COURAGE

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The private collection created and owned by Piotr ‘Pietia’ Wierzbicki contains hardcore punk fanzines, articles, and papers from the 1980s, including the original matrices of ‘QQRYQ’ fanzine edited and published by Wierzbicki from 1985. ‘QQRYQ’ was the leading Polish magazine about the underground punk scene and Wierzbicki became an influential author and promoter on that scene.

Punk in Polish People's Republic began in 1978 and it quickly gained popularity in Warsaw, as well as in other cities. In its initial phase, the movement maintained close ties with student clubs and galleries, where performance art, mail art, and concrete poetry flourished at the time. The collection of a punk photographer Anna Dąbrowska-Lyons includes zines, photographs, and newspaper clippings from the years 1978 to ca. 1982. The most interesting of these materials were featured in the album titled Polski punk (Polish Punk) published in 1999. The album documents the first wave of punk in Warsaw, while also presenting original, artistic photographs, collages, and graphics which blend the Western influence of punk and the new wave with the poetry of futurism, Dada, and conceptual theories of the 1970s.

Polish Rock Granary in Jarocin, a branch of the Regional Museum, possesses a unique collection of photographs, documents, and films related to the history of Polish rock music, dated from 1959 until today. The most interesting exhibits are presented at a permanent exhibition, available also on-line. The history of Polish rock is not only the evolution of the genre and styles, bands, albums, concerts, and festivals; it is also the dissent against the dominant culture and the search for an alternative. The location of Polish Rock Granary is by no means coincidental. In the 1980s the small town of Jarocin hosted the Rock Musicians’ Festival that attracted rock music fans and alternative culture participants from all over Poland, and even from Czechoslovakia and GDR.

The collection at the Popmuseum includes both written and audiovisual archive materials and other tangible artefacts that relate to Czech and Slovak pop music. The institution, besides running the museum and holding popular activities, also manages a large archive. The collection is the biggest of its kind in the Czech Republic. Pop music, not only rock, is seen by the museum in a complex context but the collection and the exposition describe opposition activities connected with the phenomenon of “West” and “undesirable” music genres from 1950s until 1980s in Czechoslovakia as well.