By John Hill and Hana Janeckova
View of Košice, overlooking the future site of Tomáš Džadoň 'Monument of Folk Architecture'
Košice is far away, as even its residents admit, and we spend a night in the couchette of a hot, crowded train heading east from Prague, passing the Tatra mountains at dawn to arrive just in a time for breakfast. We see the large tower blocks that encircle the city. A flash of the decrepit railway station, which will soon be a swanky shopping mall, then we’re led through the stylish historical centre to the pretty café Rozprávka, where artist Andrea Kalinová discusses Abandoned (re)creation, her ongoing work examining the faded Slovakian spa town Trenčianske Teplice. The breakfast talk is part of Medzicentrum IV, a project that comprises presentations, workshops and interventions by young Slovak artists who’ve been invited here as part of Košice’s programme for the European Capital of Culture 2013. There’s a sparkly Italian coffee machine; poppy-seed cake is served by tanned staff. Watching functionalist architecture built in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) projected onto the vaulted walls, it all feels unmistakably local European. ‘The Czechs wouldn’t let it to fall apart as we do,’ says the Slovak artist, hinting at the Czechs’ love for Adolf Loos, not to mention the rivalries between two countries that have only been separated for 20 years.
Košice’s high-rise suburbs from Hradova tower
Czechoslovakia was an established cultural brand, and it’s been a challenge for the Czech Republic and Slovakia to define their own cultural identities. Košice seems well positioned to do so. Unlike the Slovakian capital Bratislava, which after the expansion of the European Union fell within the cultural and economic sphere of Vienna, Košice’s remoteness in a region that borders Poland, Hungary and Ukraine gives it an appealing sovereignty. It was a centre of Rákóczi’s Hungarian rebellion against the Habsburg Empire, has a fine medieval old town, the country’s largest cathedral and a fascinating social and physical legacy of the former Communist regime. Andy Warhol’s distant cousins still live in a nearby village. It’s really something of a frontier, not only because further EU enlargement to Ukraine is currently inconceivable but because the people see their remoteness, their ‘Easterness’, even to the rest of Slovakia, as an important characteristic. ‘Racism is a western concept by which the EU seeks to implement rules without understanding local circumstances,’ we hear at a private view, when discussing the miserable living conditions of the city’s Roma population.
Public art as an administration-funded enterprise is an ungrateful project in most places and Košice could serve as an exemplary case study for its distinctly local flavours. In the midday heat we head to the new Kunsthalle which opened in July, the first of its kind in Slovakia. The former swimming pool, built in the 1950s by architect Ladislav Grec and defunct since 1992, has been renovated to become, as the exhibition guide tells us, a ‘multi-use exhibition centre’. The extensive reconstruction by the architects Juraj Koban and Stefan Pacak has resulted in a clashing aesthetic: original salmon-pink marble diving blocks are mismatched with black non-slip tiling and yellow safety tape, the aqua motif on the railings and the mosaics on the walls apparently symbolizing ‘the connection of culture and water’.
Tony Cragg, ‘The Sculptures’, Kunsthalle Košice
On the other hand, curation of the Kunsthalle shows less attention to detail. There’s a solo show of Tony Cragg, with sculptures spread directionless at the bottom of the empty pool and titling on crumpled paper and ‘Constantin Brâncuşi: Photographer’, where Brancusi’s photographic works are presented on a side wall in a film strip, making it hard to distinguish one from another. Still, the artists on show are internationally known with local connections: Wuppertal, where Cragg lives, is Košice’s German twin city, and Gyula Kosice, an Argentinian artist who committed an abysmal public sculpture greeting visitors outside, was born here. One can almost imagine ticking off an EU monitoring form.
Further exploration of the Kunsthalle reveals large glass doors leading directly to the still working outdoor pool behind, crammed with unsuspecting bathers, and brand-new showering facilities. One cannot help but wonder if the renovated building, so well suited to being a swimming pool, might not quickly become one once the watchful eye of the EU turns to another city.
There are more cherries on this EU fund-shifting cake: the beautiful 19th-century Austro-Hungarian barracks at the centre of the new Culture Park are being re-clad in a Disneyland-like white polystyrene to house gallery, studio and educational spaces. The only fully worked-out project for the building, which opens in September, seems to be the ‘Creative Factory’ – an interactive exhibition telling the ‘Story of Steel’ sponsored, though only in part, by the owners of the nearby steelworks, U.S. Steel. Just out of town, the viewing tower at Hradová has new woodland walkways and an outdoor amphitheatre but no money left to run its programme. Short bursts of funding, and entrenched corruption, favour hard infrastructure. ‘Unlike construction, where money can just disappear, it’s difficult to overvalue “soft projects” – they are a lot more transparent,’ we are told by disillusioned Slovakians.
Exchanger Station Važecká, part of the SPOTs project
This is evident at the final presentation of Medzicentrum IV, opening on a hot Saturday evening at the Exchanger Station Štítová. Exchanger Stations, part of the SPOTs programme, are an innovative and intelligent cultural outreach project. Seven former boiler houses, ugly windowless buildings which used to heat each tower block neighbourhood, have been renovated into community cultural centres. Medzicetrum IV is the visual arts component of SPOTs, which is aimed at decentralization of the culture to the housing estates and the invited artists worked in the local community for two weeks. Many of the artists’ individual projects, Zuzana Godálová and Július Krištof’s Platform 1–12 (2011–ongoing), facilitating art events at 7.30am to thousands of commuters in Topolčany’s central station, or Pavel Karous’s ideas about the monument industry, seem intriguing. Yet, at the opening even the most outstanding works – notably Tomáš Rafa’s work with Roma children, as part of his long-term project New Nationalism (2009–ongoing), or Erik Sikora’s video Thermal Insulation Saviour (2013), a documentary-style musing on tower-block renovation that hinted at Slovak xenophobia – looked a bit sloppy, perhaps for the lack of install budget, lack of time to develop the work, and lack of artists’ fees. The impact and sustainability of the project may also be an issue. Medzicetrum’s breakfast schedule included ‘Confrontation with Residents’, though there are no local residents at the opening to confront anyone.
Ilona Nemeth, Mirror (2013), on the edge of Košice old town
Hopefully, some things will stay even after the Capital of Culture money has run out. We swing by Ilona Nemeth’s Mirror (2013), a huge sculpture situated to reflect an easily overlooked war memorial, and drive to a hill on the edge of the city to see the location where sculptor Tomáš Džadoň will site his ambitious Folk Architecture Monument (2013) – three traditional wooden houses taken from rural Slovakia, reconstructed in Košice and craned to the top of a ten-storey tower block, using the ubiquitous Slovak housing as a plinth for a disappearing architectural heritage, and drawing equal attention to both. He has permission from its residents to leave it there for two years, but talks about the project with a energy and determination that makes us sure he’ll be able to keep it there indefinitely.
Building a regional hub of contemporary arts in a year is a precarious ambition and attention to detail or sophistication may not be Košice’s strongest point. But there was an art scene here before the Capital of Culture, and there will still be one when it’s gone. Tabačka KulturFabrik – a bar, art and music venue which opened in 2009 – has kept a safe distance from the Capital of Culture and has no trouble maintaining a full programme. The old cemetery hidden behind derelict oil pipes, the Bronze Age archaeological sites and exiled, Communist-era statues in the surrounding barley fields and the successful experiments in large-scale social housing all makes Košice worth a trip in any year and with the first direct flights from London starting in September, it’s no longer quite so far away.