A performer and a conceptual artist Peter Kalmus carries out events which should get people at individual town memorials in Košice to re-evaluate history. I am going to introduce some of the recent events realized together with a society Res Cassovia. The society, whose members are also participants of November 1989, aims besides public discussion also at foundation of a Museum of Communism in Košice.
19.1.2011 on the day of Košice liberation and the death of Jan Palach, he criticised a bust of Ladislav Novomeský, one of the first communists who also managed to engage in normalisation in his declining years. The artist linked these facts in a short event when he dressed the bust in a sweater with New York sign. He publicly polemized with a question if a Soviet soldier who had never experienced liberty was able to bring one to the country. The following event took place at a memorial bust of a major Ludovít Kukorelli (made by an academic sculptor Arpád Račko) which was allegedly used as a secret box of CIA agents in the days of cold war.
Victorious February. About one month later on 25th February 2011 an ideologically related protest against a foundation stone of a Victorious February 1948 memorial was held. The socialist regime didn’t manage to build a planned concrete rainbow and on the spot remained just the foundation stone which Kalmus painted black. The city mayor of Košice was publicly asked to set up a Museum of Communism.
Protest against a bust of Jánoš Esterházy revelation. The most controversial event was held on 14th May 2001 during a revelation of a bust of Jánoš Esterházy (considered by historians a fascist, an anti-Semite and a symbol of southern Slovakia occupation) in Košice. After the revelation, Kalmus expressed his disapproval of the act by an attempt to wrap the bust in toilet paper. It resulted in a physical conflict after the organizers had tried to prevent him from doing it.
Hockey 28.3.2011 Together with a painter Ján Vasilko, Kalmus remembered events from 1969 when ČSSR won twice against Soviet Union in a hockey world championship in Stockholm. After writing two historically important scores on a pedestal of a removed statue of Klement Gottwald, he pointed out the last mass anti-soviet demonstrations in Košice and Czechoslovakia. The event was held in front of a Technical University in Košice, where these demonstrations would always end.
Jana Kapelová
