During and foremost after the Olomouc presentation and symposium in 2023, I was inclined to think about the present and future of ‘Hermit’. After spending over a month in rural France (Burgundy province), I was constantly reminded of vacant farmhouse ruins, castles or churches and their possibilities for artists in residence living and working. Many friends from France, The Netherlands and Belgium live here semi-permanently, combining ‘big city life’ with rural harmony and space.

The 1990s are culturally imagined evolving with the consequent Revolutions of 1989-99 in East Europe and lasting till the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) announced by the United States after the 9.11. 2001 attack on WTC. Some researchers and polititologists have argued that the GWOT and decreasing environment issues mutated from the suppressed general anxiety of the Cold War and re-animated a new state of heightened anxiety on a global scale.

As I was not able to attend this year's Ars Electronica, so I do not know "who owns the truth", as that was a topic there. The secret was probably revealed there, but I learned to care more about what the truth is than who owns it. People of my age, who were active even in the late 1970s, as well as during the last decade of the socialist regimes in the middle of Europe, may remember that it was a wishful thinking to hope that the system will collapse during their lifetime. Around 1989/1990 as a sudden event, it happened with a promise that normality finally arrived. 

"We went to all the different conferences, some of us were for example at Ars Electronica in '95 when they did their Welcome to the Wired World symposium. We could see what was happening, not happening, not getting discussed and follow up on it, take that opposite theme. In '95 we had JP Barlow and Hakim Bey discussing things, Matt Fuller, Marleen Stikker, lots of Dutch. '95 was extremely intense, there was also another Nettime meeting there. The guys from EastEdge had a fight with the guys from Digital Sziget in Budapest, which was also somehow connected with Közhely. There were all these different little groups of the Internet. I don't know if to call them activists, they were people that were active and using the Internet and setting things up. There was almost a cyber war between the Sziget guys and one Budapest cell and we made them make friends at Metaforum, that was nice."

"Does Central Europe have its own, specific language?" this topic was discussed during the 3rd annual Central European Dictionary of Political Concepts Conference, held on April, 2014 in Prague, and on July, 2014 in Wisla, Poland. This text is a part of a chapter in "Understanding Central Europe” publication (2018). The author discusses how the changing sociopolitical and cultural landscape pre-and post-1989 has determined Central European artists’ use of particular art languages – both the languages of verbal communication and the visual languages of art. (First version was delivered at the conference in Prague).

Written while I was the Soros foundation's radio specialist, for a presentation at a 1996 symposium in Saalfelden, Austria, on "International Models of Free/Private Radios." While it might be outdated, it describes the situation in Eastern Europe when changes were still rapidly unfolding, when the innovations and problems were greater than today. In 1996, Austria had no private broadcasting at all. The European Court of Human Rights found that unacceptable in a democracy, so they directed Austria to start issuing broadcast licenses. The Saalfelden symposium was designed to stimulate "new thinking" about principles and goals for the regulation of broadcasting.

Editorial Note: This text is a considerably re-worked version of a lecture Eric presented in Tirana (Piramedia), Tallinn (ACTION - REFLECTION) and Prague (Translocation conference, 1999). The final text has been included in the book MEDIA · REVOLUTION, edited by Stephen Kovats, Edition Bauhaus #6, published by the Campus Verlag (Frankfurt a/M & New York), released as a bilingual German/English edition, October 1999. It was accompanied by the Ostranenie 99 CD ROM.

Nettime is an internet mailing list proposed by Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz  as a part of the Club Berlin event, at the second meeting of the "Medien Zentral Kommittee" during the Venice Biennale in 1995. Since 1998, Ted Byfield and Felix Stalder have moderated the main list, coordinated moderation of other lists in the nettime "family," and maintained the site as their nexus. Ted Byfield and Felix Stalder have moderated the main list, coordinated moderation of other lists in the nettime "family," and maintained the site as their nexus.

The Romanian revolution had a really strong impact on Hungarian society, it was very emotional, because there is a Hungarian minority in Romania, and they were repressed in many ways during the long Ceaușescu dictatorship, it was a very sensitive issue in our country. And this Romanian revolution had a very strange presence on television because the revolutionaries from Bucharest went to the Tv, occupied the studio, but they couldn’t be sure that it’s really going to be broadcasted. You can stop Tv broadcasting easily, just by turning off some switches, or blowing up a transmitter station. In this situation the Hungarian state decided to rebroadcast the revolutionary Tv program, and this could be received in Romania, especially in the ethnic Hungarian territories, and you could watch it on the Hungarian Tv program too. It was the most bizzare Tv broadcast ever.

