Hrvatski konceptualni umjetnik, filmski redatelj, glumac i performer Tomislav Gotovac rođen je 9. veljače 1937. u Somboru u Srbiji, a umro je u Zagrebu 25. lipnja 2010. godine. Od 1941. živi i radi u Zagrebu gdje završava gimnaziju i kratko studira arhitekturu te radi kao službenik u banci i bolnici, a 1967. seli u Beograd gdje će 1976. diplomirati režiju na Akademiji dramskih umjetnosti. Nakon diplome vraća se u Zagreb.
Gotovac se smatra pionirom performansa u Jugoslaviji, a prvi performans izvodi 1954. u Mostaru. Po performansima će i ostati najprepoznatljiviji, kao i po korištenju vlastita nagog tijela u njima. Svoje će akcije (performanse) objavljivati u omladinskim listovima Studentski list i Polet. Drugo područje u kojemu je ostavio značajan trag jesu režija i gluma. Jedan od najznačajnijih Gotovčevih nastupa je sudjelovanje u filmu Plastični Isus 1972. godine, nakon kojega će biti politički progonjen te će mu biti onemogućeno diplomirati sve do 1976. godine. Prema riječima Zore Cazi-Gotovac, umjetnik nije znao na koji će način Lazar Stojanović režirati film, te je ostao neugodno iznenađen kada je vidio da je film poprimio političku dimenziju.
Gotovac je bio članom Hrvatskoga društva likovnih umjetnika (HDLU), a 2007. godine dobio je njihovu nagradu za životno djelo. U čast svoje majke, godine 2005. mijenja ime u Antonio G. Lauer. Nakon umjetnikove smrti njegova supruga i kći, uz pomoć povjesničara umjetnosti Darka Šimičića, osnivaju Institut Tomislav Gotovac. Institut je osnovan 2012. godine, a u njemu se nalazi Gotovčeva ostavština i bogat arhiv.
Gotovac sam za sebe kaže kako je uvijek nastojao biti drugačiji: „Znam kakav je odnos većine prema mom radu, liku i djelu. Otkako sam se umjetnički osvijestio, nikada nisam pripadao nikome. Uvijek sam bio neka vrsta avangarde, iako riječ avangarda ne volim upotrebljavati, meni je to strano.“
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Lokacija:
- Zagreb, Croatia
Vladimir (Vlado) Gotovac (Imotski, 18. rujna 1930. - Rim, 7. prosinca 2000.), hrvatski je književnik, pjesnik, filozof, novinar i političar te jedan od najpoznatijih kulturnih opozicionara iz doba socijalističke Hrvatske koji je zbog svojih uvjerenja i vjere u pluralističku demokraciju bio proganjan od komunističkih vlasti.
Osnovnu školu pohađao je u Prnjavoru (BiH), Župi Biokovskoj i Lovreču, a gimnaziju u Imotskom i Zagrebu gdje je i maturirao na Klasičnoj gimnaziji. Na Filozofskom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Zagrebu diplomirao je studij filozofije.
Književne radove, ponajprije pjesme, počeo je objavljivati 1952. u časopisu Tribina, a u drugim časopisima objavljuje filozofske i likovne kritike i eseje, priče, radiodrame te angažirane publicističke tekstove. Godine 1955. zaposlio se kao novinar i urednik redakcije kulture i drame na Radioteleviziji Zagreb gdje je radio sve do uhićenja 1972. U to vrijeme uređivao je i časopise Međutim (1953.) i Razlog (1969.), a od srpnja do prosinca 1971. bio je glavnim urednikom Hrvatskoga tjednika, koji je objavljivala Matica hrvatska, a koji je zastupao program nacionalnoga pokreta.
