COURAGE

connecting collections

From the agents’ reports about the Orfeo-group, one gleans insights into one of the most unique alternative theatre companies in Hungary. These accounts were based on personal meetings and recollections of the performances. The secret police was interested in members’ political views, and they wanted to know how their ideas were presented in the plays and the talks and debates held after the performances. These documents are preserved at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL). The folder with the cover name “Community” shows how the political police created a picture about a group of “hostile” artists, who were perceived as dangerous to “the existing social order.”

The members of Orfeo built a semi-detached house in Pilisborosjenő (15 kilometers from Budapest) between 1972 and 1974, when they wanted to improve the conditions under which they worked. The first house became the home of the actors of the Orfeo Studio. The Orfeo Group constructed a commune, while also holding theatrical and musical performances and creating artwork and photos. The creation of a collection on their work is the result of ordinary activities and an alternative, opposition-cultural lifestyle, which was, in turn, embodied in a house and objects. The inner spaces, the furniture in the house, and the uses of the furniture themselves are artistic works. The houses were spaces of the alternative theatre work and alternative lifestyle of Orfeo, which was condemned by the state authorities as violating the norms and morals of social coexistence.

The Pitch-In Culture was a unique phenomenon of Polish cultural landscape of the 1980s. This informal community brought together radical, critical, and progressive artists from two different generations: the former members of the Zero-61 group and the Film Form Workshop, who had begun their activities back in the 1960s and their younger colleagues, who were breaking up with conceptualism and the ethos of the avant-garde. The nihilistic, anarchistic, neo-Dada circle of the Pitch-In Culture distanced itself both from the state-supported art and from the so-called “church” art created by artists related to the political opposition. The Pitch-In Culture Collection presents artists, their works, manifestos and texts, as well as the documentation of exhibitions and artistic performances.

Polish artists and circles involved in performance art were in many ways critical of Polish People's Republic authorities. They would often be involved in the so-called “second circuit” of publishers and galleries that functioned without public support and independently from national institutions. Performers’ actions themselves were also loaded critically not only towards the authoritarian practices of the “people’s” government, but also the patriarchal and hierarchical aspects of Polish culture. 
The Archive of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw presents the history of Polish performance art. It uses an attractive web portal to publish photographic and video recordings of artistic actions along with commentaries from curators. The Archive is also engaged in research and promotion activities, and is participating in the preparation of Museum’s permanent exhibition.

The collection of Society for Queer Memory represents a unique set of daily needs items, printed materials, private funds and oral testimonies capturing the history, memory and everydayness of LGBT/queer people living in Czech milieu. The oldest members of the community are perceived as bearers of a specific historical memory based on their experience of the second half of the 20th century, when they were criminalized and subjected to repression by the state. Thus, the collection focuses also on defensive strategies of “dual life” of this particular social group, both official and private.