In the statement from 1978 Mladen Stilinovič comments the photo-serie of his self portraits in bed being lazy: "Why cannot art exist any more in the West? The answer is simple. Artists in the West are not lazy. Artists from the East are lazy; whether they will stay lazy now when they are no longer Eastern artists, remains to be seen." In 1992 he made another piece "An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist" where he refered to the new conditions for East European artists, who are working under the hegemony of the English language. It talks directly to us using this language that the globalised art world uses, making us starkly aware of its linguistic dominance.

The Soros Foundation is a philanthropic organization that played a definitive role in the formation of the eastern European artistic field in the 1980s and early 1990s. In this study, I recount the emergence of the foundation in Hungary, and discuss its ideological framework. I will investigate the reasons behind the activities of the Foundation. I argue that, although during the political regime change the Foundation was a catalyst for the integration of the artistic life of Hungary and other eastern European countries into the Western paradigm, it also promoted new kinds of political, economic, and cultural dependencies. While this restructuring of the Hungarian and eastern European art scenes was not solely due to the work of the Soros Foundation, my inquiry is exclusively focused on it due to its leading role in the transition, which resulted in a new institutional framework that provided both more opportunities and new contacts for the actors in the field.

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. It lasted approximately till the United States (after 9.11. attack on the World Trade Center) proclaimed the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). George W. Bush warned that the GWOT would not end until terrorism was eradicated: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Some researchers and polititologists would argue that both GWOT and the increasing public awareness of decreasing environment problems are outcomes of suppressed widespread fear and hysterical atmosphere of the Cold War Era. It can be interpreted as a beginning of the acceleration of the heightened anxiety we are facing, on both local and global scale today. You can enoy to read some odds and ends we collected to support this tricky statement.

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 have 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 central Europe, may remember that it was 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 had 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."

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-europe", Prague, 1997. (Translation M.V., English correction Sarah Brock)

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.

Towards the end of the 1980s, different activities both in unofficial culture and in the so-called “grey zone” emerged, and greatly influenced, determined and marked the course of the beginning of the 1990s. Enormous dynamics of emerging artistic groups, associations, unions and communities after the 17th of November, 1989, created the potential and hope for a vibrant artistic and, more generally, cultural scene in Czechoslovakia.

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 will focus, in short, on the crucial point,. I was asked to reflect upon the situation in Vienna in the 1990s. 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.

22. 6. 2024 published Martin Škabraha in the online journal denikalarm.cz text "Longing for the West that never existed. Teaching art in a world of lost exceptionality", where he introduced the neologism "Nonastalgia" and which was explained as: "Nonastalgia is a longing for the (especially early) nineties, not only in the sense of one time period, but especially in the sense of a certain space-time. Nonastalgia is paradoxically a form of so-called ostalgia, i.e. a longing for the world of the "real socialist" East. However, this is not in the form of state socialism itself, but in the form of ideas about the West that people under the dictatorship of one party had created, which were more a set of projections and symbols with fixed meanings than a lived experience of the complex and changing reality of Western societies". After reading it I sent him two questions which are answered in this text.(Miloš Vojtěchovský, editor)

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

The (now updated) text was distributed as the invitation for a gathering on the recent history and trends in cultural diversity in Central Europe in Olomouc NOT FOR SALE / SOLD OUT, September, 2023. "This meeting draws on artistic and curatorial investigations into the art of the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe seen from the perspective of the then emerging artist-run initiatives and networks outside the cultural centers and institutions. The goal of this meeting is to address the histories and potentials of such (often half-forgotten) case studies, models, strategies, networks and experiences, as well as to discuss the place of art in post-socialist societies in the period of 1989–2000. The archive of Hermit Foundation and Center for metamedia Plasy, which is in the collection of Olomouc Museum of Art, offers an example and is a step towards the outline of a broader geographical, socio-political and cultural map. It indicates how and by whom the organizers were inspired and what contacts and exchanges they established with similar centers and initiatives in the West and in the closer Central European area. see further: cead.space/Detail/occurrences/3861

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.