Kao urednik Hrvatskoga tjednika, ali i zbog svojih beskompromisnih kritički intoniranih tekstova, Gotovac je spadao među najistaknutije osobe hrvatskoga proljeća 1971. Zbog svog djelovanja u sferi kulture bio je, s još desetoricom hrvatskih intelektualaca, optužen za neprijateljsko djelovanje i osuđen 1972. na četiri godine strogoga zatvora s dodatnim trogodišnjim gubitkom građanskih prava. Kaznu je, ne tražeći pomilovanje, u cijelosti izdržao. Nije se pridržavao zabrane istupanja, pa je nakon razgovora s inozemnim novinarima 1977. ponovo optužen te u procesu 1981. osuđen na dvije godine zatvora, odnosno još četiri godine gubitka građanskih prava. Na tom suđenju je, iznoseći svoju obranu izjavio: „Jedini smisao mog rada je u nastojanju da se osigura prava, ljudska, pravedna i slobodna zajednica – za sve i svugdje; zajednica koja raznolikost ne samo podnosi, nego joj se i raduje upravo onako, kako se graditelji katedrale u Chartresu raduju, kad iz raznobojnih stakala slažu svoje vjerničke rozete. Tako radostan i tako raznolik svijet – to je moj san! Ako zbog njega moram biti suđen, ja na to pristajem jer bez tog sna ni ja, ni moje djelo nemamo nikakvog smisla.“ (https://vladogotovac.org/).
Kao jedan od najznačajnijih zastupnika liberalnih ideja u Hrvatskoj krajem 1980-ih se i politički angažirao, osnovavši u svibnju 1989., sa Slavkom Goldsteinom i Draženom Budišom, prvu hrvatsku demokratsku političku stranku za vrijeme komunističkoga režima (HSLS - Hrvatski socijalno liberalni savez). Godine 1990., nakon 18 godina nezaposlenosti i izolacije, zapošljava se na Hrvatskoj radioteleviziji kao savjetnik direktora. Iste godine izabran je za predsjednika tada obnovljene Matice hrvatske, a tu dužnost obavlja do veljače 1996., kada je izabran za predsjednika HSLS-a (tada preimenovanog u Hrvatsku socijalno liberalnu stranku). Nakon raskola na 7. saboru HSLS-a (studeni 1997.), osniva novu političku stranku centra - Liberalnu stranku (LS) čijim je predsjednikom bio do smrti 2000. godine. Bio je saborskim zastupnikom u trima sazivima (1992., 1995. i 2000.), a na izborima za predsjednika Republike 1997. bio je kandidat skupine oporbenih stranaka.
Uz njegov pjesnički i filozofski opus treba izdvojiti knjige u kojima je progovorio o svojim zatvorskim iskustvima u komunizmu. U knjizi Zvjezdana kuga (Gotovac, 1995), objavio je svoje zatvorske zapise iz 1972. i 1973., a u knjiga Moj slučaj (Gotovac, 1989) sadržava i njegovu Obranu pred sudskim vijećem 1981. godine. Sabrana djela objavljena su mu 1995. u sedam knjiga (Hekman, 1995), a njegove pjesme uvrštene su u gotovo sve antologije suvremenoga hrvatskog pjesništva i prevođene su na albanski, engleski, francuski, njemački, rumunjski, talijanski i na neke slavenske jezike. Dobitnik je nagrade Grada Zagreba (1968.) i nagrade Tin Ujević (1991.). U hrvatskoj je povijesti ostao najpoznatiji kao vječito angažirani intelektualac, publicist i briljantan govornik. U spomen na život i djelo Vlade Gotovca, 2001. osnovan je Institut Vlado Gotovac, a 2009. kreirana je i internetska stranica https://vladogotovac.org/.
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Lokacija:
- Imotski, Croatia 21260
- Metropolitan City of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Zagreb, Croatia
Gadó was born in a Jewish middle-class family. Both of his parents were deported in the Second World War, but they were among the few who survived. In the post-war era, members of the family joined the Hungarian Communist Party, and he was raised in this spirit. He started his career as a convinced communist and a more or less loyal cadre of the regime in the 1950s, and he remained a communist until the 1960s. Beginning in 1958, he worked at the archives of the party daily Népszabadság [Freedom of the People], from where he was fired for one of his articles in 1963. He took a position at the Central Statistic Office (KSH), which was kind of a depot for ideologically deviant social scientists and intellectuals. At both places, he had some degree of access to confidential papers of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI). At KSH's library he started to read the foreign press extensively. Furthermore, a friend living in Switzerland got him a subscription to the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (and also paid for it), so Gadó was well informed in foreign affairs. His views changed as a result, and he ceased to be socialist. He left the Worker's Union in 1965 and the Party in 1967.
