We Have Never Been Closer

Can strange things in white cubes, black boxes or public spaces still be transgressive at all? Should artists and cultural workers find fulfilment in the very possibility to create and organise, and in the process somehow 'make a living'? Are we really in a situation where the endless catching up with the West in our region has turned into a cultural demarcation against it, but with no alternatives in sight?

D'EPOG, Farewell, here it comes again!, 2022. Performative intervention in the We Have Never Been Closer exhibition. Video: Johana Novotná. Camera: Peter Važan. [1] [2]

• Nikdy sme neboli bližšie / We Have Never Been Closer, exhibition, tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 24 Nov 2021-25 Mar 2022. Links archival material from artistic initiatives that experimented with formats of collective creation and networking in Central Europe in the early 1990s. Invited artists created an environment for the projects from the 1990s that pays tribute to them, but at the same time brings into play the repressed, dark aspects of the transformation. Curated by Dušan Barok and Ivana Rumanová. Artists: Jan Čumlivski, D'epog, Ferenc Gróf, Nadácia Hermit a Centrum pre metamédiá Plasy, Media Research Foundation, Lucia Repašská, Society for non-conventional Music (SNEH), Matěj Sýkora, erté Studio, Transmusic Comp.. Press release. Photo, [3].
  VIDEO
  .

• Nikdy sme neboli bližšie / We Have Never Been Closer, eds. Dušan Barok and Ivana Rumanová, Bratislava: tranzit.sk, Nov 2021, xl pp. Exh. booklet. (Slovak)/(English)

• Dušan Barok, "Demokratický priestor a demokratická avantgarda: umelecké spoločenstvá 90. rokov v stredoeurópskom priestore", 2021. (Slovak)

• World Wide West: The Advent of the Internet in Awakening Democracies, discussion, online, 2022. With Keiko Sei, János Sugár and Ferenc Gróf.

• An Artist Who Does Not Work for Free Is Not an Artist, discussion, tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2022. With Anna Remešová, Mária Janušová and Miloš Vojtěchovský.
  VIDEO
  . (Slovak),(Czech)

• Tunnel to Freedom and Prosperity: Side Effects of the Transition to Democracy, discussion, tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2022. With Kristina Andělová and Marek Mikuš.
  VIDEO
  . (Slovak),(Czech)

• We Have Never Been Strange, discussion, tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2022. With Lucia Repašská and Michal Murin.
  VIDEO
  . (Slovak)

• Ivana Rumanová, "Postni to, a nič sa nestane", Kapitál, 11 Dec 2023. (Slovak)

• 
• 
• 

 Ferenc Gróf, Das Kapital Raum², 2021, [42] pp. Typographical score for blackboard drawings.