COURAGE

povezivanje zbirki

The Oral History Collection at CNSAS is a unique collection of this kind as it includes only interviews with individuals who are the subjects of personal files in the CNSAS Archives, and who after studying these personal files created by the Securitate agreed to narrate their own experience of entanglement with the secret police. The interviewees include not only individuals who were under surveillance and thus victims of the Securitate, but also individuals who collaborated with the secret police to provide information on others: family, friends, and colleagues. Both types of interviews represent the response of the interviewees to the narrative created about them by the Securitate.

The private collection created and owned by Piotr ‘Pietia’ Wierzbicki contains hardcore punk fanzines, articles, and papers from the 1980s, including the original matrices of ‘QQRYQ’ fanzine edited and published by Wierzbicki from 1985. ‘QQRYQ’ was the leading Polish magazine about the underground punk scene and Wierzbicki became an influential author and promoter on that scene.

Polish Rock Granary in Jarocin, a branch of the Regional Museum, possesses a unique collection of photographs, documents, and films related to the history of Polish rock music, dated from 1959 until today. The most interesting exhibits are presented at a permanent exhibition, available also on-line. The history of Polish rock is not only the evolution of the genre and styles, bands, albums, concerts, and festivals; it is also the dissent against the dominant culture and the search for an alternative. The location of Polish Rock Granary is by no means coincidental. In the 1980s the small town of Jarocin hosted the Rock Musicians’ Festival that attracted rock music fans and alternative culture participants from all over Poland, and even from Czechoslovakia and GDR.

The collection at the Popmuseum includes both written and audiovisual archive materials and other tangible artefacts that relate to Czech and Slovak pop music. The institution, besides running the museum and holding popular activities, also manages a large archive. The collection is the biggest of its kind in the Czech Republic. Pop music, not only rock, is seen by the museum in a complex context but the collection and the exposition describe opposition activities connected with the phenomenon of “West” and “undesirable” music genres from 1950s until 1980s in Czechoslovakia as well.