Risk factors: Cultural opposition collections

What can we learn from archive materials about the culture of opposition before 1989?  What effect did contemporary events have on culture and various intellectual circles? Do these artefacts and collections hold a mirror to ourselves and our own times? The exhibition “Risk Factors” examines the relationships, activities and actions that were either illegal or on the fringes of society before 1989 – those that have become a permanent part of our collective memory as well as those that remain largely forgotten.

Creativity, solidarity and a willingness to risk and accept responsibility for others are the major prerequisites for political and social changes. Therefore, the exhibition pays special attention to grass-roots initiatives, community life and creativity.  Before 1989 culture and politics were greatly interlinked, and that is why, even nowadays, they cannot be presented as two separate areas.  The collections that store and document the cultural heritage of the opposition create catalogues of various forms of independent activities and tools through which culture influenced society.

The exhibition represents a wide spectrum of phenomena related to independent culture and social resistance in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It presents events and initiatives based on open conflict with the regime, and the various ways of alternative functioning of living culture (samizdat, apartment theatre, underground production). The exhibition also pays attention to contemporary subcultures and various forms of independent lifestyles. The exhibited items come from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine and the ex-Yugoslav countries. The exhibits have been selected on the basis of research conducted within the international project COURAGE: Cultural Opposition – Understanding the CultuRal HeritAGE of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries.