Planet Eden
The exhibition PLANET EDEN: TOMORROW’S WORLD IN SOCIALIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1948 – 1978 will present the vision of the future depicted in the art and popular culture of post-war Czechoslovakia.Every epoch adapts the future to suit its needs. At the beginning of the 1950s, the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia were being persuaded that a Communist utopia was on its way. The launch of the first Soviet space satellites served as a propaganda weapon. It left no one in any doubt that by 2000 we would be making regular flights to the Moon. By the second half of the 1960s those dreams were shown to be unrealistic. What remains of them are novels, stories, pictures, architectural projects and sci-fi films in which technological progress did not stop, but the nature of the future social system became increasingly vague. The unfulfilled future of the socialist past is inspiring contemporary artists to reflect on their post-Communist identities.
- At the end of the 19th century,00:00:10.258
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- hardly anyone accepted that humanity and life on earth00:00:14.529
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- could be closely watched by intelligent beings00:00:21.133
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- whose IQ considerably surpassed that of a human.00:00:26.696
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- Although they were mortals like man is.00:00:32.089
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- People wouldn't believe that humans00:00:36.659
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- might be subject to detailed observation and scrutiny,00:00:41.225
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- similar to man's observation of tiny creatures teeming under a microscope00:00:46.468
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- in a drop of water.00:00:54.324
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- Proud of himself, man has been trying hard to reach his meaningless goals,00:01:00.918
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- with an unshakeable belief in his superiority.00:01:08.877
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- It is a strange feeling, to evoke the ambiance of the past.00:01:14.984
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- But from the depth of the cosmos, we were already watched00:01:23.125
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- by envious eyes of a mind as superiour to ours,00:01:29.893
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- as our intellect is to that of a dumb beast.00:01:36.608
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- Brains of enourmous capacity, with no trace of sentiment.00:01:40.994
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- Coldly calculating plans aimed against us.00:01:47.197
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- Then, on the treshold of the 20th century,00:01:57.528
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- humanity was brutally divested of its illusions.00:02:03.490
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- It is a political exhibition.00:02:27.200
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- I am a bit worried someone might accuse us of being leftists,00:02:29.385
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- of presenting a communist utopia.00:02:35.107
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- We view it as collecting information, paintings, and artifacts00:02:39.916
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- from that period.00:02:45.032
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- Things mirroring the understanding of the future at that time.00:02:48.032
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- The exhibition doesn't deal with history only.00:02:53.064
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- I think it contributes to a larger theme:00:02:55.438
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- the search for a new utopia,00:03:01.350
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- the rediscovery of utopian thinking.00:03:04.477
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- In the past decade, you can see the shock art has experienced00:03:08.274
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- at the loss of utopian thinking.00:03:13.351
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- It can seem that pop-culture, toys, and magazine illustrations prevail,00:03:17.321
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- but we have tried to connect it with art.00:03:22.281
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- Sometimes, one thing appears in several places.00:03:27.188
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- At the start of the exhibition we have displayed00:03:32.171
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- a file of cuttings about austronauts.00:03:37.098
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- It's anonymous. Some enthusiast did it in the 1960s.00:03:39.398
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- He was cutting out information about the first space shuttles.00:03:44.356
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- A few rooms away, there is Július Koller's archive of cuttings.00:03:49.306
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- Koller was very excited about UFOs and other phenomena,00:03:54.314
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- but his collection of newspaper cuttings is framed differently.00:03:59.621
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- It's influenced by his knowledge of conceptual art, of media manipulation.00:04:06.055
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- We also exhibit Karel Honzík's projects.00:04:12.809
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- Honzík was an architect creating utopian projects.00:04:16.940
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- He imagined people's lives in the future, in communism.00:04:21.612
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- At the same time, he wrote sci-fi novels about life during communism.00:04:25.594
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- We also show videos by Zbyněk Baladrán.00:04:31.756
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- Via Honzík's work, he questions our relation to the inter-war avant-garde,00:04:35.342
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- to leftism, to the possibilities that individuals00:04:41.758
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- might change social structures.00:04:47.028
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- Technology Prevails00:05:21.293
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- Martian: Radioactive brain, lungs on the surface of the body,00:05:26.508
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- an uncertain number of hearts, four fingers00:05:31.121
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- The birth of new Martian is made possible by connecting two hearts.00:05:32.891
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- Tomorrow's World00:05:57.085