Notes from the Underground –
Art and Alternative Music in Eastern Europe 1968–1994

The exhibition 'Notes from the Underground – Art and Alternative Music in Eastern Europe 1968–1994' explores the close relationships between the underground music and visual arts scenes in Eastern Europe for the first time. Defying state control and regulation, rock music, punk and new wave, performance, fashion, music videos, and Super 8 films - often in improvised forms of distribution - became artistic forms of expression of a counterculture. Censorship and scarcity stimulated imaginative and often ironic methods of working, so that artists created homemade instruments, recorded their own songs on cassettes and issued small editions of Samizdat magazines. In the more liberal countries of Eastern Europe, such as Poland and Yugoslavia, opportunities to exhibit and perform did exit for neo-avant-garde artists and musicians. In the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, artists and musicians took over and occupied marginal spaces as sites, from which an alternative culture developed and spread. Members of groups lie The Plastic People of the Universe ended up in prison after being persecuted by the authorities. In addition, pirate programmes were first made in the 1980s, when Western video cameras were imported into Eastern Europe.

The exhibition is structured thematically, with numerous works and documentary recordings of performances being shown for the first time. These include, amongst others, archive collections of the Akademie der Künste, early visual notations by Katalin Ladik or a sound object by Karel Kurismaa.

An exhibition in cooperation with Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland. Curated by David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk, adaption prepared with Angela Lammert.

Featuring works of the following artists: AG. Geige, Aktual, Zemira Alajbegović, Sascha Anderson, Auto-Perforations-Artisten, Andrzej Bieżan, A. E. Bizottság, Gábor Bódy, Juris Boiko, Borghesia, Włodzimierz Borowski, Frank Bretschneider, Vladislav Burda, Inguna Černova, Mikolaš Chadima, Ladislav Chocholoušek, Robert Conrad, Lechosław Czołnowski, Lutz Dammbeck, César de Ferrari, Die Gehirne, Tohm di Roes, Janusz Dziubak, else Gabriel, György Galántai, Roberts Gobziņš, Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid, Wiktor Gutt & Waldemar Raniszewski, Jacek Januszyk, Kilhets, Tamás Király, Krzysztof Knittel, J. Kořan, Neven Korda, Bohdan Kosiński, Marko Kovačić, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Jarosław Kozłowski, Gerd Kroske, Ludvík Kundera, Sergej Kuriochin, Kaarel Kurismaa, Kwiekulik, Katalin Ladik, Hardijs Lediņš, Wspólnota Leeżeć, Helge Leiberg, Yuris Lesnik, Via Lewandowsky, Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok, Vladislav Mamishev-Monroe, Davorin Marc, Florian Merkel, Andrzej Mitan, Timur Novikov, Novye Kompository (New Composers), Ornament & Verbrechen, Włodzimierz Pawlik, Bert Papenfuß, Post Ars, Praffdata, NSRD, Petr Prokeš, Andrzej Przybielski, Józef Robakowski, Marek Rogulski, Piotr Rypson, Jan Ságl, Zorka Ságlová, Cornelia Schleime, Adam F. Sikora, Tomasz Sikorski, Sergey Solovev, Ivan Sotnikov, Cezary Staniszewski, Joanna Stingray, Tibor Szemző, Michał Tarkowski, Sviatoslav Tchekhin, The Plastic People of the Universe, Totart, Jiři Valoch, János Vető, Josef Vlček, András Wahorn, Ramona Welsh, Tomasz Wilmański, Dieter Wuschanski, János Xantus, Kryzsztof Zarębski, Ziema Mindel Würm, Zuzu-Vető.