Jaromir 99 (* 1963) lives in Prague as comic artist, painter and musician. Jaroslav Rudiš (* 1972) works as author, screenwriter and playwright; he writes in Czech and German and lives in the Czech Republic and Germany.
Summer 1989. Alois Nebel, a lonely train dispatcher at Bílý Potok, a small railway station on the Czechoslovak border, lives a quiet life. As a small child, Alois has witnessed the dramatic expulsion of Germans after the World War II. Sometimes the fog rolls in and he hallucinates, seeing ghosts and shadows from the dark past of the region. One day, a silent stranger carrying an old photograph appears at the station. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok, but his arrival propels Alois on the journey to resolve the long-forgotten memories that are haunting him.
The exhibition by Literaturhaus Stuttgart has been supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung.
“Alois Nebel – Graphic Novel von Jaroslav Rudiš und Jaromir 99”
14 January until 22 / 28 February 2013 (see locations below)
Admission free
Opening: 12 January 2013 at both locations:
1800h AID Berlin: panel discussion with Jaroslav Rudiš and Jaromír 99
2000h Czech Centre Berlin: with Jaroslav Rudiš and live concert of PRIESSNITZ
Akademie für Illustration und Design Berlin (AID Berlin)
Ritterstraße 12-14, staircase 2
10969 Berlin
Germany
14 January until 22 February 2013, Mo-Fr 1400-1800h
Tschechischen Zentrum Berlin
Wilhelmstraße 44 / entrance Mohrenstraße
10117 Berlin
Germany
14 January until 28 February 2013, Mo-Th 1500–2000h
I think that both the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square were turning poitns in our understanding of the world. I’m 30. I was in the fourth and fifth grade when these things happened. I still remember what a big deal the cold war was, how every movie bad guy was Russian, that so many buildings in my home town bore the three inverted triangles indicating a fallout shelter, how, even in the late eighties, I was still taught to hide under my desk in case of a nuclear attack. My girlfriend, who’s coming up on 26, doesn’t have a clear recollection of these things. To her Soviet-style socialism, the eastern bloc, glasnost, M.A.D. and Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! are all historical relics with no more obvious connection to modern life than the Boer War and the Teapot Dome scandal. What’s particularly interesting about that moment in history is that it was also at the same time that computers were becoming household objects. Anyone with experiential memories of the Soviet collapse also remembers a time before the internet, before cell phones and often before cable television. There’s a very clear generational divide between people born before the about 1983 and those born after. If only because that’s right when CD’s first hit the market, we might call them the Analog and the Digital generations. If you have a clear memory of Germans climbing atop the Brandenberg gate, of them chipping away at the wall with hammers and bits of rebar, of whole sheets of graffiti-strewn concrete being tugged down by cranes and, more importantly, if you understood the significance of these events as they took place, you are probably of the Analog generation. If you lack these memories, then you’re probably more Digital.