špejchar / Granary) we realized that we were some kind of a weird animals, living on the top of the hill: without electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen (we had water in a tank and a simple toilet built outside, though). We decided to identify ourself with a mole crickets (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa) an insects who lives mostly underground, only occasionally coming up and singing/playing/making sound.

Few other meetings in other location kept this title: "Krtonožka" – "Medveďka" – "Dana Burnu". The meetings were (today we would call it multidisciplinary) attended by visual artists, non-visual artists, non-artists, poets, people of word, theorists, sound but also people without discipline. All kinds of casual affiliates welcomed. The symposiuma were held in Czechoslovakia / Křešice, in Russian village of Khanevo, in Danish Kvols, on the Turkish island of Gökçeada, last one on the Danish island of Bornholm. in 1992 art historian Vitaly Patzukov joined us. But since everything there was almost "anti-artistic", the outputs were (if any) rather diverse, he realized that we were not suitable to create some group he could work with. He remained a friend and one of participants—not as a binding or forming agent. Patzukov died of covid in the fall of 2021.

Hard to say how many people got involved—because we actually didn’t make difference between the participants and the guests. We didn’t even know the name of some who spent some time with us. If you count, for example, the infinite number of Nordic poets in Kvols, the number of people would be in the hundreds.

The list of symposiums—compiled with the assistence of Feyhan Hellum

1991 International Symposium Špejchar 1, Křešice
1992 International Symposium Medveďka 1– Krtonožka, Khanevo, Russia
1992 International Symposium Špejchar 2, Křešice
1993 International Symposium Špejchar 3, Křešice
1993 International Symposium Medveďka – Krtonožka 2, Khanevo, Russia
1994 International Symposium Medveďka – Krtonožka 3, Khanevo, Russia
1995 International Symposium Dana Burnu, Kvols, Denmark
1996 International Symposium Island, Gökçeada, Turkey
1998 International Symposium Island, Bornholm, Denmark

There were also several exhibitions connected with the symposium, in the City gallery in Příbram (1991), in the A3 gallery in Moscow (1993, 1994), in Viborg (1995), in Kunstnernes Hus in Aarhus (1996), in Istanbul (1996) and in Bornholm (1998).

Martin  Zetová, Libušín, November 17, 2023