Vetřelci a volavky
Aliens and herons

Summary/Abstract: Unrivalled in its scope and ambition, yet firmly grounded in the everyday worlds of postcommunism – and ‘post-postcommunism’ – Pavel Karous’ Aliens and Herons (2014) is perhaps the most significant and moving Czech art project of the 21st century. I am delighted to present it here not only because it speaks to my own interests but because it provides a beautiful and insightful perspective on the politics of history, memory, identity and materiality, which are increasingly key concerns in the fields of International Political Sociology (IPS) and International Relations (IR). Aliens and Herons challenges standard views of what we see when we look at and for (post)communism. In so doing it questions how we deal with the material legacies of painful and problematic, but also complex, pasts and the effects in the present (e.g. Scribner, 2003). Debates over the removal of Confederate statues in the US, over the re-use of Nazi-era buildings in Germany or, more recently about the renovation or destruction of the brutalist, communist-era Czech embassy in Berlin are only three of many other possible examples of controversies over such issues. However, in highlighting minor remains (if sometimes major in size) that are neither marquee buildings nor monuments to supposed national or social heroes, Karous project does something different.

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