Exhibition website: stratenyclovek.zdruzenie.ooo
The exhibition and performative project is titled The Lost Human. The name is derived from the poem of the same name by Milan Adamčiak:
“One day I just noticed That I was Slowly disappearing. Initially no one could See or Hear it, nor could anyone feel it when they touched me. I Seemed quite Normal like anyone Else every morning I woke up I got up Or I didn’t I don’t remember That exactly nevertheless I was Alive it is infeRable and I’m prepared to fight for It if it comes to that.”
– Milan Adamčiak: The Lost Human (excerpt)
The curatorial project is conceived as an intermedia environment expanding beyond the walls of the exhibition venue, which will be its “base camp”. However, it will also include works that take place at other venues or online. The project actively works with the local community with the genius loci of the “inland” of the towns of Banská Štiavnica, Podhorie, Banská Belá and their environs, where Milan Adamčiak has lived in his late years. The multi-generational international exhibition explores the interactions of artists from different fields with each other and also with people from the local community. We present you the report on how they perceive the rapidly changing world in which we all live together. The selected works and performances are related by the fact that it is possible to interpret them as crypto-self-portraits. Each of them uses various means to explore the themes of isolation and endangerment but also the search for escape, the way out.
The exhibition with live performances presents authentic statements on the reality experienced in various periods from the 1960s with reference to the challenge and strategies of creative survival of artists after the milestone year 1968. It will also touch on the period after the revolutionary 1989 and other, later crisis periods working with current global and local experiences at the societal and cultural level that have currently exposed the repressed urgency of environmental and socio-political reforms in the post-pandemic era.
Environmental issues that are present in every discussion about the future form the meta-text of the entire exhibition. Even from this perspective, we do not lose sight of the importance of the conversation of artists as specific people from real cities. Through their works of art, we outline possible trails or maps of the evanescence of individuals for the benefit of connecting with other natural or cultural entities. We present an insight into the reflections of artists about the present but also into their visions of the future. As the Czech poet Miloslav Topinka writes in the poem Faiths – Quivers of Speech: “To offer everything I have – whispering, humming, pounding, grunting, muttering, mumbling, thunder, tide, sea foam, stellar vortex.” (excerpt).
The opening of the exhibition took place on 22 and 23 October 2021 in parallel with the event JAMA – 75th Year of Milan Adamčiak.
Exhibiton venues:
Parter BSC, Banská Štiavnica; Hájovňa KTC, Banská Štiavnica; Krčma u Michala, Banská Belá; Pub, Podhorie; Banská Belá – train stop, Banská Belá; Na Záhradke Gallery, Košice; Country House Dovje, Dovje.