Strike a pose.

For the fifth year in a row, the Sculpture Grande exhibition has hit the centre of Prague, featuring sculptures of 'established' artists as well as up and coming artists. The sculptures are scattered around the centre of Prague until the 30th of September.

Julian Opie, 'Imagine you are driving a blue Honda'


Jan Kadlec, 'Pig'

Cross Bones Style.

I'm suffering from a little writer's block, or maybe it's more a blogger's block. I'm not sure.
Last week was spent with my parents, whom I tried to show as much of the city as possible, as well as some things outside of Prague. We visited Karlštejn, a small town south of Prague, where King Charles IV (then ruler of the entire Roman empire) had a castle built in 1348 to save his crown jewels (how decadent). We did a tour of the castle, which was in some ways quite impressive. The town itself isn't very interesting though, and so horrible touristic it makes you wanna kill everyone that's in your way. The next day we went to Kutná Hora, a town east of Prague, which has a beautiful old centre that is under the protection of UNESCO. We visited the St. Barbara Cathedral, which had some 15th century frescoe's that amazed me, and the Ossuary. The Ossuary is a small chapel in Selec, a suburb of Kutná Hora, that contains the remains of the 40.000 people who were buried in its cemetery. Since 40.000 dead people produce quite a lot of bones, in 1511 a monk started to decorate the chapel with the skulls and bones of the deceased, and nowadays the small chapel is completely filled with it. The ceiling has a huge chandelier containing every bone that can be found in the human body, and the corners house four big 'altars' of bones. While we were there, a group of Japanese metalheads were taking pictures of each other while doing the 'horns up'. I wonder how many album covers worldwide contain cheesy pictures taken at Kutná Hora.....

The Ossuary also has its own website.

A new room, with a view.

This nice view belongs to the window of my new room. The past week proved to be the most hectic since my stay in Prague, starting with the arrival of Ernesto, my best friend.
Ernesto arrived last Friday around noon, and after meeting up with him, I decided to take him to my house to show him my room and have a sandwich before hitting town. Little did I know that my flatmate/'landlord' A., who had already told me I wasn't allowed to have friends sleeping over (which I found already pretty ridiculous), did not want me to have anyone over, anytime! So, Friday night I received an angry text message from him, resulting in me rushing home to discuss the situation. To make a long story short: I was not allowed to have people over without calling him first, to ask for permission. This was, to him, only natural, since it was his house, his rules and I had to obey (!) him. When I pointed out to him, so angry I had trouble keeping my voice down, that it was just insane to ask this of me, that I was allowed to have friends over since I was paying him quite a fair amount of rent for a not so big room, and that I didn't want to be treated like a child, he concluded that I did not respect him. Also, I was acting hysterical and childish. So there you go.
The weekend with Ernesto was great. We walked around a lot, had dinner, spent lots of time with my new (American) friends and before we knew it, it was Sunday night again and Ernesto had to catch a 6:40 plane back to Amsterdam. Six hours later, I went to Žižkov to look for a new room, and loved it immediately. It's two blocks down from the TV Tower, in a beautiful, but slightly deteriorated, old building. The room is huge, the ceiling doesn't seem to end and my new flatmate is the cutest Czech girl I've met so far. Monday night I packed all my stuff, cleaned the house, told A. the good news and moved out. Here's to new beginnings.

Tuesday afternoon, my parents arrived in Prague. I was very happy to see them, since it had been five months since I'd last seen them, and the past days I have showed them my city. Because it truely feels like my city now. I've been here for more than six weeks, and I'm home. I can't believe I have to go back in less than a month, and to be honest, I don't want to.

Wasting time with art, again.