Human beings dwell on tiny islands of post-historical reality, wander in the middle of the ocean of the u-topian world and far from the island of Utopia. Transcription of a lecture for the Symposium "Absence and Translocation: Art Society New Media", held February 26 and 27, 1999 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, this article is an outline of several ideas that Vodrážka elaborated earlier in the book "Chaokracy - From the New World - A-vrope", Prague, 1997.

By the time November 17th, 1989, rolled into history, many artists and activists who had helped to plant that turning of the soil, were already exhausted. We (myself and twenty other Los Angeles and Czechoslovak artists) had managed in the early summer of that year, to create the exhibition “Dialog: Praha/Los Angeles” as a statement against a regime that said we could and should not do it. The Berlin Wall had not yet fallen, the state police were still following our every move, as they had during the years of planning to make the international exchange a reality. The demonstrations in Prague that summer were some of the bloodiest I had experienced during that decade. Czechoslovak artists were dedicated to organizing and pushing the envelope with the authorities wherever and whenever they could. It must be remembered that they were instrumental in forcing the changes towards a democratic society, and that Občanské forum, (the Civic Forum) movement that Havel and other dissidents birthed, was influential in all the cultural events of the 1990’s in the country. At least in principle.

The Olomouc Hermit conference led me to think about the time before and after 1989 in relation to ecological activities—before 1989 called differently—nature protection or ecological activities—and their role in the change of the system.  What was the role of the environment in the dismantling of the System? Again, as usually, if I say “system change” I start to get unsure.  I think in 1989 people had different goals. I'm (almost) sure that majority of people wished the end to the ruling role of the Communist Party, but I'm not sure if we (including people active in the field of protection of nature) wanted to reset the economy back to capitalism. My personal vision of the future was a kind of socialism (some of my friends and relatives thought the “Scandinavian model” was attractive). When I was considering whether to stay in this country or to try to leave (in the 1980s) the argument how nature was being destroyed had similar importance as was my depression to be locked in a prison behind a one-way sealed Iron Curtain. Finally I decided to stay because of my personal relationships. 

My relationship to the independent and alternative art scene developed during the 1980s in the underground music and art environment. I got involved mainly as an independent journalist, focusing on punk, alternative and industrial subcultures and was working as a foreign correspondent for several magazines abroad (Maximum Rock and Roll, and others).

Internally the situation doesn’t look brighter. Twenty years after the project “InvAsia”, the recognition of the independent cultural sector and a number of NGOs practicing and advocating for contemporary art and socially engaged art practices as its role in the society remain uncertain. Most funding continues to come from sources other than local or national. There are no programs to support the cultural civil society in the long term with spaces and opportunities to carry out activities on a permanent basis. This is the case of several collectives and initiatives including and not limited to Teatrul Spalatorie, KSAK Center for Contemporary art, Center for Cultural Projects Arta Azi, etc.

In March of 1992 I saw the film “Step Across the Border” in NYC and a few months later I stepped across the border into what was still Czechoslovakia while traveling to the first Hermit Symposium. The film is a documentary about the musician Fred Frith and it is about his life of musical improvisation showing his many collaborations with various musicians. A contemporary troubadour, the film show’s him as well in the former Czechoslovakia with musicians from Brno Pavel Fajt and Iva Bittova.

At the end of the 1980s, activities in both unofficial culture and so-called grey zone emerged, and greatly influenced, determined and marked the character of the first years of the 1990ies. The enormous dynamics of the emergence of artistic societies, associations, unions and associations after the 17th November 1989 created the potential and hope of a vibrant artistic and cultural scene. The political climate was favorable, even it was only for a short period of time. From the beginning of 1993 onwards, there was a gradual but visible decline of cultural projects and activities especially outside the state institutions, and this process continuied until 1998/1999. Same time, the spliting of Czechoslovakia into two separate states, and setting of borders. To cross them was connected with obstructions three years after the old regime changed, was also phenomen of this period. The shock from the decline of the Czechoslovakia and reactivation of contacts didnt happen automaticaly.

This invitation is a gift because after a year of research that I and Jovita have undertaken to put together the largest exhibition to date on Slovenian punk and photography, focusing on photography, we can focus precisely on art and history, building a future archive.The exhibition Slovenski Punk in Fotografija / Slovenian Punk & Photography, opened on December 4, 2023 and runed until January 30, 2024 in the main gallery of the Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Center in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a center that was built in the 1980s as a bastion of modern art, appeared at the same time as punk in Slovenia.

We heard a lot about Plasy already, and I have read several contributions in the new Hermit catalog and agree with the comments of the co-artists. I’ll focus on the crucial point - in short. I was asked to reflect the situation in Vienna in the 1990ies. Since I am based in Vienna, I can do it.

