Prague, Oct 26 (CTK) – An exhibition of totalitarianism will be established on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Czechoslovakia’s foundation in Prague’s Letna Park, Mikulas Kroupa, the Post Bellum non-profit organisation’s director, told journalists yesterday.
The exhibition will introduce the key historical moments of the 20th century in about ten critical points in time, such as the revolt of Czech legionaries in Siberia, the post-war expulsion of Germans or the 1950s events, using materials from the archives of Czech Television and Czech Radio, as well as the personal testimonies gathered within the Post Bellum’s “Memory of a Nation” project.
“Our idea is to equip the exhibition with state-of-the-art technologies. We would like to use video mapping, video projections, and as a former radio man, I shall say that equipping the space with audio is crucial for me,” Kroupa said.
The exhibition is to install in the visitors the impression of stepping right back into the 20th century by making use of the depressive underground spaces that lay unused beneath the former Communist Joseph Stalin’s Monument in Letna, while the moving events of the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 would release them back into the open, Kroupa said.
Post Bellum cooperates with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes on the project’s preparation. It is also supported by Prague’s Mayor Adriana Krnacova, who proposed the spaces in Letna.
After reconstruction of the spaces under the monument, the exhibition is to open in October 2018, in time for the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s foundation. It is to be open through to the summer of 2019.
Kroupa said he estimated the project’s costs to reach 10 million crowns.
Post Bellum has so far managed to collect 3.5 million crowns at the project’s fundraiser website nastalina.cz.
The exhibition is expected to start a discussion about the establishment of a permanent museum of totalitarianism, whose existence and location are still being debated, with the current exhibition’s location being one of the options, Jana Holcova of Post Bellum said.
($1=21.753 crowns)
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