COURAGE

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Tango art magazine, published in the years 1983-1986 is the most important material product and a testimony to the existence of the Pitch-In Culture. There were 9 issues of Tango, although numbers of the issues do not reflect that, as they were given at random, in accordance with programmed principles of inconsistency and humbug followed especially by the Łódź Kaliska members who constituted the core of the Pitch-In Culture. Each issue was printed in A4 format in ca. 200 copies. Adam Rzepecki designed the iconoclastic cover the famous first edition of Tango, which featured a reproduction of the painting of Our Lady from Jasna Góra monastery with moustache painted over it.

Tango was a collective work: artists related to the Pitch-In Culture would send their works, which were then published on the pages of the magazine. Typesetting and print were also a collective effort of the creators who would meet in one place (not necessarily Łódź, although geographically it was the centre of the Pitch-In Culture, but also e.g. in Nowa Huta). Each issue had its own editor-in-chief and contained works by several artists. The collective model of preparing the publication was important for strengthening the ties between the artists, and was a part of being together, in which creative work mixed with discussions, jokes, and fun.

The Pitch-In Culture was founded upon rejection of both official and opposition art circles. Artistic establishment and hierarchies, as well as political commitment were met with dissent against the entire social and cultural systems, not just the institution of political power. Owing to that fact, the Pitch-In Culture remained on the margin, only to remind of itself through scandals, provocations, and profanity. Therefore such important is the role of Tango, a tangible artefact corroborating private and personal ties between the participants of the Pitch-In Culture and the very existence of this ephemeral community. Along with such journals as Oj Dobrze Już by Gruppa, Luxus by Luxus Group, publications by Totart, the Orange Alternative, or Leeeżeć Community, Tango was one of the most brilliant examples of underground art magazines of the 1980s.

Sources:
Jarosław Lubiak (ed.), "Szczerość i blaga. Etyka prac Łodzi Kaliskiej w latach 1979-89", Łódź 2009.
Marek Janiak (ed.), "Kultura Zrzuty", Warszawa 1989.

In the 1980s, Karl Laantee was an announcer with the Voice of America, the American propaganda radio station. It broadcast to Soviet Estonia, and provided its listeners with an alternative source of information. In 1981, the station broadcast an Independence Day speech by the Estonian diplomat Ernst Jaakson, the chief diplomatic representative of the Republic of Estonia in the United States until Estonia regained its independence in 1991. He was an unofficial symbol of Estonia’s legal continuity during the Soviet occupation. Therefore, his speech, which was broadcast in Soviet Estonia, was a remarkable gesture against the Soviet occupation.

Officials in Soviet Estonia jammed Western radio stations, including the Voice of America. It was possible to listen to it, even though the station was jammed. Today the Voice of America is remembered mostly positively. Materials about the Voice of America are not widely used in research, although the station is often mentioned. Because the Karl Laantee personal archive is not often used, Ernst Jaakson’s speech is also rarely, if ever, used.

The most interesting part of this file is formed by the political drawings by Lembit Saarts, a friend of painter Heldur Viires. These drawings were used as evidence against the group of artists from Tartu known as the Tartu Circle. Artists from the circle, Valdur Ohakas, Ester Potisepp (later Roode), Henn Roode, Lembit Saarts, Ülo Sooster and Heldur Viires, were accused of anti-Soviet ideas and plots. They were sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp, except Esther Potisepp, who received ten years. Later, all the sentences were reduced to ten years. However, they were freed in 1956, at the beginning of the period of Khrushchev's thaw. 

The art historian Juta Kivimäe has stated that this persecution was not actually meant against these particular young artists, but rather to affect indirectly old and influential art teachers and painters, such as Addo Vabbe, Elmar Kits and Johannes Võerahansu.

Dominik Tatarka was a famous Slovak writer that became a “banned author” after 1968. He criticized Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and he was the first Slovak signatory to Charter 77. Thus, some of his books were published as samizdat or in exile. Tatarka’s book “Navrávačky” was first published in the samizdat journal “Fragment K” in 1986 (the first part) and 1987 (the second part). In 1987, this book was published in the samizdat edition “Petlice”. Then, this text was issued in exile – “Navrávačky” was published in 1988 in Western Germany in Cologne within the exile edition “Index”. These samizdat and exile editions of “Navrávačky” were prepared by Martin Šimečka and Ján Langoš. “Navrávačky” are book of Tatarka’s memories, opinions, and messages about culture, society or his life. This book is based on Eva Štolbová’s interviews with Tatarka that were recorded on twenty tapes during years 1985 and 1986. However, the text of these samizdat and exile editions was modified and rewritten as Tatarka’s monologue (in prose), without Štolbová’s questions. Later, in 2000 and 2013, “Navrávačky” was published in an original and complete version, as a transcription of interviews from tapes without any modification.

Under the title „písačky“ (scribbles) Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka generally described his texts from the so-called Normalization period. Milan Šimečka commented that the word “písačky” contained “deep sorrow of a writer who had been writing in solitude and isolation, without the hope that his manuscripts would be ever a published book, printed, bound and read.” More specifically, “písačky” refers to texts collected in his later book “Písačky pre milovanú Lutéciu” that were created between 1976 and 1978 and were designed as love letters of an older writer to his young lover to Paris. Under the title “Písačky” some texts were published in 1979 already in the samizdat Petlice Edition by Ludvík Vaculík. Miroslav Kusý published about 50 copies of “Písačky” by samizdat in Bratislava but Slovak readers were said to show little interest because they perceived these texts as pornographic. Part of this samizdat edition by Kusý was confiscated by the State Security during one of house searches. In 1984, “Písačky” were published in exile by historian Ján Mlynárik in the Index Publishing House in Cologne. On 23 September 1986, Dominik Tatarka was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for “Písačky” by the Charter 77 Foundation in Stockholm. The Jaroslav Seifert Prize Committee consisting of Jiří Gruša, Milan Kundera, Antonín J. Liehm, Sylvie Richterová, Josef Škvorecký, Jan Vladislav, František Janouch and “in pectore” Ludvík Vaculík and Václav Havel, appreciated on these works by Tatarka that they “newly developed a genre of human monologue” and also “a bold testimony about a time and so far not reached depths of human mind”. Tatarka learned that he was awarded the prize from the Voice of America broadcasting on the very day. “Písačky” were officially published after 1989 in an edition by Ján Mlynárik (1998, together with “Letters to Eternity” and “Alone against the Night”) and by Oleg Tatarka as “Písačky pre milovanú Lutéciu” (1999, 2003, 2013).