The Culture of Dialogue

Notes on the Šternberk Symposiums

Marek Trizuljak

„How many pathways are there to the truth? As many, as there are people on this Earth." (Citation from a book of interviews between the journalist Peter Seewald and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 2002)

Within the Greek conception of symposion, we find a council of sages, who meet to feast together - in the Classical world they literally reposed together on settees around a bountifully laid table - during which they would conduct philosophical dialogues. Of course this causes a feeling of certain exclusivity; as such an occasion was the privilege of the elite, people well-protected on all sides. It was easy then in this affluent and charitable atmosphere that it could happen that the talk turned in labyrinthine circles of formal disputational styles, that this "meeting of the sages" sometimes looked as if it were a group posturing. The real sense of similar get-togethers was fulfilled when they arrived at the conceptual boiling point, when the dialogue arrived at the formulation of thoughts which described human civilisation and at the same time at the truth that many basic discoveries took place in quiet and concentrated isolation and only afterwards were they established by the research of others. At this point it would certainly be possible to follow the line of development of the Classical culture of dialogue further, how for example early Christian communities in the Greek surroundings based themselves upon it, so too the Islamic scholars at the university in Cairo, how it spread to the medieval European universities, and at the dawn of the Renaissance in philosophical schools in the environment of Italian city-states. It seems to me, that modern European culture, especially since the mid-20th century, in a certain manner has addressed itself to the original meaning of the word symposium. Many academic conferences have used this word in their titles and in this they have indicated their intent of serious searching for new, underlying points of view. The phenomenon of creative arts symposiums was dramatically developed in the optimistic atmosphere of the 1960s in Europe and during the short period of open conditions it came to Czechoslovakia as well. Here we were able to create a constant tradition out of several symposiums which later were maintained at quite a professional level. But many of these promising activities were from the beginning severely liquidated during the "normalisation" period of the 1970s (a representative example of all of these was the destruction of the complex of installed statuary from the symposiums at Moravany u Piešt'an, carried out with bulldozers). The new wave of interest in organising international artistic meetings here took place at the beginning of the 1990s and it brought with it huge interest in renewing unrestricted contacts. A similar atmosphere took place also in the birth of the artistic symposiums in Šternberk. During the entire time of their operations there has been a characteristic spirit of a live creative workshop. Among the participants the majority did not discover the above-mentioned elite, which perhaps would have changed the symposium into a demonstration of attained poses, rather, young artists and younger artists of the middle generation came, who incarnated that which took place in the terrain itself, those artistic and conceptual attitudes or trends which were evolving at the given time. The first annual event, which took place in the summer of 1992, under the title Šternberk International Painting Session (ŠIPS), was more or less an intimate, almost exclusively painting, symposium, but in the year 1993 it underwent a significant transformation; it opened the possibility for artists to enter the abandoned area of the former Augustinian monastery and work directly inside it. The year 1994 came mostly under the sign of installations, the majority inspired by the fascinating location, the atmosphere of which in a special way was amplified by the remnants of absurdity and devastation of recent times. In second half of the decade it was necessary to interrupt the Šternberk symposium's occurrence. Nevertheless, in conjunction with enticing events, the monastery building entered into more than ordinary awareness. Artistic contacts which had been started meanwhile kept developing and with the co-operation of the Union of Olomouc Artists, Olomouc Galerie G and Galerie Šternberk there were a number of international artistic projects and exhibitions which took place. Events which took place in Šternberk inspired for example the organisers of three annual Czech-German art symposiums in the monastery at Teplá u Mariánských Lázní (1998, 2001, 2004), including the realisation of exhibitions which followed at Ludwigsburg (1999), Olomouc (2002), Berlin and Hamburg (2003).

I would like to personally pose the question of the meaning and importance of renewing the symposium in the Šternberk monastery in the year 2005 under the title "Space of Memory", even if as a participant myself I might offer a rather internal personal point of view. I would like to point out the presence of the principle of "symposiums in a symposium" as a characteristic element and a connecting line of several realisations. For example Jiří Hastík first prepared a number of rectangular forms in various colours and the artist present then asked if people would put their own artistic touches upon them. Thus the treated artefacts became a basis of finishing touches and quite a neat way of conducting an installation. Another form of the symbolic symposium, or rather "group swinging", was prepared for the participants by Milena Dopitová in a room with thirty-two swings, hung from the ceiling construction. The Englishman Mark Dixon prepared a brilliant digital projection; onto photographs of Baroque frescoes he added the portraits of individual artists in humorous and serious transpositions of a "symposium of the celestial spheres'", which he then projected onto the battered arches of one of the dark corridors in the ground floor of the monastery. The German musician Stefan Reiß planned an event in which he would play the music of Eric Satie on the piano for 18 hours, so that symposium participants would get inspiration for their works. Even if this project did not take place, there was still a strong element of concentrated group events present. Also remarkable was the phenomenon of "working pairs" (Agris Dzilna and Solvita Zarina from Latvia, Claudia Bucher and Graziella Berger from Switzerland, and Wim Barends and Robert van Dolron from the Netherlands). Otherwise, if talking about the aspect of "posion", a characteristic and a little surreal prop were the several decommissioned medical examination cots, covered in slightly cracked white leather. Two of these became the focal point of an installation by Czech participants Jiří Hastík and Jiří Surůvka. The latter at the symposium also performatively posed and lied down on one of the cots, located in the monastery courtyard, as a wonderful series of photographs by Radoslav Bernát bears witness. A significant positive element of the symposium - among many other examples - are the sensitive, essay-charged meditations by Ladislav Daněk on the theme of monologue, dialogue and searching for the truth, delivered during the opening and closing ceremonies of the symposium (in Galerie Šternberk and Galerie G in Olomouc).

The former Augustinian monastery in Šternberk has remained a quite powerful structure to this day, a great unsettling task for every sensitive creative person. The artist who enters this building can act the strong, fearless unassailable personality; can come with the fore-armed position that such an atmosphere of the environment can in no way influence him. From my observations arid experiences, however, every meeting in this building demands great strength of spirit, extraordinary openness and awareness. The value of the entire Šternberk event, counting from the time of the early 1990s, can be measured primarily in the dimensions of the space opened for dialogue. One of its levels is the dialogue of the artist in the given space and its contents. Another dimension is the mutual "concurrence", in the synergic and contrasting attitudes, in the searching for group positions or their negation and in the number of inspirational ideas from meeting people from various countries and different ideological worlds, in the free mutual exchange of opinions and attitudes. I am convinced that similar symposiums can contribute, perhaps in a discreet and unpretentious way, to the deepening of universal cultural dialogue in today's world.