Tonight I went to NoD, a gallery right next door to Roxy, one of the oldest and most legendary (underground) clubs of Prague. There was supposed to be some kind of stencil art 'thing', or so I was told by an American guy I met here (one of many; I've met more Americans here in a month than I've met in the past year, bands not included). I asked Jaime, one of the nicest persons I've met here, to come with me (yes, she's American too!) and she came with another nice girl called Jessica, from......well, you guessed it by now.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a stencil in sight. The exhibition consisted of a collection of artworks from different Icelandic artists. Some of the names looked vaguely familiar, as I had visited an exhibition of Icelandic artists the last time I was in New York City, but the works bared no resemblance to anything I had seen there: mostly very complex and almost surrealist drawings and paintings. This exhibition 'Islandia' however, showed some video's and some very poor mural artworks. After a few hours two girls started to do some performance that included laptops, huge wigs with flowers and a lot of screaming through a mega-phone. By then it was time to get the hell out of there, and so we left and ended the night in Duende, my favourite bar in Prague.

There was one work of art at the exhibition that was, well let's just call it 'pretty interesting'. It took me a few seconds to figure out what it was exactly.

The stills were next to a video on a loop. I forgot to write down the name of the artist or the title of the artwork, so I'll just call it 'Talking Penis'.

It's too bad that there's no sound, otherwise you could've heard the penis talking loudly in Icelandic.

By the way, there was a Danish girl also taking pictures at the gallery. I was intrigued by her camera, since it looked like an old fashioned Leica, but a very well preserved one. I asked her about it and she showed me the most beautiful digital camera I have ever seen: the Leica Digilux 2. It's digital, so it has a big screen on the back, but it looks just like a nice old Leica. Now I am probably the last person on earth to stop shooting analogue; I love films, I love the darkroom, I love all the 'hassle' that comes with it. But this was something special.
I probably can't afford it, but I want that camera!

Dangling Man.

'Viselec' ('Hanging out'), sculpture by David Černý, located above Husova.

I prefer to shut up today.

Not in the mood for writing, so I'll just leave you with a few pictures, taken the past few days.

Staroměstské náměstí (Old Town Square). A square in the middle of the Old Town of Prague. It is usually packed with tourists, who are closely watching the Orloj (Astronomical Clock). I was there on Thursday morning at 6 am, and it was almost completely deserted.....

Yesterday, I walked there again, noticing the beautiful facades at the buildings surrounding the square again (and the fiercely blue/grey sky). How I'm gonna miss this kind of architectural beauty...

The TV Tower however, is another story. Located in Žižkov, an area that used to be very rough and working class, it's one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen. It stands on a plateau in the middle of a residential area, and can be seen from almost everywhere in town. It's 216 metres high. In 2001, sculptures of babies by Czech artist David Černý were attached to it.

One year ago today....

? September 1996 - 21 June 2006

Dixie, the most wonderful (and photogenic) rabbit in the whole wide world, died one year ago.

Wasting time with art.

