Excerpts from The Diary of Modern Realism Eastern Europe (1994) John Held, Jr. Monday, October 17, 1994: Call the post office about Gaglione delivery of Havana rubber stamps. No knowledge of it. Call UPS but they can't give me any information without a shipping number. Find a UPS delivery slip on the front door for an attempted delivery. Call UPS and they tell me where to find the delivery person. Don Huff, who designed the Havana post card invitation, picks me up to go to the airport at 10:30. We track down one UPS driver, who doesn't have the package, but he directs us to another route.When we finally track him down, he has two packages from Stamp Art Gallery: the Havana invitation rubber stamps, which I'll give out as souvenirs in Cuba, and Gaglione Fake Picabia mask. Don takes me to the airport, and I take a 1:00 flight to Philadelphia, where I switch planes to go to London. Sit with another Dallas artist, Liz Wagner, all the way to London. Tuesday, October 18, 1994: Arrive at Heathrow Airport in London in the morning around 7:00AM. Take plane to Prague, Czech Republic, on British Airways at 11:00 AM. Arrive Prague at 1:00 PM, where I am met by Jarmilla Kovandova at the airport. She is an assistant at the National Academy of Art. Take taxi to the National Academy of Art, and then walk to the dormitory, which is in a park. Meet Paul Zitka, an Australian painter who is on sabbatical from Hobart University in Tazmania. Walk to a pub through the park, but no one is there yet. The Academy is having a Sports Day, where the students and professors play different sports together. Return to the dormitory and meet two Germany students, Carlo Schivma and Christiane Ostertag. Finally go to bed. Wednesday, October 19, 1994: Wake up at 7:00. Read. Go to the Academy about 9:00 and get slides ready for the lecture. Tried to find Globe bookstore and Cafe, but couldn't. Ate beefsteak and dumplings at a local restaurant. Rested at the dorm, talked to Paul. Back to the Academy at 2:00PM. Went to the library and looked up books on Milan Knizak, the President of the Academy, and my host. Found articles on mail art in two magazines: Profile, a Slovakian magazine , which I'd received from Jaroslav Supek before I left, and NBK from Germany on the East German mail art scene before unification. Lectured to about thirty-five students. Mother of Ivan Pressler shows up delivering materials, and another mail artist, a woman of fifty. Go back to library and continue reading on Knizak for our interview tomorrow. Back to the dorm. Dinner with Paul, and the three students. Go to the Globe for coffee. Walk to the river and view downtown Prague for the first time. Back to the dorm and read. Thursday, October 20, 1994: Get up at 8. Shower and go to the Academy. Do research on Knizak from 8:30 to 9;30. Put up stampsheets for an exhibit in the Academy's display cases on the second floor. At 10:30 I go to the President's office and interview Knizak for an hour. We start conversing about Maciunas, Ginger Island, Fluxus in general, his travel in the United States, his manifestations in Prague, his arrests, differences with Havel, becoming the President of the Academy, his friendship with Allan Kaprow, and much more. He gives me a tour of his studio, and signs a book for me. In return I present him with a copy of the M. A. Bibliography. Lunch at the Globe. Back at the dorm Paul Zitka shows me his work on the cover of Art Monthly (Australia), which he just received in the mail. Take a nap. Go to the city center with Paul in the evening and buy train ticket to Budapest. Then we go to an art opening of an associated professor at the Academy (Jan Pistek at Galerie Behemot). Sound performance in the gallery. Paul loans me After the Spring: Contemporary Czeck and Slovak Art to read, the catalog of a show that is currently touring Australia. It has Knizak's Hammer and Sickle: Rotten with Hearts on the cover. Friday, October 21, 1994: Have breakfast at the Globe and write introduction to the Knizak interview. Pick up ND magazine at the dorm and give it to Knizak's secretary to give to him. Take a walk in the park over to the zoo. Read a little at the dormitory, and then take the tram to Prague Castle with Carlo and Olaf Lundstrom from Sweden, another of the Academy foreign students. Have a roasted duck dinner at the base of the Castle. Stop at the