It is the year 2012, and two photographers decided to make a report about the transformation of the country in which they live. They barely remember the years before the crucial date of ´89. They are contemporaries of what is happening right now, more than twenty years „after“. They try to understand and to show the seen while travelling Slovakia – the feature of typical arbitrariness we have towards the countryside, the possession, the architecture and customs which we are able to modify easily into a modern, even lucrative form on „our own“ model.
There is something that vanishes definitelly from our Slovakia, the things around us obtain new meanings, they turn from wood to plastic. The space for life has taken new forms following the commercial rules, from a simple garrage a great party space is born. It concerns as well a birth of something new, while the old should naturally die. It has been twenty years that we have had our State and our liberty. But it is but now that we start looking around and we do not know where is this going to? The photographs mapping transformations of the Slovak country and the man inside it tell us a long story that changes from side to side. Sometimes they are at once brief sentences and long texts of changing facts in the background.
When this visual report is read by those who used to cross meadows on the way to a silent forest willing to pick mushrooms there, where the solar collectors were not spread yet and there were no men camping on the hills to guard the banners, those know that the Slovak people have waken up. They decided to take back at least a part of what belongs to them. That is why most stood up from bar tables and went to the streets. We are a free country, aren´t we? We feel that it is familiar to us, but we do not believe taht it still exists. The history repeats.
For those, who were born recently and don´t know the architecture of building that are not hidden under a layer of advertisings, or what the virgin countryside untouched by a highway is like, is this picture of Slovakia the only one picture of home. The society is swallowed by crime news, tabloids treating the lives of others, and is waiting in some way for the forthcoming end of the world. Somewhere in between we forgot about our own personal story. About the essencial meaning of life that is wisely hidden in the instantanous enjoyment of the democratic plenitude of all goods and pleasures. But there are some who already expect a spiritual tranformation. Sure is only one thing. What is actual today, will become a proof about, for, or against us after some time. A book is an evidence which does not disappear that fast as a newspaper or online article in the crisscross of new and newer ones. The Transformations of Slovakia by Ján Viazanička demands just to open more the semi-closed eye, hidden under UV factor, and look on to the everyday sceneries. Through the eye of Boris Németh we will find out that our social, religious and cultural customs did not sublimate during the years of changes, demonstrations or other exposals dealing with awakening from a carefree ride. We will reveal the big truth that the others are no more responsible for our lives.
For the moment we have not done more than just covered the past with something apparently different. But under the thick coat of posters we will still be able to find the banal, partially perceivable traces of the past, but also empty places. Also thanks to the photographs of Boris and Ján we will know more about our tranformation. The time of change, of the neverending liberty, has just begun.
Autori projektu: Boris Németh, Jana Močková a Ján Viazanička, Fotografie: Boris Németh a Ján Viazanička, Texty: Aurel Hrabušický, Miriam Petráňová a Jana Močková, Výber fotografií: Miriam Petráňová, Úprava fotografií: Boris Németh, Dizajn katalógu: Filip Jurovič, Preklad do angličtiny: Eva Krčmáriková, Vydalo: ARTTODAY (občianske združenie) 2012
04.03.2021
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