The two lectures, presented by the representatives of the Prague-based educative and interdisciplinary platform Fresh Eye, offer an insight into the totalitarian past of Czechoslovak modern history in order to provide a revision of some of its well-established notions and representations. Based on rigorous work with a variety of archival sources (documentary films, photographs, architectonic sketches, correspondence and bureaucratic documents), they examine two different periods and cases: the official approach of the post-war democratic (1945–48) and communist (1948–1955) political representation to the issue of reconstruction and preservation of cultural heritage in the first decade of the post-WWII Reconstruction; and the relationship between the Czechoslovak and Polish contemporary art scene in the period of the 1970s. In both cases, the lectures aim to point out the less known ideological and institutional frameworks through which the opposite regimes can be seen as surprisingly cooperative units and the neighbouring countries united under one central ideological and political framework as non-cooperative singularities.
ANDREA PRŮCHOVÁ HRŮZOVÁ (Fresh Eye, Czech Academy of Sciences): The Two-faced Era of the Czechoslovak Post-WWII Reconstruction: A Cultural Heritage Case Study
PAVLA ROUSKOVÁ (Fresh Eye): In Between the Institutional and Private Sphere: Case Study of Janina Ojrzyńska’s Czech Art Collection
