Several texts, essays, and images  evolving around the theme of the panel discussion, which was organized on the occassion of the exhibtion in Olomouc, November 2023 (https://muo.cz/vystavy/flashback-hermit-1992-1999). It draws on artistic and curatorial investigations into the art and society of the 1990s in the Czech Republic and the Central and Eastern Europe. It was conceived to investigate this subject from the perspective of (then) emerging artist-run initiatives and / or autonomous or independent networks. Those emerged often beyond official centers, comercial, state funded and controled institutions. The main question was: their set up and situation was within the Central European (post-communist) “essentialy” different from the Western, or (Northern) European countries? I would like argue that if there were any differences they were rather a matter of degree, not of a kind. I am aware this statement was often criticized as a “dissent” strategy, and the standard reading of the histories of the Cold War stand on the idea of a bipolar juxtaposition between the “totalitarian”, "undeveloped" East block countries on one side and the "liberal", "democratic" or "free" West block on the other.

Naturally there were many structural and cultural differences around the turning point of the November 1989 breakdown of the East block. The cultural revolution of the 1960s had during the political ‘thaw’ there a more muted and shallower mode in Central European countries. It was suppressed by authoritarian forses in 1968 and survived only in margins of the official culture, or dissent subculture. Such historical differences “accounts for the relatively shallow foundations of cultural liberalism in post-communist countries that made them less immune to the inroads of nationalism and conservatism” (see: Pavel Barša, Zora Hesová, Ondřej Slačálek, eds: CENTRAL EUROPEAN CULTURE WARS: BEYOND POST-COMMUNISM AND POPULISM,  Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2021). Akin to the earlier “underground” or “gray-zone” supressed communities, those initiatives were usually sustained by artists as activists. They were often not professionally educated, seldom bound to academic or state structures and were surviving on the margins. Similar to rather well funded and established international network of Soros Centers for Contemporary Art or Erste Foundation branches, were their activities lingered in unestablished disciplines and / or trans-national informal networks. Such initiatives frequently didn't fit into predefined categories and/or geopolitical communities (as national narratives "Czech", "Polish", "Hungarian" scene, disciplines as "visual art", "music", or "performance"). Such hybrid and heterotopic nature of those collective was one of the reason why only rarely this phenomena attract the curiosity of academic discourse and still awaits the evaluation.

The aesthetic, ideological and economic strategies of such initiatives and collectives covered a wide range of interests and features, but what they had in common was the belief in a narrow relation between cultures, civic values and freedom, both in the individual and in the social meaning of word. To a certain extent, these initiatives followed the pre-revolutionary ‘anti-political’ tendencies, whose social strategy was try to democratize society rather than the change the state. Some of them emerged from wide spectre of dissent communities of the 80s, some of them succeeded to become a temporary alternative to the approach of art to be primarily produced for market, entertainment and consumption.

We would like to thank all who kindly shared their ideas and thoughts and thanks their patience to wait untill or after the expiration dates of this Anthology (for the Forgotten).