Globe on the way back to the dorm. Turn in about 10:00PM. Saturday, October 22, 1994: Breakfast of cinnamon toast and cappacino at the Globe. Back to the dorm and leave for the Center with Paul. go to three Futurist shows at various locations and see a great Jiri Kolar exhibit at the Czech National Museum of his very detailed collage work. Purchase cheese, sausage, bread and apples at the downtown supermarket. Meet Carlo and Olaf and while we are walking to the tram. Return to the Academy after a long day of sightseeing. Sunday, October 23, 1994: While Paul, Olaf, and Christiane take off for an excursion to a nearby town, I go for breakfast with Carlo to the Globe. Carlo goes into town, and I go back to the dorm to pack. Take the tram to the rail station at take the 3:10 train to Budapest. Arrive in Budapest at 10:40PM and am met by Julia and Gyorgy. We drive in their car first to get a view of the center and the Danube that separates Buda from Pest. Then they take me to the Mav Hotel where I check in. Serge Segay and Rea Nikinova had stayed there two weeks ago while participating in a sound poetry festival that Artpool organized. Monday, October 24, 1994: Wake up at 8:00. Read Tales of the Body Thief. Take the bus to Artpool stopping first for a pastry and expresso. Looked over the Artpool collections: Bidner's Artistamp Collection, which has yet to be fully worked on, nice collection of Fluxus books, periodicals by country, and a look around their bookstore. Pick out some nice things to buy, which Galantai insists on giving to me. Ester, a student from the Academy of Art, comes into to talk about the lecture tomorrow. Galantai and I sit down in his office and he gives me alot of documentation about his work. We set up an exhibition of my artistamps in the cases he has in the front room of the archive. The Dadawerke series in also hung. Do a video interview with one of Galantai's assistants while he videotapes. Go back to the rooms to get Yugoslavia bus information. Walk back to Artpool. Look at Ray Johnson material. Julia returns and we walk to Picasso Restaurant. Same place they took Anna Banana and Jonas Mekas: a nice art restaurant. Have dinner of turkey breast stuffed with chestnut. Tape interview with them before dinner comes. Talk about life under Soviet rule, and Galantai's part in continuing tradition of alternative art. Walk back to the car at Artpool and drive back to the hotel. Tuesday, October 25, 1994: Wake up at 8:30. Take a bus to Octogon Square for pastry. Walk to the School of Art to hear a lecture on conceptual art by San Francisco State visiting professor George Landary, who is a specialist in computer art. Met with Katalin Timor, who I've previously met in London during my V & A lecture. She has come to translate for Landary's lecture. After the lecture Katalin and I walk to the travel agency and make reservations for the train to Beograd. I go to Artpool and call Dobrica about plans. Talk to his son, Srgen. Go back to hotel and rest. meet Katalin at 5:30 at the Academy of Art. Give a lecture on Alternative Art, Fluxus, Mail Art, and Performance. About fifty people attend. Katalin translates. Galantai videotapes. Fifteen minute break after the lecture to dress as a Fake Picabia. Then give a performance in the formal indoor courtyard of the Academy. I pass out about 10 rolls of tapes (black, red, white) and have audience members wrap me. At the conclusion, I struggle to break free. Afterwards Katalin and I go for pizza and beer. Back to hotel at 10:30 PM. Wednesday, October 26, 1994: Wake up at 9:00. Cappacino and pastry at the restaurant down the block from the Hotel Mav. Take the bus to Buda Castle to do some sightseeing. Walk through the National Gallery and see some fantastic gothic religious art. Bus back to Artpool. Set up for the opening. Bus back to the hotel to shower. Back to Artpool at 3:30 PM. Galantai has brought his perforator (which Cavellini bought for him during an Italian visit). While the opening is in progress I perforate papers and rubber stamp them. Katalin drops off an article she wrote for an Austrian Intermedia Conference on the Eastern Europe mail art situation. Back to the hotel at 8:00 PM. Go for Pizza again. Back to the hotel to read. Thursday, October 27, 1994: Galantai and Julia pick me up at 10:00 at the Hotel Mav and take me to the train station. Catch