
Hans Ulrich Obrist – The Czech Files
English edition
Publisher: tranzit.cz, JRP-Ringier, Les presses du réel
Geneva, 2014
Authors: Milan Grygar Ivan Kafka Stanislav Kolíbal Jiří Kovanda Martin Machovec Karel Malich Hans Ulrich Obrist Zdeněk Sýkora Jiří Valoch
Editors: Lionel Bovier Vít Havránek Hans Ulrich Obrist
Translated by: John Comer, Barbara Day, Ivan Guttierez, Elizabeth Spáčilová
Design: Gavillet & Rust, Geneva - Nicolas Leuba
Pages: 126
Soft cover
ISBN/ISSN: 978-3-03764-387-7
This publication is a result of visits and discussions carried out by Hans Ulrich Obrist in artists’ studios in Prague around 2001 and 2008. Interviews with Milan Grygar, Jiří Kovanda, Karel Malich, Zdeněk Sýkora, and many others, map the historical events as well as unknown stories of the actors of the Czech “second avant-garde” or “neo-modernism” of the former socialist block. The artists and intellectuals of this generation were born in between 1920–1945. They lived through the 1960s cultural upheaval known as the Prague Spring, becoming part of international cultural movements for a limited time, and witnessed the “normalization” of the 1970s when censorship was re-introduced. This series of interviews contextualize a generation of Czech artists within the historical events that marked their lives and careers, and draw attention to their urgency to resist historical events while keeping their artistic practices sustained, radical, and vital.