ARTIFICIAL HELLS

III. Problematics of Public Space
artificial hells
Mlynárčik and Żelibska represent the extrovert and social side of Slovak
art in the 1970s, whereas the art produced in Prague at this time is
conspicuously more introvert, as we have already observed in the development
of Knížák’s ritualistic ceremonies of the everyday. The
self- immolation of Jan Palach in Wenceslas Square, January 1969, as a
protest against the regime, signalled a decisive change of tone. The
congress of the Union of Soviet Artists passed a resolution on 2 November
1972 denouncing the experimental activities of the 1960s; some artists
found their work excluded from acquisition for public collections, were
forbidden from producing publications on their work, and from participating
in exhibitions in Czechoslovakia or abroad. This congress also
re- endorsed Socialist Realism and a uniform cultural policy for the Soviet
bloc countries, in which Marxist- Leninist theory became a binding criterion
in judging art. 57 The effect upon alternative art was immediately to
force it into further privacy: actions were performed only for a close
circle of trusted friends. As Jaroslav Anděl observed in 1979, ‘the art of
the 60s pretended to be international and had collectivist aspirations not
without an optimistic flavour; in the 70s it has turned out to look international
but, ironically enough, it has lost its collectivist and optimistic
undertones’. 58 What came to replace it was the psychically charged
expression of solitary individuals: an emphasis on the body in space,
performed with the minimum of materials.
The artists associated with this period of Czech art, such as Jan Mlčoch
(b.1953, active 1974– 80) and Jiří Kovanda (b.1953) do not make participatory
art with the general public, but excruciatingly pared- down works
that testify to the restricted nature of public space and social interaction
during this period. Mlčoch’s early work involves physical endurance,
with an emphasis on the body as a material extension of the spiritual. 59
Some actions were performed alone, others for groups of eight to ten
people who took it in turns to do a performance, one of whom would
photograph the event. The description accompanying Mlčoch’s Washing
(1974), for example, is devastatingly spare, as is the intimate photograph
accompanying it: ‘In the presence of a few friends, I washed my whole
body and hair.’ 60 His later works of the ’70s tend to involve aggressive
actions against other people. The text accompanying Night (1977) is
typically terse:
A strange office in a strange building. A girl was brought to this office
who didn’t know what was going to happen. I waited for her there with
a tape recorder, camera and a strong lamp. After an hour of questioning
I let her go. She left the building with the other people who were waiting
outside. 61
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