ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 148– 150
57 ‘The main themes of official competitions and exhibitions were revolutionary
traditions, the October Revolution, the History of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia, the Slovak National Uprising and the Liberation
of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army.’ (English summary of Slovak
Visual Art 1970– 1985, Bratislava: SNG, 2002, p. 236.)
58 Jaroslav Anděl, ‘The Present Czechoslovakian Situation’, in Works and
Words, p. 69. Anděl also draws attention to the different uses of photography
in Prague and Bratislava: in Prague, artists using photography did
not receive a traditional academic art education, and used photography as
documentation, influenced by Happenings and Action Art. In Slovakia,
they had a more formal art training and used photography as graphics,
more influenced by Nouveau Réalisme and Pop (p. 70).
59 See for example Suspension, 1974 (the artist hanging in an attic room, his
ears plugged with beeswax and his eyes covered with opaque black masking
tape); Climbing Mount Kotel, 1974 (climbing a mountain in bad
weather); There and Back, Prague, 24 May 1976 (sending a letter to
strangers requesting that they assault the person described in the letter,
which was himself). In a recent interview, Mlčoch recalls that Chris
Burden came to Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s, along with Terry
Fox, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, and Tom Marioni, who were influential.
See ‘The Shift From the Personal to the Social: A Conversation
Between the Ládví Group and Jan Mlčoch’, Notebook for art, theory and
related zones, 1– 2, Prague: Academy of Fine Arts, 2007, p. 102.
60 Mlčoch’s View of the Valley (1976) is no less quietly galling: fifteen people
were invited to come to a meeting on the outskirts of Prague, the location
marked by a black metal rod. Prior to the meeting, the artist was wrapped
in white material and buried by the black rod; after 45 minutes he was dug
out, by which point some of those invited had left.
61 Mlčoch text, reprinted in Ludvík Hlaváček, ‘Vzpomínka na akčni umění
70.let, rozhovor s Janem Mlčochem’, Výtvarné Umění: The Magazine for
Contemporary Art (Prague), 3, 1991, p. 74.
62 Mlčoch text, reprinted in ibid., p.76.
63 Kovanda, interview with Hans- Ulrich Obrist, in Vit Havránek (ed.), Jiří
Kovanda: Actions and Installations 1976– 2005, Prague: tranzit and JRP
Ringier, 2006, p. 108. It should be stressed that the invisibility of Kovanda’s
actions have very little in common with that of Augusto Boal’s,
discussed in Chapter 4, beyond a desire to escape detection by police
informers. Kovanda’s documentations are not scores to be repeated, but
documents of a single encounter.
64 See Pospiszyl, ‘Look Who’s Watching’, in Bishop and Dziewańska
(eds.), 1968– 1989: Political Upheaval and Artistic Change.
65 See Ilya Kabakov, ‘On the Subject of “The Void” ’, in Kabakov, Das
Leben der Fliegen, Kölnischer Kunstverein/ Edition Cantz, 1992, pp. 234– 5.
‘This structure is basically not a social one . . . Except for acquaintances
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