COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

The exhibition organized in student theatre Pstrąg presented for the first time Polish alternative press from the last decade. It was a unique presentation of a few hundred of mostly illegal, unofficial papers and magazines from the third circuit. The specifics of the collected items varied from punk and hippie fanzines, Orange Alternative, anarchist, pacifist, and ecological press, to the homosexual underground papers, including ‘Azotox’, ‘QQRYQ’, ‘Gangrena’, ‘Szmata’, ‘A-Tak’, ‘Antena Krzyku’, ‘Kanaloza’, ‘Lokomotywa Bez Nóg’, ‘Zielone Brygady’, ‘Linie’, ‘Kultura Nędzy’, ‘Ciach’, ‘Skafander’, ‘Filo’, ‘Mać Pariadka’, ‘Prosiacek’, ‘Rewolta’, ‘Szajba’, ‘A-Capella’, ‘Homek’, ‘Kau Gryzoni na Serze’, and many others. Such a vast exposition became possible due to engagement of Krzysztof Skiba in the alternative culture and artistic underground circles from the beginning of the 1980s. Skiba along with Janusz Waluszko from the Alternative Society Movement, Dariusz Leśnikowski, the art director of the Pstrąg theatre, and colleagues from the Gallery of Maniacal Activities: Andrzej Miastkowski, Michał Gralak, Krzysztof Raczyński, managed to widely propagate the idea of the exhibition and consequently collect many niche and extraordinary artefacts. Also, the layout of the exhibition is worth mentioning: the majority of the collected pieces were attached to the twines hanging lengthwise space like a just washed underwear. Such way of presentation was to suggest that showed papers are fresh and current. After the exhibition, similar shows took place in different cities, especially at Art Zine Gallery in Zielona Góra in years 1992-1994, and Art Zine Show in Warsaw in years 1993-1995. Szalona Twórczość Xeroxów lasted only one week because the crowds of viewers took away many precious items.

The policy of liberalisation (perestroika), which was started in Lithuania at the end of the 1980s, also influenced the activities of archives. Various state archives started to open their collections, not only to scholars and historians, but also to students and the general public. The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences was one of the first to make its archive public. In 1989, the Ignas Jonynas collection also became public. As a result, not only members of the Academy had an opportunity to use the collection, but also students and those who were interested in Lithuanian history. This was important, because the Jonynas collection holds documents from different periods of Lithuanian history. Documents that characterise the political history of the independent Republic of Lithuania, and also documents which illustrate the dangerous and often dramatic situation of Lithuanian intellectuals during the Stalinist period, were of special importance to the general public and researchers. These documents were unknown to the general population.