ARTIFICIAL HELLS

the social under socialism
Drink 2 quarts of rum every day for 7 days!
Do not drink at all for 3 days!
Ask your wife (husband) to demolish your radio, television set, recordplayer,
refrigerator!
Say hello to every person who passes you!
Commit suicide!
Live! 16
Such an injunction to disruptive, nonsensical, non- conformist behaviour
can be seen in many of Knížák’s works from the mid ’60s, which sought to
engage participants as unwitting artistic accomplices. In 1965, he theorised
the difference between two types of audience participation – ‘enforced
action’ and ‘spontaneous reaction’. The former produced disorientation,
but was less productive than the latter, which indicated the full commitment
of the participant. Knížák felt that two types of participation needed
to be defined, because there are two types of participant, the passive and the
active. 17 Ideally, he felt, artists should deploy a combination of both modes,
an idea that he exemplified in An Event for the Post Office, the Police, and the
Occupants of no.26 Vaclavkova Street, Prague 6, and for all Their Neighbours,
Relatives and Friends (1966), realised in collaboration with Jan Maria Mach.
As the unwieldy title indicates, the somewhat arbitrary recipients of the
project were the residents of a randomly selected building and all their
acquaintances. The inhabitants were subjected to three types of intervention:
firstly, being sent packages containing various objects (such as lumps
of bread, or a leaflet advising them to ‘get a cat’). Secondly, objects were
spread around the halls of the building: books and goldfish on the floor,
coats on hooks, calendars and paper gliders, unmade beds, chairs, and so
on. Finally, the inhabitants of the house were sent free cinema tickets to a
movie, so that they might (ideally) all be sitting together in reserved seats
in the same theatre. Using Knížák’s typology of two types of participation,
the first phase corresponds to the idea of enforcement: ‘the participant is
imposed upon, restricted; in some way, he is insulted, hurt. His effort to
regain his normal (previous) status constitutes the activation’. The second
– going to the cinema – is the spontaneous component: ‘the participant
voluntarily joins in both physically and mentally’. 18 The artist sought an
experience of individualised yet collective disruption as a way to open
people’s minds, bringing objects into their immediate domestic environment,
while also hoping to displace these same people from one building
(26 Vaclavkova Street) into another (the cinema) in the form of a largescale,
unannounced social sculpture.
We might also see An Event for the Post Office . . . having a sly social
goal in the creation of a situation that encouraged conversation and debate
amongst neighbours; in effect, however, the work seemed only to exacerbate
the distrust that already existed under the regime. The police
135