Under the name Aliens and Herons, the artist Pavel Karous, who has long been interested in public art from the socialist era, documents sculptures, reliefs and other objects from the second half of the 20th century that are usually overlooked, considered unimportant or even regarded as unwanted remnants of the past. Karous, however, knows how to place them in a wider context - he shows how they were created, why they look the way they do, and what questions they raise today.
The walk is not only about visual art, but also about the changes in public space and what is reflected in it: what ideas about society, work or the future. And also about why utopias today seem more like the past than a possibility.
The walk is part of the larger project Chemnitz Utopia, which asks where all the emancipatory and utopian projects of modernity have gone - and why we often believe today that there is "no alternative". The theme of transformation - the upheaval of the societies of the Eastern Bloc, which was often associated with new lack of freedom, insecurity and the loss of voice - resonates in each of these concrete constructions. Our aim is not nostalgia, but reinterpretation.
The tour is in Czech and will be translated into German. For those interested from the Czech Republic, the return journey will be organised, prior registration is required.
