EXCZECHOSLOVAKIA
Tábor 27. — 30. 9. 2018
Czechoslovakia: Jews, Germans, Romani, Hungarians, Poles, Rusyns...
Tábor 27. — 30. 9. 2018
We have called the seventh annual festival of small publishers, authors, translators, editors and booksellers Czechoslovakia: Jews, Germans, Romani, Hungarians, Poles, Rusyns and others... Institutions and other cultural players have raced to celebrate this important year in which we commemorate the birth of Czech statehood, some even going to lengths to rouse our national pride. We, on the other hand, would like to show what a colorful and varied mix of nationalities made up the Czechoslovakian state and left their mark deeply in our history, those which the 20th has so tragically and irrevocably taken from us. We seek the threads that unite us with our lost “brothers”. Threads that have been cut, threads that in spite of all the adversity and disfavor are intertwined in each of our lives today. Of course we cannot address every aspect of this, rather we try to touch lightly on the phenomenon through those who are here now and whose work it is to ensure the past is not forgotten, those who do not simplify our national image and indeed are skeptical towards any monolithic interpretation of our history. Since this theme is strongly connected to Brno, we have taken the liberty of inviting a few more people from that great city and renamed Pražská Street “Brno Street” for the duration of the Tabook festival. Now we can imagine our little metropolis to be the city of Brno, a city of galleries and theaters we love to visit, of streets to walk down without bumping into omnipresent crowds of tourists, of parks to lounge in, of coffee to sip, a city we would like to live in, if only for a few years. This year, we have decided to give more space to literary journals. Will they survive? Are they surrounded by a thriving community? Will they be able to weather the competition of the internet? Aren’t they too old fashioned? Does anyone read them? Should they be supported through grants? We have brought them all together: in addition to the marketplace in Sřelnice, you can find them at our literary Coffee Shop in Italian Festival Square.
And now I have come to our “festival within a festival”, as I like to tell our guests from abroad who wonder how we are able to draw so many lovers of illustration and picture books to Tábor. This year, there are exhibitions sown throughout the town where you can find our favorite publishers, graphic artists and visual artists. Through the work of Palo Bálik, we have mapped out the history of Slovak bookmanship in Vodárenská věž / The Water Tower. In Galerie u Radnice we have combined Czech illustrator, publisher and author of many small books, Alžběta Zemanová, with a classic of modern Swedish illustration and author of dozens of unique children’s books, Eva Lindström, in 4mat you can find Olivier Douzou who, aside from establishing Le Rouergue publishing house which in the 1990s fundamentally changed storytelling in children’s books, is himself the author of dozens of books and concepts of books and the secret originator behind much of what goes on in the world of French book illustration. Sophia Martineck has arrived from Berlin and her meticulous illustrations can be seen in Baodílna. Planeta Tangerina has returned after several years during which time it has become one of Europe’s favorite and most interesting publishing houses... Artist and illustrator Madalena Matoso exhibits her work in a brand new social space where you can sip coffee and read books: Jednota. The freshly restored space in Martínka Húsky Street is occupied by Belgian illustrator Loïc Gaume and Cuistax magazine. And all through town you can follow the tracks of students from the studios of illustration and animation at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava who are encroaching and meddling in urban space. I wish you wonderful encounters, a sea’s worth of time for pondering and ruminating and lots of joy from our little world independent of commercial culture and dissatisfied consumer society. Tabook is the celebration of living and creative spirit which will survive in spite of everything!!!