an 11:15 AM train from Budapest to Beograd (Belgrade), Yugoslavia. Share compartment with a Yugoslavian chemical salesman working for an Austrian company. He speaks excellent English, and we have a very pleasant trip together. Dobrica Kamperlic picks me up at the station and we go by tram to his wife Rora's parents apartment (they are out of town). We watch video of Dobrica's performances, have a bottle of wine, and their son joins us for dinner (sausage, cheese, peppers, and meat). Take a bus with Dobrica to his apartment and go to sleep. Friday, October 28, 1994: Coffee at Dobrica's apartment. Shower and go to International Book Fair by bus. Dobrica is a lawyer for a major Yugoslavian book publisher. Arrive at 10:00 and spend the day looking at exhibits. At lunch we go to the nearby banks of the Danube and I interview him on tape. At 5:00 I give a performance at the Nolit booth. I get into Fake Picabia tuxedo and Dobrica wraps me to a support beam. He then stands next to me in Gaglione mask. A video cameraman comes by and also the director of the Contemporary Art Museum. After that we leave and go to the happy Gallery at the Student Center. Meet Sandor Gogolyak, who is putting up a Networker Show. Beer at the Student Cafe. Talk to many artists during a reception for a Greek art magazine. Go back to Rora's parents apartment with Dobrica and Sandor for dinner. Then the tree of us take the bus and tram back to Dobrica's apartment to sleep. Saturday, October 29, 1994: Coffee at Dobrica's. Leave with Dob and Sandor Gogolyak for Happy Gallery downtown. Take Open World's to copy issues not in my collection. Stamp out perforated sheets for hand-outs at the upcoming reception. Sandor frames mail art works (Spirit of Anti-Embargo). Nenad Bogdanovic comes. Go out for lunch with Nenad and Sandor. Dob goes to the book fair. After lunch set up my exhibit with the help of gallery director Slavko Matik. Performances at 5:00. i do Networker Gallery performance with Nenad Bogdanovic. Help Sandor with his Embargo Stamps performance. I do a tape performance, which ends up with five of us all wrapped together in the tape. Dobrica does his performance.Go to Park Hotel with Dob, Sandor, Nenad, photographer, Slavko, and Zoran Popovic (early YU performance and conceptual artist). Tram back to Dob's apartment with Sandor. Sunday, October 30, 1994: Wake up at Dobrica's apartment. Have coffee with Dob and Sandor. Take tram into Center to meet Nenad Bogdanovic who stayed at park Hotel. Say goodbye to Dobrica who goes to the International Book Fair. Nenad and Sandor and I go to train station and book a train to Novi Sad. Go to a restaurant and eat grilled meat and salad. Take 10:30 AM train and arrive at 1:00 PM in Novi Sad. Andrej Tisma is there to meet us. We go to a nearby hotel restaurant and we hold "The First Post-Embargo Networker Congress." The cultural embargo imposed on Yugoslavia by the United Nations ended on October 20. Sandor and Nenad take trains home. Andrej and I conduct first audio interview. Take bus downtown and check into Hotel Putnik. We walk to VLV Gallery where Tisma's Fax Exhibition on Embargo Art is being held. Interview Tisma on the show and meet the Gallery director. Walk to Andrej's apartment opposite a tennis club and meet his wife Marta. We look at his collection of catalogs, pet his dog Bridget, and we take a performance photo, "Un-block Art." At 8:00 PM we go to eat pizza with some members of the Bahai Church. Marianna, the Tisma's daughter comes with her boyfriend. I leave at 10:30 to go back to Hotel Putnik. Monday, October 31, 1994: Wake up at 9:00 at Hotel Putnik. Eat breakfast at the hotel and go for a walk around the city center. Get some bread for the trip. Tisma meets me at 10:30 and we go to the Golden Eye Visual Arts Center. Their is an anti-embargo show up with work by a variety of networkers. In a conversation with the director, he offers me a show in the Spring. They also publish their own magazine, and they take photos for an upcoming issue. Tisma shows me a carved eraser he has made of the Post Embargo Congress, and give me a stampsheet he has made with it. Walk back to the Hotel Putnik and check out (Yugoslavia is really expense. The hotel room is $80, compared to the the $15 in Budapest. A liter of Coke Cola is $6.). Take taxi with Tisma to the train station. Buy ticket to