[artinfo] PRAGUE BIENNALE is the one and only PRAGUE BIENNALE
Flash Art International
info at praguebiennale.org
Mon May 23 19:47:39 CEST 2005
PRAGUE BIENNALE 2
PRAGUE BIENNALE is the one and only PRAGUE BIENNALE
The first edition of PRAGUE BIENNALE took place in 2003. On that
occasion we asked the Prague National Gallery to host the exhibition.
The director of the gallery, Milan Knizak, conceded this hospitality
reluctantly and continuously tried to hinder the event (suffice it to
think that he forbade us the use of the photocopiers, the fax
machines and the computers belonging to the National Gallery, thus
compelling us to use an Internet point outside the National Gallery
building). But the most hateful and improper gesture was denying our
Producer/Manager, Jiri Prihoda, access to the National Gallery, for
the completely trivial and personal reason that Prihoda had dared to
criticize one of Knizak's very own installations during a debate. But
the cherry on the cake was that Knizak took, for his own benefit, the
money earned from the entrance tickets to the Biennale, a total of
100.000 euros, with the excuse that there was only a verbal, not a
written agreement.
For this second edition, since the very beginning we have excluded
the possibility of working with a person who is unprofessional and
basically unscrupulous, such as Milan Knizak, who uses the Prague
National Gallery as his own personal feud (and where he has created,
as if he was a great protagonist of the art scene, close to Beuys, a
room of his own).
For those who live outside the Czech Republic and do not know Milan
Knizak, perhaps a brief introduction is necessary. One of the latest
Fluxus artists and certainly not one of the best, he is known to have
been a bit of a rebel in the past, opposing local traditions and
systems. After the fall of the Berlin wall and thanks to his many
friends who were politicians (and not exactly progressive ones), in
particular the President of the Republic, Klaus, he began his
unstoppable ascension that in no time at all took him from being a
simple professor to becoming the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts
and immediately after the Director of the National Gallery and of all
the museums in Prague as well as a member of the Board of Directors
of the state television.
The Czech Republic's desertion of the international art scene
An all round man of power indeed. Power which in a short while made
him forget his past as an arsonist and made him become a fierce and
implacable enemy of every form of new and progressive/avant-garde
art. He bitterly fights and boycotts all the young artists from
Prague and only patronizes the mediocre and incapable ones. He
becomes the paladin and supporter of the most backward Prague
retro-garde by exhibiting it in his National Gallery and trying to
export it abroad. Never have the artists of the Czech Republic
received so little attention and consideration abroad as during the
last few years due to the lack of support and encouragement from the
National Gallery. And Milan Knizak is the only one responsible for
the total absence of Prague and Czech art on the international art
scene. Just when new and interesting cultural and artistic proposals
such as those of Poland, the Slovak Republic and Hungary, were
starting to come into the limelight, Milan Knizak was slow to support
artists of any quality.
Consequently it would have been impossible to even consider working
together on PRAGUE BIENNALE 2, which was conceived, promoted,
financed, created (thanks to the enlightened sponsor Mattoni) and
brought to success despite the continual ill-treatment and boycotting
that Mr. Knizak subjected us to in 2003. Reluctantly and only to take
away our ideas and possible advantages, he gave us hospitality in his
National Gallery (sending us also the bill for the postage stamps for
the invitations that we had printed ourselves and brought to Prague,
as well as the electricity bill at the end of the exhibition!).
And we, being people who like to work calmly and without traumas (the
work and stress are tiring enough without additional trauma from
internal battles) tried to find a venue for the new edition of PRAGUE
BIENNALE that was not the National Gallery, having to face
substantial stress and costs that reduced our already limited budget.
But do you know what happened? Dear old Milan Knizak, who for decades
has never done a thing, who in his National Gallery never hosted an
exhibition of contemporary art apart from the routine ones passed on
to him by local cultural institutes (for example recently: an
exhibition of Chinese watercolors) as a response to our unwillingness
to work with him anymore, suddenly decided to organize a PRAGUE
BIENNALE of his own, knowing perfectly well that the idea behind the
biennale and name belonged to us. But it does not end there: seeing
his total incompetence and that of his staff, apart from wanting to
name the exhibition PRAGUE BIENNALE, he is trying to invite those
curators that we had invited for the first edition. The majority of
these curators are scandalized and refuse, yet he manages to catch
some renegades who are starved of curatorial projects.
Milan Knizak's group show will have to
change its name shortly
Despite continual requests from our lawyer and injunctions of the
Prague Court of Justice that invite him to change the name of the
event (our copyright on the brand does not allow someone else to
associate the name of Prague with an international art biennale),
confident of his backing from politicians coupled with his arrogance,
he continues unabatedly to call a most ordinary and disassembled
group show the "Prague International Biennale," thus wrongly inducing
curators, artists and members of the public who think that they are
taking part in our Prague Biennale whereas in reality they are taking
part in a simple group show that will shortly have to change its
name. Those who have been invited to take part in PRAGUE BIENNALE2
are exclusively the artists and curators who received an invitation
signed by Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontova.
In the light of the hundreds of letters of explanation that we
receive from curators and artists who have been invited by Knizak who
thought they were going to be taking part in our Biennale, we felt it
our duty to clarify our position with regard to this ambiguity. For
this reason we are telling everyone that PRAGUE BIENNALE IS THE ONE
AND ONLY PRAGUE BIENNALE and will be held from the 26th May at the
venue of Karlin Hall (Thamova 8-14) where we shall be waiting for you
all to see together the most grandiose and interesting exhibition in
Central Europe. The other exhibition at the National Gallery is
merely a group show, a caravan of artists and curators that act as
testimony of Milan Knizak's mental confusion and his sole desire to
bring harm to others.
Please visit the PRAGUE BIENNALE 2 website: www.praguebiennale.org
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