Yesterday I visited some galleries. Since the guide I’m writing is mainly focused on history and culture, I am supposed to ‘know’ about the cultural climate and the (contemporary) art scene in Prague, and visiting galleries is always a good way of getting a taste. Unfortunately, as I already wrote two weeks ago, I have become completely jaded when it comes to modern art. So when I saw that one of the galleries I wanted to visit hosted an exhibition entitled Don’t waste time with art, that sounded promising! The artist, an Austrian ‘media mannerist’ (whatever that may be) named Markus Huemer, didn’t ring any bells, but I was definitely up for some self-mockery.
Unfortunately, the gallery-space itself was more interesting than the exhibition. Huemer does a good job at painting a few bird-like figures on huge, empty stretches of canvas though. It was pretty nice, aesthetic, and sometimes even beautiful. But boring.
One part of the gallery was closed off by a heavy black curtain; a sign next to it warned the visitors only to go in one by one. There was no one there, so I went in and entered a large room, completely dark apart from the bright and sharp light coming from a beamer. In the opposite corner of the space, around 50 small birds huddled together on a wooden branch attached to the walls. It was hot and muggy inside, and the birds seemed scared. On the floor were big bowls filled with water and birdseed, and bird droppings all over. I wondered what the fuck this was supposed to be.
I stood there for a few minutes, observing the birds and taking a few pictures (without flash of course). Nothing happened: there was no sound, no visuals. Just those poor animals caught in a beam of white light, for art’s sake. The brochure accompanying the exhibition contained an interview with the artist, who explained that it was entitled Action Painting: “A conic ray of white light illumines the floor of the black box with hundred alive birds [I guess half of them had died by the time the exhibition was reaching its end] and creates an interesting image on it. Flying birds and their silhouettes affect the spread of light in the box and thus the whole impression from the installation. The birds’ droppings on the floor create haphazard patterns reminding Pollock’s drip paintings.”
Yeah, whatever! I may not be the biggest Jackson Pollock-fan in the world, but this comparison is simply ridiculous. I have seen some of Pollocks works up close in New York in 2005, and I when I entered that 'Pollock room' in the MoMa, I was seriously moved by those huge paintings, bearing an impact still so violent after all those years. Pollocks work is agressive, desperate at times; with an urgency you hardly ever seem to find in contemporary art, since a lot of artist nowadays seem more concerned with being ironic and 'aesthetically sculpting their concept' than just spilling their guts for once.
If Hueller really knows Pollock so well, I'm very suprised that he dares to compare himself to him. To lock a hundred birds in a black box for six weeks and let them eat, drink, fly and shit in the dark, and call that 'Action Painting' is not only pathetic; it's pretty disgusting too.

"I play guitar for my car but I won't get very far..."

Today I was at Levné Knihy again, and I picked up Rise Above, the benefit cd (for the West Memphis Three) containing 24 Black Flag covers by various artists. There are some really good covers on this album, one of my favourites being ‘I’ve had it’ by The Mars Volta singer Cedric Zavala. I love the way he sings it.

(Thanks to my friend Erik, I know how to upload mp3's now! Visit his blog Electric Voodoo for more good music.)

All quiet on the Eastern front.

Yesterday I visited Terezín together with Jetske, a girl I know from Amsterdam, and her friend Gaspar. Terezín is a small fortress town, 50 km north of Prague. It was built in 1780, when Prague was part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire (then referred to as ‘Theresienstadt’) and used in the battle against the invading Prussians.
Already during the First World War was the ‘small fort’ of Terezín used as a prison. When the Nazi’s occupied the town in 1940 (and started calling it ‘Theresienstadt’ again) they built a concentration/transit camp for Jews and political prisoners, and used the small fort as a prison again. Most of the 140.000 people that passed through Terezín were eventually send to Auschwitz.
In 1943, 500 Jews from Denmark were send to the camp in Terezín, after which the Red Cross demanded to visit the camp in order to make sure they were safe there. The Nazi’s came up with a clever plan to trick the Red Cross representatives by building a temporary ‘model camp’. First, a lot of people where quickly shipped off to Auschwitz to hide the fact that the camp was overpopulated. Then, fake shops and bars were opened, and the prisoners were given regular clothing to wear. The whole camp was supposed to look like a nice and peaceful 'temporary home'. The Red Cross visited the camp and saw seemingly content people in spacious rooms, concluding that the transit camp was ‘acceptable and safe’. The Nazi’s, content with their successful scam, decided to make a short film about Theresienstadt (entitled Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet with the addition Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt – ‘the Führer gives a city to the Jews’), to pretend they weren’t as brutal as everyone thought. The actors and crew were all prisoners: forced to cooperate, and killed or transported immediately after the project was finished. The film itself was not widely distributed through the Red Cross, as it was intended, but found in the camp after the liberation in May 1945.

The weather was beautiful yesterday, with a fierce sun and a clear blue sky. When we arrived at the small fortress, there were hardly any visitors. We received a detailed map upon entrance and walked across the whole fortress, entering all the rooms and prison cells, and walking through the 500 m long (!) tunnel that was small enough to make you claustrophobic for the rest of your life.
It was very weird to visit a place with such a horrible past. You know that every room you enter was once filled with people who lived under terrible conditions and were uncertain of their lives, their future. The rooms and prisons were scarcely furnished with what I assume were the original beds and tables, and every space had a sinister atmosphere. And yet, every single room that had a window was occupied by swallows: up high, against the ceilings, were nests filled with little birds screaming for food. Countless swallows flied in and out of the rooms and across the territory.

After three hours of walking and visiting the detailed exhibitions that are scattered around the area, providing a lot of information on the camp, we were desperate for some food and drinks. We left the fortress and headed into the deserted town, and after dinner we waited for hours for a bus that didn’t come and eventually hitchhiked back to Prague.

I am still impressed by the visit, as I was the first time in 1995. I’ve always been extremely interested in World War II, mainly because of the stories my Dutch grandparents, who witnessed it from up close, told me when I was a kid. To walk around in a place that was once used as a concentration camp is fascinating and repulsive at the same time, and it made me wonder if it was in fact the right thing to do. Is it important to make a place like that public, to allow people to walk in, take pictures, touch the doors and beds and tables? Or is it disgusting? Should a place like that be preserved, like it is now, or destroyed? I stood in a huge, empty shower room, used more than sixty years ago to ‘delouse’ people that would be dead in less than five years; watching birds feed their young while other ‘catastrophe-tourists’ came in to take pictures…and I was completely confused.
At the end of the visit we watched a short documentary that contained excerpts of the propaganda-movie about Terezín. You saw a football match between two groups of prisoners, and scenes of ‘happy, healthy’ women talking, sitting on the same beds we had just seen. Different voice-overs, in different languages, kept repeating that “everything is fine in Theresienstadt, I’m not lacking anything at all.”

Mes meilleurs voeux!

Today is my mom's birthday, and I'm not there to celebrate it with her, unfortunately. Chère maman, bon anniversaire!

No big updates. Today, I went to the Museum of Decorative Arts (chock full of glass, ceramics, ornaments etc., it sounds more boring than it actually was), where there was 'A Beastly Show': a selection of animal-inspired work from two Czech artists. It seemed childish but turned out to be pretty cool, with works ranging from photographs and lino-cuts of animals to lobsters and fish made out of plastic bottles (which were quite impressive). One of the artists, Michal Cihlář, makes nice lino-cuts and does all the 'merch' and advertisement for the Praha Zoo. There were two walls filled with his images of animals.




Tomorrow I'll try to go and visit Terezín (also known as Theresienstadt), a town not far from Prague where the Nazi's built a concentration camp in 1941 (or a transit camp actually, since most of the people where eventually send to Auschwitz).

“I dig, you dig, the worm digs too.”

No updates in a week; that probably says enough about the past days. I feel like haven’t really done anything significant enough to post about.
My biological clock was running it own course this week. I’m afraid I only have myself to blame for this: last weekend, the weather was bad and I decided to be wise, stay at home, work and don’t spend any money. The staying at home-part went good, but in stead of only working, I spend a big part of my weekend watching the whole first season of ‘Lost’ online. When it was on TV in Holland, I only captured a few chunks here and there; and once I started watching it again, I was completely hooked. I watched three nights in a row, falling asleep at 6 a.m. in the morning.

Tuesday, George ‘Dubya’ Bush was visiting Prague, promoting his plans for Cold War – The Sequel. For those of you who do not know: the US wants to build a missile shield in Central Europe, to protect us (but mainly themselves) from possible attacks from the Axis of Evil. One part of the shield would be located in Trokavec, a Czech hamlet (97 inhabitants!) not far from Prague. The other part will be located in Poland. There were two days of demonstrations in Prague, although things didn’t really get out of hand. I didn’t attend any of them; I didn’t feel like it (or maybe I’m just lame). But I did walk up to the park not far from the Prague Castle that Bush was visiting that day, to see what security measurements the Czech government had taken. What I saw were rows and rows of small fences, low enough to jump over it. Where the fences closed off streets, groups of bored policemen were gathered; talking, eating and leaning. But the park around the Castle was largely deserted. The fences just stood there, with no policemen in sights, ready to be jumped over by whomever felt like it. I think the Czech have a thing or two to learn about Homeland Security…..

