MILAN KOHOUT – RETROSPECTIVE
A retrospective exhibition of works by performer, action artist, poet, and teacher Milan Kohout. In 1986, Kohout and several other Charter 77 signatories were expelled from the country because of their political and cultural activities. Today, he works in Boston, Massachusetts. The defining direction taken by Kohout’s American art results from his realization that the capitalist system in the United States is no more than a different form of totalitarianism that one must resist just as much as the hated communist regime. The exhibition presents two key activities in Kohout’s politically engaged work. One of these is the production of activist posters criticizing America’s economy, oil policy, war machinery, media manipulation, religious blindness, racism, and prejudices. Kohout’s main focus, however, remains on action art.
- I would say that engaged art is missing a lot in the society.00:00:09.639
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- It may sound as a terrible definition especially here in the Czech Republic00:00:15.407
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- it is something as a brand on a forehead.00:00:19.228
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- Engaged artist is something as a communist.00:00:25.035
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- But it is not truth. Artists should do engaged art.00:00:31.379
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- This is what I tell my students. It is my opinion.00:00:36.076
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- In my opinion the art has three basic elements: aesthetics, cognition and ethics.00:00:39.907
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- Aesthetics are the shits that dedicate to the beauty, to the form, then00:00:55.125
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- cognitivity uses the brain a bit together with the beauties.00:01:05.817
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- This has already achieved by some masters, thanks goodness.00:01:10.518
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- And finally there is ethics.00:01:15.421
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- What does it tell us in fact?00:01:17.288
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- It tells us there is a brain, eyes and heart.00:01:19.788
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- The heart is the most important.00:01:23.064
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- The heart represents engaged art.00:01:25.690
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- It is not something else.00:01:29.325
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- Let´s get rid of the definition that came out of the former totalitarian regime.00:01:31.041
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- Let´s clean the word "engaged" and put the new form on it, a more contemporary.00:01:39.891
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- The engaged art has been missing in this society for the last 30 years.00:01:46.793
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- That is the reason why the USA has ocurred in such moral mess or collapse.00:01:55.804
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- Because any artist has started being a prostitute in the USA.00:02:07.350
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- All the galleries crank out only aesthetics and cognitive sensations.00:02:13.882
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- There was nobody who would dedicate to the ethics.00:02:19.369
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- Nobody criticise the ruling economical class,00:02:22.756
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- but the contrary everybody drove in the same carrige of capitalism.00:02:28.160
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- But any system either capitalism or communism00:02:32.275
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- when it becomes totalitarian, it is harmful.00:02:36.780
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- It does not matter which name it has.00:02:48.420
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- I think we should find out some new system.00:02:52.149
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- Ecology is fucking,00:02:57.640
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- it is clear that this economical system is unbearable.00:03:00.900
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- Democracy will not solve it, it will just accelerate it.00:03:08.037
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- People will always vote and shout that they want bigger cars and more money.00:03:16.228
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- Over there you can see my ecological piece of art00:03:18.348
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- when I was standing in streets of Boston all the day and clearing the Boston´s sky.00:03:21.557
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- There is some revolution needed, fuck.00:03:36.021
I am Milan’s friend from Boston. Milan’s work is powerful, aesthetically coherent, and courageous. He never seems to be tired of creating, and thus his body of work is also impressive. Great retro exhibition in Prague!!
Julia Goryuchkina
the message, this continual commentary and ingenious campaign against the thoughtless momentum of our found systems ‘out there in the world’ that Milan brings to the world in his work is absolutely essential and necessary for us to even begin to admit the problem … its that first step to admitting you are an addict, in this case an addict of passive acceptance of the established systems of any nomenclature … democracy, communism, etceteracism … these labels we like to put upon ourselves typically start in the words of great philosophers and thinkers that are trying to define a utopia … and then the implementation of these systems becomes something so completely morphed, twisted and dystopic by comparison … nobody is doing the user-centered testing to keep the systems in check … and the philosophical beginnings always, always, always get titty-twisted out into some economic perverse transmogrification that totally destroys the original idea, that original essential core that was the primary kernel of the design idea behind that particular philosophy
so, from my own standpoint as a research practitioner testing the system we all still call democracy … my political renaming that would be far more frank and truthful would be something like this equation below:
democracy + political power and alterior motives + socioEconomic control systems = capitalistic consumerism
we are not ‘a democracy’ here at all … democracy is for the people, by the people in theory … so we would need to have the people, not just the pigs, participate in the actual governance of the people with the needs and greater good of the people in mind for each and every decision … is that even possible?
Milan’s work always points out in very ingenious ways where the system or systems fall short and how he as an individual thinks about the landscape we’re all looking at … well, a good many of us might not actually be looking at a landscape at all, but for those that look and think about it, they’ll want to see Milan and follow his work … they need Milan’s voice … we all need it