Budapest. Tisma and I buy some food for the train and then he leaves for work. Take the train to Budapest at 1:30PM. Write Kamperelic interview while on the train. Take taxi to Mav Hotel. Go to Artpool and meet Julia to say goodbye. She informs me that Buz Blurr called to say hello to me the evening before. Walk to Margaret bridge to take a last look at the city. Tram back to Hotel Mav. Tuesday, November 1, 1994: Wake up at 6:00 AM. Take a taxi to the airport with some Hungarian businessmen I meet in the lobby. Plane leaves at 9:30 for London. Switch planes at London for Boston. Change at Boston for Dallas. Write these "Impressions of the Trip" while on the plane from London to Boston. "I've accomplished what I intended to do, which was to form impressions of a changing Eastern Europe, seek a renewal of my conviction that art can effect change, and interview leading art personalities in three Eastern European countries. Each country is at a formative stage, and this is what makes the trip so exciting. Knizak, in the Czech Republic, and the Galantai's in Hungary, have been leading figures in the alternative art scenes of their respective countries, who have labored under repressive conditions. The Yugoslavian artists have been laboring under similar circumstances because of current economic and cultural embargoes. The crux of my concern was to see firsthand artists who are, to a large extent, freedom fighters. Their art actions had serious personal and cultural repercussions. Knizak was imprisoned. Galantai was censored and came under surveillance. Both took personal responsibility for forging an authentic national cultural history while under the domination of a state culture trying to eliminate a legitimate national cultural history. The Yugoslavians have lived a similar life in the past, and have currently undertaken to lead a national and international debate on the primacy of open global cultural exchange while living under a cultural embargo. These artists have shown that art can make a difference: a difference that evokes the spirit of a country and it's cultural life. They have not only influenced the cultural climate of their own countries, and the young emerging artists of the nation, but have created national debates by the force of the actions they initiated. A month before I left Dallas I was quoted in the Dallas Morning News that I didn't want to paint flowers, but that I wanted to change the world. That sounds pretentious and is ill-phrased, but what I meant was that art was not so much decoration as a path for the agent of a cultural change in consciousness. That change renders global repercussions. These people who I've just visited have put themselves on the line to prove this. The cumulative effect of their actions, and other similar ones, have raised the whole of humanity towards new realizations of global congruity." Wednesday, November 2, 1994: Open mail from Aleksadar Jovanovic (Yugoslavia), Farm Pulp Magazine, Solarz Z, Ruggero Maggi (Italy), Henning Mittendorf (Germany), Guillermo Deisler (Germany), Kevin Nickerson (Canada), Rubberstampmadness, Short Fuse magazine, Vamp Stamp News, Artist Talk on Art, Jack Saunders, Information Sickness magazine, National Stampagraphic, Feral House (Bob Black's Beneath the Underground), Ashley Parker Owens, Wicked Witch, Jim Hayes, Reed Altemus, Ruud Janssen (Holland), Les Vraies Folies Berageres (France), Bugpost, David Nestle, Eric Hays, Steve Bradley, Ben (France), Michel Helsem, Fran Jerkoffsky, Linda Genet, Janet Hofacker, Italo Medda (Italy), Alberto Rizzi (Italy), Hans Braum�ller (Germany), Toast Postes, Norman Lederer, Jacinto Garcia (Spain), Alessandro Ceccotto (Italy), Al Ackerman, 10,000 humans editions (Spain), Mark Hamilton, Alic Borealis, Jesus Chairez, Becky Ivancic, Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Howard Schickler Fine Art, malok, Jenny Soup, Peter kaufmann (Switzerland), Eat Art, Jean Francois Robic (France), Tim Mancusi, Tact, Andy Hanson, Marian Hirsch, Bruno Pollaci (Italy), Le Peintre nato (France), Anna Banana(Canada), Pere Sousa (Spain), Banco de Ideas Z (Cuba), Ablardo Mena (Cuba), Park Pawson (England), Thought Crime magazine, Christina Bergmann, Honoria, Who's Who in Art, Adirondeck Commnity College, Encyclopedia of Art, Don Webb. Talk to Judith Hoffberg on the phone about Jean Brown article for Umbrella. |