Things were different. Coffee grounds caught between teeth were common indignities to discourse. We wrote letters to each other. I filled my quill with charred pinesap mixed with a shot of vodka. It was easier that way. Email was something people spoke about, but few had used. Messages arrived with daybreak like carefully folded paper airplanes gliding in and out of our minds.

Nonastalgia is not meant as a reaction to neo-normalization, but rather as a reaction to the fact that the hard-fought normality is being lost again: give us back our "normal world"! In this sense, of course, it is a conservative phenomenon. It should be added, however, that conservatives do not see every historical change as evil; what they really do is that they defend the achievements of the last great change, of which they feel themselves to be the actors or at least the heirs; they fear that further changes will diminish its value (and thus, of course, weaken their position or authority).

From The UNDERGROUND to the GROUND/ From the POSITION to the DISPOSITION FLASHBACKS, described by some psychotherapists as traumatic experiences,can also be experienced positively, as liberating moments of detachment from depressing reality. - FLASHBACKS by Timothy Leary

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.

Poetry and Drawings of Květa Válová (from a photo album, 1953-55), in collaboration with Dagmar Šubrtová and Antonín Petruželka

The text written by Martin Zet about his "situation with the car" in Bubec was published under the title "Owning a Car is an Open Demonstration of Loyality" in the book SEBEVRAŽDA IMAGE /THE SUICIDE OF THE IMAGE, Divus publishing house, 2005-13

The members of the Kyzyl Tractor (Red Tractor) - Said Atabekov, Smail Bayaliev, Moldakul Narymbetov, Arystanbek Shalbayev and Vitaliy Simakov - decided to set themselves the task of ‘returning to the lost roots’ of nomadic culture (Chukhovich 2011). As Kudaibergenova (2018, p. 436) notes, ‘Focusing on such discourses as nomadism, shamanism, the land and the steppe that were previously considered “backward”, “uncivilized” and certainly unwelcomed by the Soviet cultural frameworks, the new generation of postsocialist cultural producers attempted to bare these contradictions.’ (Emina Yessekeyeva and Eric Venbrux: Shamanism, Globalisation and Religion in the Contemporary Art of Said Atabekov and the Kazakh Art Collective Kyzyl Tractor)

Common tumbleweed, tumble pigweed, tumbleweed, prostrate pigweed, pigweed amaranth, white amaranth, wind witch, Russian cactus or white pigweed. It is native to Euroasia but in the 1870s, it appeared in South Dakota when flaxseed from Russia turned out to be contaminated with Kali seeds. Although it is the best-known of this group of weeds, and was at first thought to be a single well-defined species, it now is known to have included more than one species plus some hybrids. This has led to taxonomic confusion in dealing with species in the genera Salsola and Kali in America. Recent studies show that the population that once was assigned to Salsola tragus really includes three or more morphologically similar species that differ in flower size and shape. The group was widely assigned to the family Chenopodiaceae – including the genera Kali and Salsola – have since been included in the Amaranthaceae. They now are allocated to the Salsoloideae, a subfamily of the Amaranthaceae.

Biophysicist Prof. Petr Heřman kindly lent his Praga RND bus, which has not been driven for a long time, for the purpose of its planned transplantation into the mobile laboratory of the Lost Expedition. I discovered information about the bus on the Internet in 2002 and immediately contacted the owner. The vehicle was parked in the forest on the Krkonoše Mountains, where Petr Heřman had to move it from Prague in the early 1990s. In Prague the bus was the victim of repeated vandalism. Bellow, in outline, we present the heroic story of MLOK (Hurvínek) compiled from memory and data on Peter's Wikipedia page.

Karl Katzinger (Freistadt October 1953 - April 2021) was an artist, film-maker, writer, organizer, traveller and scythe coach. From 1973 to 1981 he lived in Vienna, where he studied pharmacy and occasionally wrote for newspapers. In 1981 he moved to his grandparents' farm in Harrachstal near Freistadt and has stayed there ever since, except for his travels to far and near countries. Here he founded various organizations such as the Backwood Association, or the Research Institute for Zero Emission Technology and hosted courses, lectures, music and theater performances in the Drushba Garage which is part of the farm. From May to October, he gave classes in scything. He was a passionate traveller and visited many places such as Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Albania.... and spent his last time in the Bohemian Forest.

Lizbeth Rymland has worked as an integrative catalyst, writer and producer supporting leaders of evolutionary culture at pivotal moments in their careers. For 40 years until present time she has served continuously and worldwide as a discrete catalyst, mid-wife and producer for visionary pioneers, convenors of emerging culture, indigenous and young leaders in interdimensional medicine.