WINDOW 1-5(6) - book edition

Book edition with accompanying commentaries and studies.

If all independent cultures are characterized by a certain distrust, with which they prefer to express themselves through "self-management", this is doubly true for Vokno magazine. Not only because it became the centre of Czechoslovak independent culture during the period of totalitarianism, and thus a synonym for political resistance, but also because it could not but focus on its own self-sufficiency and autodidactic approach.
Vokno magazine built a border territory between totalitarian power and free creativity: It became a symbol of the search for independent expression and developed its own creative autonomy in an era of Marxist media bluster. Vokno also created an intellectual base for all individuals who were in an antagonistic relationship with the politics of normalisation. The historical contribution of the magazine, then, is precisely that it was able to defy the limited hypocrisy in a period of the complete crucifixion of free creativity and provided a space for information that could not be published or read elsewhere. It thus inherently ranks among those sources of independent culture that have become, on the one hand, the "generator" of new ideas and, on the other, their effect.

The annotated book edition of the first five issues of the journal, which will be followed by two more volumes, will remind us of the survival strategies of the period, while at the same time giving us a historical perspective on regional and global music trends, visual arts, or the attitudes of certain intellectuals.

Free admission.