One of the highlights of my week was stumbling upon a beautiful woodcut by a Czech artist from North Moravia called Ferdiš Duša (1888-1958). It shows a young deer looking up, in quite a weird posture. When I showed it to my roommates their first question was "Why is its neck broken?". Whatever. I love it.
The picture is not very clear, unfortunately. It doesn't show how beautiful the cut is: smooth and delicate lines on the body, it's like you can almost feel the fur. The outline is thick. The woodcut is from 1941. I haven't found any information on the internet about it, although there is some info to be found on Duša, but mainly in Czech.

Wednesday, in the afternoon, I went to some sort of panel discussion in the Municipal Library. It was the last day of the 17th Prague Writers Festival, and since this year’s theme was ‘Dadaïsm’, I was curious about the program, which was built around the question "Where has Czech Dada gone, if it ever existed?" Since I have been to lectures and panel discussions like these numerous times, I knew that I would not leave the building with anything that would even remotely seem like an answer to that question.
I sat in a hall with around 50 people scattered, some of them old enough to have known Tristan Tzara (the Romanian poet who founded Dadaïsm) in person. On the stage were a bunch of equally old men, writers and literature professors, and one surprisingly young guy who turned out to be a curator from Zurich. The discussion was in Czech, but headphones were handed out, which allowed you to hear a very British woman’s desperate attempts to translate the mumbling going on onstage. It made me feel like I was at a UN convention.
After twenty minutes, the man next to me fell asleep, and on my other side a couple was making out, so I had no real chance of escaping. I tried to stay focused and actually learn something. After nearly an hour, one of the old guys (Ludvik Kundera, cousin of the famous Czech author Milan Kundera) decided to recite some poems of a poet who may or may not have been on of the few Czech dadaïsts. This spontaneous act of him was of course very ‘dada’, but since the translators were not prepared, they apologized through the headphones and I was forced to listen to nearly fifteen minutes of Dadaïst poetry in a language that barely makes sense to me in writing, let alone in speech.

During all this, I was wondering how it is possible that I have spent the past six years studying art and its history and theories, and although I’m always interested in stuff like this, it doesn’t seem to really capture me nowadays. I always like to give it a try, but while I’m at it, it hardly ever grabs me by the throat anymore.
I’ll be the last person to say “It’s just art”, because I truly believe that art plays a crucial, albeit often underexposed, role in society. Personally, I’m most interested in art that reflects (or has reflected) social structures; I’m attracted to art that springs from conflict, from war, from life changing events. And I'm particularly interested in the avant garde movements dating from the beginning of the 20th century: Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaïsm, Surrealism. These movements came into existence in a time when Western society was undergoing very drastic changes, and that is clearly reflected in almost everything. Besides that, these movements changed the course of art and the way art was looked upon permanently. All the more reason to be curious about what a group of so-called 'experts' had to say about the influence of Dadaïsm on Czech art and society...
But that afternoon, I was just plain bored. And I looked around wondering if anyone really gave a shit. In fifteen minutes, it would all be over, everyone would be outside again, in the sun, and 90% of the things said in that hall would be totally forgotten.

The motto of the festival was 'I dig, you dig, the worm digs too', taken from the poem Es war Erde in ihnen ('There was earth inside them') by Paul Celan, who spend some time in Romania writing surrealist poetry. Hermeneutics isn't my specialty, so I'll spare you my interpretations of it.

The Czech emperor has a whole new wardrobe.

Wednesday evening I went to see Severed Head of State play a pretty good show at Klub 007, a legendary venue in Prague, situated in one of the campus-buildings up the hills. It was a chance for me to meet up with some nice people as well, Nuno and Jenny, who introduced me to some other people.
After the show we descended the Petřín hill to get to the tram stop, and the view of Prague at night was breathtaking. Of course, at moments like that I never have my camera with me. Today I went back up, and although it’s slightly less spectacular by day, it was nonetheless a nice (and sometimes extremely steep) walk.

