COURAGE

connecting collections

Already during the Velvet Revolution, students of the archives at the Faculty of Arts, UJEP in Brno started to create an archive of documents, photographs, posters, banners and other items of this important time. The collection grew, not only through their efforts but also spontaneously grew as the collection began to be organised by many students, and in the end, during 1990 it was also completely finished and prepared. The basement of its organisation has become an inventory, which are summarising the individual parts of the collection. There is, for example, an inventory of documents, photographs, newspapers, etc. They are hand written in exercise books, and they are still key in locating the huge amount of documents and charters.

This ceramic piece was created by Halyna Sevruk. She titled it "Ivan Svitlychny" in order to show her deep love and respect for this leader of the Ukrainian sixtiers movement. Her portrayal meant to underscore his importance in forming the Ukrainian national consciousness and civic bravery of the sixtiers, who were persecuted for their words and their pursuit of truth. The martyred figure is winged and crucified. Quite importantly, at the very center of the piece is a book, as Svitlychny was a soul who thrived on knowledge. The curator of the Sixtiers Museum, Olena Lodzynska, noted during our interview that the date of creation (1969) is also significant, as it was well before the mass arrests that happened in the winter of 1972, when Svitlychny and many other sixtiers were taken by the Soviet authorities. This gives the piece an unsettling and prescient quality. 

It was established in 1983 in a small town Pulawy near Lublin, and performed until 1988. The composer and lyrics author was Tomasz Adamski, who was also a guitar player, and later a lead singer as well.

Adamski shouted the text with his hoarse voice, accompanied by dirty guitar riffs. With this aggressive vocal, high pace and its sudden changes, an early Siekiera resembles the seed-punk The Exploited or the thrash-metal Motörhead, rather than better-known Western punk stars.

The lyrics of songs such as Atak Już Nadchodzi, Nadchodzi Zwykłe Świństwo, Krwawy Front, Rana Kłuta, Zabij ty!, Oddział ślepych  compose of just a few words expressing aggression, cruelty and nihilism of war. Songs may be interpreted as a fascination with violence and chaos of war, but also as an anti-war expression, targeted at the youth which underwent an obligatory army recruitment – in an authoritarian state which has just directed an army against its own civils.

Na wszystkich frontach świata is a compilation of 30 studio demos and concerts’ recordings in Jarocin and Wroclaw in 1984, so the beginnings of the band. Those recordings have never been published before in any form. They were released in 2008 thanks to the activities of Robert Jarosz and his Trasa W-Z Archive. He managed to persuade to cooperate Sławomir Pakos, an owner of a small record company in Katowice, W Moich Oczach, which specialized in punk and reggae. The record was released in a series “Legends’ manufacture” and was accompanied by a modern cover designed by Wilhelm Sasnal, famous Polish painter, as well as 40-pages long booklet with lyrics in Polish and English, photographs and commentaries.

The news on  „Jarocin’s music” comeback was noticed in media and the edition was quickly sold out. It inspired the band to get back to making music and releasing a new album in 2011.

This is an existential novel by the Slovene émigré writer, poet and essayist Zorko Simčič, who wrote it in Buenos Aires in 1957. This novel is considered the first existentialist literary work in the Slovenian language and the greatest achievement of Slovene émigré literature in general. Later it was translated into English, Polish and Hungarian. The Slovene edition was only published after the democratic changes of 1991, which demonstrates that Simčič was a forbidden and undesirable author in socialist Slovenia.

The novel's story is devoted to a Slovenian intellectual who, after the war, goes away to Argentina in exile. Through his character and fate, Simčič describes the ideological divisions among the Slovene people during and after the Second World War. However, the novel does not deal with external events, but rather the intimate drama of a Slovenian intellectual who struggles with his wartime memories in the post-war period. Simcič depicts the restlessness of a fugitive who has lost his homeland and the inner mental division between the fidelity of his wife and his in love for another woman, who paradoxically belongs to the opposing ideological side.