Tamás St.Turba, non-art-artist

Bricks, paint, string, tape, chalk

"I first encountered this art work in 2011 at Documenta 13. The work itself is no more than a red building brick painted with yellow sulphur paint.  At Documenta it was exhibited on a plinth and accompanied by a short text briefly outlining a real event from 1968, and an unexpected rupture of conceptual art into an historical narrative. The text referred to the Warsaw Pact army’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 during which people were forbidden to listen to radio broadcasts. People resisted this censorship through a range of creative means, including making ‘brick radios’, by attaching antennae and painting dials on to bricks. These fake radios spread amongst the population who pretended to listen to them, and although they were useless as a communication device, they were continuously confiscated by the army."

..."It is still unclear if this was caused by the genuine thought these were hidden audio equipments or because they were seen as anarchic pieces of art."

An early example of marriage between media and activism, these “devices” represent, forTamás St. Turba, (poet, musician, and performance and Fluxus non-artist), “the mutation of socialist realism into neo-socialist realism: a non-art art for and by all”.

MN