Far Right assemble to protest Czech decision to deport KKK David Duke

by funderlanders Sun Apr 26, 2009 23:51

Only about 90 neonazis walked through Prague today and got photographed. They didn't even daub the jewish cemetery or mention the protocols of Zion forgery which of course was supposed to be based on earwigging there. I made scant reference in the report above to the Entropa artwork of the failed Czech EU presidency which I would like to expand on because I think it is thought provoking and obliquely relevent.

Many of us grew up with notions of Europe and the EEC based on school-maps and what little history had managed to lodge between our ears. Czechoslovakia was the place Hitler got from Chamberlain and apart from Milan Kundera and Franz Kafka didn't really figure highly in our concept of Europe or our place in the world. Sure it had resisted the Soviets and invented semtex but until the velvet revolution and the contemporary trendiness of Prague (thanks to the rough guide series of publications which could move as many young people about in the late 20th century as twitter appears to be able to do in the early 21st) we never gave much though to its territorial and cultural unity. Accordingly we didn't even read Kevin Myers or his antithesis John Waters thoughts on the partition which gave us the Czech and Slovak republics. Then thanks to the expansion of the EU under Bertie Ahern the former warsaw pact group of states were brought, long before their economies had reached parity, into the EU.

We had cheap workers and the money was flowing and many nice tolerant and intelligent people left the "east" to come to the "west" in droves just as sharp speculators went from the other way round. This of course helped create a new idea of where "central Europe" and ensure that many intolerant and often stupid people who though everywhere never seem to travel well, were left in their home states getting elected, often in twin sets to react to their soviet and previous WW2 experience of either nazism or homegrown fascist regimes allied to Hitler .

One such character headed up the Czech republic's government as it accepted the presidency of the EU. He described Obama as bringing us all on the "Road to Hell". Though some would say something was gained in the translation and he didn't really mean to be offensive. Then thanks to the global economic crises which spoilt the investment of "westerners" in "central" Europe and also meant there were less jobs about all over the shop - he lost his government and so the Czechs still can't negotiate a proper rescue package from the IMF our age's equivalent of the medieval pawnbrokers.

But one piece of art will be talked about for years, it was supposed to show how Europeans could live together and celebrate their diversity and difference. It was commissioned from David Cerny who later of course had to give all the money back. It weighed 8 tons and depicted a sort of model kit map of Europe where every state was an insult based on stereotypes and the British along with northern Ireland had been left out.

It was very famous and the Bulgarians objected to the depiction of their land as the kind of open toilet many of us might have seen in France had our families afforded international language exchange programs back in the days of the Warsaw Pact, Milan Kundera, lenient Garda treatment of teenage shoplifters smelling of eau de cologne and a functioning apartheid state of South Africa.

Page 15 of the proposal which David Cerny put to the Czech republic for organising over 20 different artists from the EU, on little more reputation than being wellknown in Prague for painting a Soviet era tank pink (long after the soviets had gone) - gave details on the Irish contribution. It has never been reproduced in Irish media, perhaps because nobody gave a shit... or is it shite?

"In today’s unifying Europe, there
is something like a need for inner
ethnic exoticism and the marketing
of a distant, idealized Ireland. Th e
stereotypes associated with the Irish
and Ireland are used as one of the
decorations of the entertainment
industry."

and that was supposedly the art blurp of Irish artist John O’Connell whose idea was to show the republic of Ireland without northern Ireland as a sheepskin bag or uillean pipe & this was supposedly his CV :-

Selected Group Exhibitions
2003 - Th e Florence Biennale, Florence
2001 - Th e Blue Leaf Gallery, Dublin
2000 - Irish Art Fair, RDS. Dublin
- Th e Grain Store Art Centre, Dublin
1999 - Artstore, Dublin.
1994 - Th e Brock Gallery Group Show, Dublin
1993 - Th e Court Yard Gallery, Dublin
1992 - Th e Malton Gallery, Dublin
1991-92 - Wyvern Gallery Group Shows, Dublin
1980-90 - Peoples Art Exhibitions, Dublin.
Awards
Caltex National Art Competition, certifi cate of merit.
Texaco National Art Competition, prize for work
of special merit.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2007 - Cafe Culture, Dublin
2001 - Celebrating Colour, Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin
1999 - Th e Education Centre, St. Patrick’s College, Dublin
1998 - Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin
1996 - Club Na Muintoiri, INTO, Dublin.
1995 - Coopers Restaurant, Greystones, Dublin
1992 - Basement Gallery, Dublin

http://www.eu2009.cz/scripts/file.php?id=12541&down=yes

__________________________________________________________________________

Of course he didn't exist. & many places on his CV don't exist. Yet no ministry of culture in the EU seemed to notice that money was being paid out and accolades then criticism passed on artists who never ever walked the earth. But they assembled to hear the launch speech and all except for the Bulgarian government thought it was "jolly good" and reflected their cultures well and even we presume were proud of their young artists witty notions of stereotype, racism and what the neighbours think.
http://www.eu2009.cz/en/news-and-documents/speeches-int...6065/

Entropa is now a bad joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropa#Removing

by funderlanders Mon Apr 27, 2009 15:37

Today's copy of "Tyden" the weekly news magazine published on Monday in Prague informs us that the case against David Duke, whose bodyguards during his short stay were the neonazi group "Národní Odpor", may continue & cite its source as the head of the Prague 1 state attorney's office Mr Sarka Pokorna. He has a reputation for fighting corruption in the police and being quite unsympathetic to this kind of thing & insists Duke faces a three year prison stretch.
http://www.tyden.cz/rubriky/domaci/rasista-duke-bude-da....html
http://www.tyden.cz/rubriky/domaci/rasismus-v-cesku/byv....html

Which brings us to why the Czech police didn't seem so unsympathetic to this kind of thing and let him go. After all US citizens are like leprachauns : you want one in jail you've got to catch it by the scruff of the neck and not let it get back to that land of the free whence nobody has ever got extradited.

The Czech police spokesperson Mr Mikulovský has confirmed that Duke was detained under article 261 of their criminal code, which outlaws the promotion and facilitation of movements aimed at subverting human rights and freedoms.

I'm not a czech lawyer, but I reckon bringing so much attention to the little group "Narodni Odpor" was pretty much promoting them and their agenda...

by Philistine. Tue Apr 28, 2009 13:03

"EU seemed to notice that money was being paid out and accolades then criticism passed on artists who never ever walked the earth."

That seems to account for the vast majority of twentieth and twenty first century artists.

To take just one.

Tracey Emin walks the Earth all right.

However,an artist called Tracey Emin does not walk the Earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed

(Her greatest work.)