On top of the hill is the Petřín observation tower, which looks like a miniature Eiffel Tower. Inside the tower, in the basement next to the toilets (what an ungrateful location) you can find the museum dedicated to Jará Cimrman, one of the most famous Czech people of all time.
Jará Cimrman, a playwright and inventor, was born either in 1850, 1869 or 1874 in Vienna and died in Prague in 1914. He is held (nearly) responsible for some great discoveries and was involved in a lot of important events at the turn of the 19th century. He helped Thomas Edison work on the light bulb; proposed the Panama canal to the U.S. government; taught the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein (and was never given credits for it) and advised Gustave Eiffel on the construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Cimrman-museum is full of pictures, personal stuff and prototypes of his inventions, such as the ‘fire-fighting bike’.

It may seem clear by now that Jará Cimrman is not real. His character was made up in the 1960’s by a few Czech actors and was first brought up in a popular radio show called Nealkoholická vinárna U Pavouka (‘Spider's Non-alcoholic Wineroom’; I haven’t figured out this bizar name yet).
But this is not just some old, dusty practical joke: Jará Cimrman is still very popular in the Czech Republic. He doesn’t only have a museum devoted to him; there is also a Jará Cimrman Theatre in Prague that only shows plays he supposedly has written, and when a Czech television network decided to organise a contest for ‘The Greatest Czech’ a few years ago, Jará Cimrman was the designated winner, had he not been disqualified.
I was surprised by the thoroughness of the whole 'joke'; one quick glance at the museum itself is enough to understand how important this myth was and still is to the Czech. I think the explanation behind the whole fictionalization of this ‘should be hero’ (a slogan at the entrance of the museum reads “Genius, who has not become famous.”) could lie in the Czech sense of humour, which seems to be very sarcastic, and fifty years of Communism. In the Communist era, the emphasis was on bringing out all the good the (Czechoslovakian) culture had brought forth, so when someone came up with this undiscovered failed hero who was also a playwright, the government allowed his plays to be performed. And for what I know, they were (of course) full of sarcastic comments; on the Communist government itself, Czech culture and basically everything else one could comment on. A very creative concept, which obviously hasn’t outdated yet.

Typically, the only ‘image’ of Cimrman that can be found is this bust, that was of course destroyed. There are no pictures of him; the greatest Czech alive remains anonymous, despite his incredible life-story.



On a different note: a lot of people have asked me how I'm doing so far. To be honest, I have some difficulties answering this question. I'm doing well of course: I'm in a great city, I walk around a lot, discover new things every day, write, drink coffee, eat good food, buy some books or music. But I don't always realise that I am actually here, now: living here and working here, alone. Going to a show the other night and talking to some likeminded people made me very aware of the fact that I am 1500 km away from everyone and everything that is so incredibly dear to me: my friends, my parents (who live even further away, in France), my band, my house (oh, how I already miss living alone and doing whatever I want, without roommates looking over my shoulder!), Amsterdam. My life. It's like my existence has been put on hold and I am taking a 10 week time-out. Which is good, of course, and I think I really needed it right now. But it can be very hard nontheless. I find myself wondering if my friends will forget me during my absence; if my bandmembers will simply recrute another bassplayer; if my house will burn down.... I wonder if my life would cease to exist and in 10 weeks, I'd discover I have nothing to come back to. I know (well, I assume) this is nonsense, but the thought never really leaves my mind.

So: I'm doing pretty good. I'm having fun, I'm relaxed, I feel inspired and I feel good about the way I'm handling myself here. But for an insecure control-freak like me, it's a tough job.

Good night.

Let's dance.

