#34 archaeology of euphoria
At the end of 1989, totalitarian regimes in Eastern Bloc collapsed, which radically foreshadowed the development of the next decades and became an impulse of the end of history, the concept by Francis Fukuyama who theoretically outlined the post-historical phase of Western neoliberalism in 1992. The prevailing bipolar view of the political change at that time often simplifies the situation. With sufficient distance today, we can look at the political and social changes not from the perspective of a turning point, but rather of “melting” or “transition”. It is a chance to describe not only the turning point itself, but also the overtures and finales of the related transformations, an attempt to describe many misunderstandings across the society, its dead ends and excesses. Such a perspective should not look only at one milestone, but at the entire transition phase from the 1980s to the establishment of neoliberal capitalism.
The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when postmodernism became more widely established as an artistic direction in Czechoslovakia. Postmodern theories not only responded to the sudden looseness of many fields, including arts, but also legitimized a number of disparate eclectic processes, thus actually delaying a real discussion on modernity as an aesthetic and social milieu. How are all these fundamentals and roots of our present democracy seen from today’s perspective? To what extent are we able to formulate our position at that time and compare it to where we really want to go today? What social and cultural identity did we accept, and under what conditions, and what have we kept from it?
Highlights:
Stephanie Kiwitt
Christopher Niedenthal
Lukáš Jasanský & Martin Polák
Marge Monko
Simon Menner
Pavel Jasanský
#37 uneven ground — Profiles
Karol Radziszewski

Radziszewski’s art, in its multidisciplinary medley, is driven in its roots by a longing to carve out a space of diversity and queer beauty out of misery. Be it the secret queer meeting spots in communist Poland or the place for alternative narratives on history, it is constantly craving for a less miserable world…
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Heji Shin

Although the German-Korean artist Heji Shin attained wider popularity through her photographs for the Spring/Summer 2017 collection of the New York-based brand Eckhaus Latta, which featured explicit images of couples of varying ethnicities and sexual orientations engaging in sexual acts, the true scandal arrived with her portraits of the American rapper Kanye West, who recently elicited controversy through his relationship with the incumbent president of the United States…
Read more#37 uneven ground — Profiles
Karolina Wojtas

Polish artist Karolina Wojtas doubtless has a lot of fun creating her photographs and installations. This usually seems inconsistent with the depth of thought her photographs suggest. Even so, this is exactly what her photographs are: a fluid mix of various kinds of humor, bizarre elements, practical jokes, children’s jokes, and bullying…
Read moreTaste Fotograf #37
#37 uneven ground — Profiles
Alžběta Bačíková

While Alžběta Bačíková’s experimental approach to documentary puts the transparency of the filmic medium in parenthesis, this self-reflexive attitude does not operate at the expense of creating an empathic relation between artist and protagonist, subject and viewer…
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Sidsel Meineche Hansen

One hot summer day, I happened to reach for H. G. Wells’s 1923 novel Men Like Gods. In it, Wells presents his idea of the world of Utopia. People here are precisely carved castings of ancient deities representing the ideal potential development of our society at some point millenia in the future…
Read moreIn stock
Content
- ––– Editorial
- Editorial
- ––– Introduction
- Introduction
- ––– Project
- Matyáš Chochola
- ––– Profiles
- Anetta Mona Chisa a Lucia Tkáčová
- Olof Olsson
- Martin Hrubý
- Svätopluk Mikyta
- Jiří Kovanda
- Christian Lange
- Jan Malý
- Ulrich Wüst
- Dagmar Hochová
- Pavel Jasanský
- Simon Menner
- Marge Monko
- Lukáš Jasanský & Martin Polák
- Chris Niedenthal
- Stephanie Kiwitt
- ––– Interview
- Tomáš Pospěch: An Interview with Vladimír Birgus, Antonín Dufek, and Miro Švolík
- ––– Discoveries
- Viktor Kopasz
- Jakub Geltner
- Gigi Cifali
- ––– Theory
- Human Scale
- Vilém Flusser
- ––– Events
- Jubilee Rencontres d'Arles
- A Special Anniversary
- ––– Fotograf Gallery
- Markéta Othová
- Bastian Schwind
- ––– Reviews
- Dialectics of a Montage-Maker
- Aperture Conversations: 1985 to Present
- From the Prague Uprising to the General Strike
- To See the Statue Means to Create it Again
- The Magic of the Multiplied Image
Archive
- #35 living with humans
- #34 archaeology of euphoria
- #33 investigation
- #32 Non-work
- #31 Body
- #30 Eye In The Sky
- #29 Contemplation
- #28 Cultura / Natura
- #27 Cars
- #26 Documentary Strategies
- #25 Popular Music
- #24 Seeing Is Believing
- #23 Artificial Worlds
- #22 Image and Text
- #21 On Photography
- #20 Public Art
- #19 Film
- #18 80'
- #17 Amateur Photography
- #16 Photography and Painting
- #15 Prague
- #14 Commerce
- #13 Family
- #12 Reconstruction
- #11 Performance
- #10 Eroticon
- #9 Architecture
- #8 Landscape
- #7 New Staged Photography
- #6 The Recycle Image
- #5 Borders Of Documentary
- #4 Intimacy
- #3 Transforming Of Symbol
- #2 Collective Authorship
- #1 Face