[spectre] PRAGUE BIENNALE (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[iram at sarai.net]

Subject: PRAGUE BIENNALE is the one and only PRAGUE BIENNALE
To:      reader-list at sarai.net
From:   "Flash Art International" <info at praguebiennale.org>
Date:    Sat, 28 May 2005 08:54:20 +0200

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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