1967 was a year of revelations for him: the Six-Day War demonstrated that Jews did not need to accept the role of the victim, but could act as self-confident agents fighting for liberty. For Gadó, helping nurture this sense of confidence and develop a dissident stance towards the Kádár regime were two sides of the same coin. He started to rediscover his Jewish heritage, and as a consequence he came to appreciate the historical role of the middle class in Hungary. He found that the regime's official cult of the proletariat prevented the middle-class from fulfilling its role in contemporary society, so he came to regard socialism as a dead end. In terms of foreign policy, the regime took a pro-Arab, anti-Israeli position, and it represented Israel as the aggressor, which further distanced Gadó from Kádárism.
He started to produce leaflets using a toy-press made for children in 1970/71. On the leaflets he printed slogans like "The press is lying about Israel!" He also wrote on walls with chalk, and he was arrested for this in 1973. The following year, he was imprisoned for 9 months. The political police never tried to turn him into an agent. Personal circumstances may have played a role in this: Gadó personally knew Sándor Geréb and Pál Hajdú, leaders of the III/III Department at the time, who had been members of the Hungarian Workers' Youth Association (MADISZ) after the Second World War, together with Gadó.
After he was released, he considered emigrating, but he was not given a passport. It was also difficult for him to get a permanent job: he made his living doing translations. In the early 1980s, he became involved in samizdat production via György Krassó. Once Krassó asked Gadó if he had a copy of Villon in the emigré poet György Faludy's translation, because he wanted to publish it in samizdat. Gadó lent him the book. Through Krassó, he met Demszky, János Kenedi, and János Kis, and he became involved in the activities of the democratic opposition. He published in several organs of the press, including Hírmondó and Beszélő, he produced independent samizdat brochures. In 1986, he allied with Jenő Nagy and Tamás Mikes to launch Demokrata. This organ was supposed to address the less educated strata of society, and it was also radical. They aimed to reach a wider audience than the other samizdat periodicals.
In 1987, Gadó started his own samizdat journal, Magyar Zsidó [The Hungarian Jew]. It was released in 800-1000 copies. Gábor Demszky provided a typewriter, and Attila János Ötvös printed the journal. Costs were covered by Gadó himself, and it was a more or less self-sustaining investment. In spring 1988, the third issue was confiscated by the police, but György Krassó, who was then already living in exile, mimeographed the copy he had, and sent it to Demszky from London. Demszky then reproduced it in Budapest in multiple copies.
He made his living as a translator and also as a distributor of samizdat materials. He was constantly under surveillance by the political police. After the change of regimes, he became the first legal Hungarian correspondent of Radio Free Europe.
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Lokacija:
- Budapest, Hungary
Henryk Gajewski (born 1948) is an artist, a photographer, a film director, a theoretician, and a cultural activist. In the years 1972-1978 he ran the Galeria Remont and subsequently, until 1982, the Post Remont gallery, an experimental arts and education centre open to new trends in culture. Gajewski organised the international festival of performance art, the International Artists’ Meeting (I AM) in 1978, and was one of the main promoters of punk music in Polish People's Republic. Soon after the introduction of martial law, he emigrated to the Netherlands where he lives today.
Gajewski was born in Białystok. As a student of Faculty of Electronics at the Warsaw University of Technology he founded Galeria Remont in the “Riviera” Student Dormitory, which he managed with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski until 1977. Initially Gajweski conformed with conceptualism, dominant in contemporary art at that time, however he would gradually turn towards sociocultural contexts and conditions of artistic activities. Already in his first exhibition at Remont Gajewski titled Ona (Her) in 1972 he confronted two types of images of women: from the press and popular newspapers and those made by kindergarten and primary school-age children. Two years later Gajewski created Book for Elise (Książka dla Elizy) for his daughter. The work featured blank spaces, which were to be filled in the subsequent years with photographs taken at various locations and in different situations as his daughter grew up. The book itself was meant to circulate among the artists, Gajewski’s friends, in fashion similar to mail art.
Gajewski's fascination with child's imagination manifested itself most significantly in Other Child Book (Inna książka dla dziecka) a project carried out between 1977 and 1981 with participation of 250 artists from 29 countries (i.a. Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, and Henryk Stażewski). The books that had been sent in were presented in 1979 at the Palace of Culture and Science and in the main hall of Warsaw University of Technology. The aim of the initiative was to create books for children that would instil sensitivity and creativity, thus substituting textbooks, which teach submission and routine. Gajweski organised actions and workshops with children dedicating great attention as to how stimulating creativity can impact and the social reality.
