Czechoslovak Radio 1968

Preventing the population from accessing impartial reporting was a main strategic objective during the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops as dozens were killed and hundreds were injured when military troops stormed the Czechoslovak Radio building in Prague. Radio broadcasts, however, continued illegally from clandestine studios and portable facilities throughout the country.

Listening to the radio was soon made an illegal activity, and the occupation forces confiscated citizens' radios. In an act of creative protest, many people began carrying painted or newspaper-wrapped bricks with homemade antennas and other props taped to them. Seizure of bricks thus unnecessarily taxed and ridiculed the police and the army.

Hungarian artist Tamás Szentjóby commemorated the civil protest with a series of objects imitating makeshift brick radios. He described this "folk" creativity as a form of performance art similar to activities of the performative Fluxus movement. He also perceived in it how artificially promoted visions of socialist realism had "mutated" into a neo-socialist reality that was its own parody – as everyone could see.

Various versions of the work can be found in the collections of several international galleries and have appeared in contemporary art exhibitions such as the documenta in Kassel in 2012.

lab.SNG ● Atlas SNG, Content for the exhibition The Art That Remains: Collection – International Biennial of Young Artists Danuvius 1968.