Although Prague is famous for it’s classical Barok and Jugendstil architecture, and there are some breathtaking buildings to be found here, one of my favourite buildings in town is a modern one (or even a ‘post modern’ one, oh that dreadful P-word!). It’s the Dancing Building (Tančicí dům), often referred to as 'Fred and Ginger'. It was designed as a collaboration between two architects: the Czech Vlado Miluniç and the American Frank Gehry (one of my favourite architects of all time, who designed the beautiful Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain).

Fred and Ginger have been dancing on the bank of the Vltava river since 1996. As you can see, there is a dent in the glass façade on the left side; apparently, this was done so that one of the neighbours would not lose his view on the Prague Castle, which is on the other side of the river. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds pretty good, and ever since I saw Gehry design his buildings (in the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry), which basically comes down to folding strips of silver coloured paper and attaching them with paperclips, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is indeed true.

(A thorough and slightly pretentious essay on Tančicí dům , written by an art historian who did know what he was talking about, appeared in the German art mag Kunst & Kultur in 1997 and can be read here.)

The right to rock 'n roll.

Today, some fierce rain showers finally interrupted the hot and humid weather. During one of those downpours I jumped into a Levné Knihy (‘cheap books’), a store of which the name says all. The tiny shop was crammed with books, cd’s and children’s toys; all dirt cheap, especially to Western European standards. After carefully choosing a plastic watch decorated with an image of Paul Gauguin’s ‘Femmes de Tahiti’ (1891), I stumbled upon some cd’s of the legendary Czech rockband Plastic People of the Universe, of which I bought two: ‘Co znamená vésti konê’ (‘Leading Horses’, 1981) and ‘Kolejnice duní’ (‘Rails rumble’, 1977-82).

The Plastic People of the Universe, which was formed in the historical year of 1968, was around for over 30 years, its history closely linked to the Czechoslovakian Communist years.
The ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 began when Alexander Dubcek replaced Communist leader Antonin Novotny on January 5th. Novotny, a hard-line Communist, was fiercely opposed against any form of Western influence and had successfully ‘purified’ its government. Prague officials hoped that Dubcek would be a more humane leader, but his reform program proved to be too progressive for the Kremlin. The Prague Spring was put to and end in August of 1968, when Soviet tanks and soldiers invaded Czechoslovakia and headed for Prague. After three days of resistance from the people, it was all over. Czechoslovakia would live under a strict Communist regime for the forthcoming decades.
A month after the invasion, Plastic People of the Universe was formed, initially covering songs of bands like the Velvet Underground, the Doors and the Mothers of Invention. After a while, they started to write their own songs as well. Their concerts were happenings in the best 60’s tradition, complete with costumes and psychedelic light shows. During their 30-year existence, the PPU knew nothing but hard times. They were prohibited by law; their recordings, on cassette tapes, had to be smuggled out of the country to be released as records in Western Europe; the Secret Police often broke up their concerts, beating and arresting the visitors, and eventually two of the musicians (together with two other musicians from another band called DG 307) were sentenced to jail, charged with ‘organized disturbance of peace’.
Vaclav Havel, the playwright who would later on become the leader of the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the first democratic President of Czechoslovakia, took the PPU under his wing in 1977, allowing them to practice in his house in the countryside. The PPU also played shows there, while the entire place was circled by police. The band would record a few more records in the 1980’s, which were all released in other countries. PPU broke up in 1988 over a dispute, and some members continued in a band called Pulnoc (‘Midnight’). The Plastic People themselves reunited in 1993, in celebration of the reunion show of the Velvet Underground, their greatest influence so far.

A more detailed history of the Plastic People of the Universe can be read here. I had only vaguely heard of this band before, but after reading the complete story, I was baffled. For a group of people to believe so strongly in their music, to endure decades of censorship and oppression in order to play and record their songs, that is simply amazing. The Czech themselves are convinced that the existence of this band has had a huge impact on the country’s history, and that the two are strongly interwined.

(As soon as I have a solid internet connection in my room I’ll try to upload some mp3’s of the Plastic People of the Universe, and attempt to translate some of their lyrics.)