Educational work and activities were just one of many means that Gajewski used in an attempt to escape the ivory tower of modernist art. Others included playing with audience, as in case of the fictitious meeting with Andy Warhol in 1974. Gajewski designed a poster with the image of the creator of pop art, his name, date, and a note: “exhibition opening, meeting”. Also, as a part of the hoax, even a luxury apartment at one of high-profile Warsaw hotels was to be rented for Warhol. Once the audience gathered in large numbers at Galeria Remont at the time indicated on the posters, it turned out the American artist did not arrive. The point of this action was indeed a “meeting” however not with Andy Warhol, but rather with the persons arrived at the venue.
The interpersonal, existential sense of a meeting was highlighted once more in 1978 during the International Artists’ Meeting, abbreviated as “I AM” or “I am”. It was the first review of performance art of such extent in Central and Eastern Europe. It was this event that contributed to the establishment of performance art as an art category as such. Also, thanks to the concert of The Raincoats I AM symbolically introduced punk to Poland, i.e. a first official punk performance, that within a year and half triggered a proliferation of Polish bands, and made Remont a permanent venue for punk events.
Gajewski worked closely with Jan Świdziński and shared his concept of contextual art — an art consisting primarily of communication between persons in various situations and negotiating meanings between different contexts. The communication aspect of art seems to be crucial for Gajewski, which partially explains his interest in punk. Interpersonal art that relied on communication had to transcend institutional frameworks and be in touch with the social transformations’ dynamics. Gajweski perceived punk, with all its vividness, expression, and provocativeness, as an extremely significant manifestation of social life, a popular culture phenomenon, which could not be disregarded. Having avid interest in futurology, he tried to combine artistic praxis with sociological forecasts, which led him to the formulation of the concept of “pre-facts”, i.e.events that cause the occurrences of particular facts in the future. The phenomenon of punk in the late 1970s can be interpreted as a “pre-fact” of the nearing social unrest.
From 1978 to 1981 Remont was probably the most important spot on punk community’s map of Warsaw. It hosted concerts and Sound Clubs (rock, world, reggae, and ska music events), as well as meetings of fans and artists. Gajewski photographed the colourful punk community, shot films with musicians, e.g. Tilt Back in 1980 and Passenger in 1984, published a cassette tape with the recordings of performances during the 1st Polish New Wave Festival in Kołobrzeg in 1980, and finally, published the PUNK, Post, and Post Remont leaflets and fanzines.
Meanwhile, in 1978, Galleria Remont closed down and was replaced by Post Remont, a centre focused on education and cultural activism, open to new trends, styles, and genres, breaking with a typical profile of a gallery. Punky, experimental Post Remont was an act of defiance both aimed at the world of conceptual art, visibly exhausted in the late 1970s, and at the trivial and idle popular culture offered by entertainment industry. Post Remont hosted presentations of artists’ books, mail art, video art, happenings and performance art. Its activities were interrupted by the introduction of the martial law in December 1981.
Shortly afterwards, at the beginning of the following year Gajewski left for Amsterdam, where he continued his artistic activities. He presented his complicated life story in Identity, a 1985 film addressing the issues of origins, religion, language, and fatherland from the perspective of a Polish immigrant in Amsterdam. “I was born in Bialystok, Poland, the home-town of Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of the Esperanto language. (Esperanto was designed as an international language.) Since 1982, I have lived in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Here I communicate with people in English. My children, Eliza and Pierre, write to me in French and I answer them by recording my voice on an audio cassette (I cannot write in French). I was taught Russian for 11 years, as was every educated Polish citizen, but I cannot identify myself with that language. Slowly but surely I am forgetting my mother tongue and, at the same time, my English is too poor for me to adequately express myself. Say hello to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but tell him that besides language there is also FEELING.”
Gajewski continues his career as an artist and a filmmaker. His works were presented at i.a Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Le Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, MACBA in Barcelona, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and Verzetsmuseum in Amsterdam. Apart from his artistic pursuits, Gajewski runs a tango dance school.
His activities in the 1970s and early 1980s were met with unappreciative and distrustful reactions of the authorities of Polish People's Republic. Gajewski’s wide contacts abroad raised suspicions, while artistic provocations and promotion of punk bands caused distrust. The world of art also displayed disapproval, repulsed with Gajewski’s legitimisation of loud-mouthed punk bands.
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Lokacija:
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Lokacija:
- Kraków, Poland