Culture - Power - Commerce

Every piece of exceptional architecture has a tumultuous past that is still present in every stone or concrete block.

The present day Prague Congress Centre conceals the former Palace of Culture. It was constructed over a five-year period (1976–1981), at the height of the 20 years of so called „normalisation“ under the communist regime, following the occupation of the former Czechoslovakia. Huge Palace with 50 elevators, and a puzzle of 70 meeting rooms, clubs, and large halls, including the giant Assembly Hall with 2 764 seats, was used for the communist party’s general and regular meetings, and therefore disliked or even hated by „normal“ people. Its awkward, wide, turtle-like architecture in neo-functionalist style was frequently referred to as “Moby Dick” (because of its enormous size), or “Massholder“ (in the sense of a gasholder, Lidojem in Czech), or „Pakul” (as the name’s abbreviation).

I nick-named it Pa-cool, as I can still feel the freezing draught of Siberian wind blowing through the long miles of corridors connecting the labyrinth of separate floors, halls and rooms of this portentous building. The cool air has been reinforced in the inner design with vast spaces, low ceilings and many grandiose chandeliers, heavy furniture, marble and wooden panels, tapestries, glass objects and other artistic decoration overflowing in snobbish elegance, even though created by the top Czech artists of the late 20th century. The only natural delight in this cool place is the breath-taking view of the wide panorama of Prague castle and the townscape which can be admired from its front glass walls.

The location close to the Nusel Bridge, which is frequently referred to as a suicide bridge and has a busy motorway across the valley, as well as the space’s megalomaniacal scale all contribute to the place’s spell continuing to hold.

Haruna Honcoop is a Czech-Japanese filmmaker, graduate of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where she is currently a PhD candidate writing about Chinese independent documentary film. Her film essay Built to Last – Relics of Communist-Era Architecture (2017) was awarded the Archfilm Lund festival prize. Her short film True or False (2016) won a prize at This Human World festival in Vienna. Olympic Halftime, a documentary film that deals with the architecture and urbanism of Olympic cities in Beijing, Tokyo, Paris and Athens, as well as the German-French co-production Annexions will both premiere in 2023. She is currently developing a new documentary film I Am Taiwanese about the political identities of Taiwanese and Eastern Europeans.

On the 31st of December, a Russian rocket hit just about 100 meters next to Palace Ukraina, blowing up its facade and windows. Since then, the concerts happening at the Kyiv’s biggest venue have to follow new strict safety regulations. The attendances must rush to the nearby bomb shelter, the closest metro station, immediately after the air raid alarms go off. 

A constant thread that follows you at every massive gathering is an unwanted suspense  that comes with every ticket purchased in Ukraine nowadays.

Collaborating at the intersection of visual art and cinema since 2013, Kyiv-based artists and filmmakers, Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk graduated as cinematographers from the Kyiv National Theatre, Cinema and Television University. Through their films and video installations, they explore the image of the crowd, as a separate character in history and culture. They were awarded the main award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2020), VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize (2021). Their debut documentary feature “New Jerusalem” received the Special Mention Award at Kharkiv MeetDocs. Their video works are in collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Frac Bretagne, and Fondazione In Between Art Film. Khimei and Malaschuk are members of the art group Prykarpattian Theater which is currently working on the project Theater of Hopes and Expectations.

In “All I wanted was to break your walls” Rob Wasiewicz plays an ardent tour guide at a post-Soviet palace of culture. His deep connection to the building verges on obsession as he falls in love with its architectural grandeur. However, his world shatters when he learns that the palace faces imminent demolition, leaving him desperately trying to save it. Despite his efforts to organise meetings and debates, no one shows up to support his cause. In a last-ditch attempt, he decides to host one final tour, but only two last-minute participants join him. Together, they explore the palace’s hidden treasures, forging unexpected bonds.

Written and Directed by Karolina Pawelczyk & Jędrek Filuś
Cinematography Magdalena Bojdo
Editing Agnieszka Białek-Zaborowska
Costumes Taso Jęchorek, Kuba Wydra
Music Tymek Bryndal
Colourist Rafał Kruszka
Graphic Design Aleksandra Ołdak
Cast Rob Wasiewicz, Magda Szpecht, Kuba Wydra

Karolina Pawelczyk is a visual artist. She creates multilayered, performative and narrative spatial installations using video, sculpture, sound and other media. Her works analyze the paradoxes of modernity and the tension between the need to find new forms of political and ethical action (that would be appropriate to a technologically mediated world) and the inertia of our established and algorithmized thought patterns.

She is a graduate of Photography at the University of Arts in Poznań and Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She is a member of the New Centre for Research and Practice and collaborates with the Office for Post-Artistic Services.

Her works have been shown at the Zachęta National Art Gallery in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Arsenal Municipal Gallery in Poznań, the Short Waves Festival in Poznań, and as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in Amarante (Portugal), among others. She also participated in the ING Polish Art Foundation Mentoring Program (2021) and was a finalist of the 19th Hestia Artistic Journey.

Jędrek Filuś is an artist who has been involved in various exhibitions, art research projects, and creative collaborations in the worlds of theater and film, often blurring the lines between art and politics. His work revolves around exploring dreams, desires, and alternative futures, all while addressing identity politics and making subtle interventions in everyday life. These projects have taken him to cities like Berlin, London, Nottingham, Poznan, Stockholm, Tbilisi, and Warsaw. Some of them have happened in big-name places like Tate Modern, POLIN, and Malta Festival, while others have been the product of grassroots collaborations within close-knit communities.

The National Palace of Culture in Sofia opened its doors in 1981 in celebration of Bulgaria’s 1300th anniversary. The palace was initiated at the suggestion of Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the communist leader Todor Zhivkov. Instead of the planned twelve years of completion it was built in the remarkable four years in order to fulfill the desirable deadline. More steel was used than building the Eiffel tower. Numerous artists were commissioned to produce artworks aiming to last for centuries: murals, sculptures, mosaics and paintings representing the cultural and historical heritage of the State.

The film “The Ghost of Culture” drifts between the utopian idea of a universal palace of Culture where different art forms/disciplines emerge in order to meet the needs of a larger audience. The film uses archive footage from the construction site dating back to 1977 combined with the actual opening of the palace. Buzzling actions and movement of people draw a picture of prosperity and national Socialist pride, in large.

The year is 2023 — The National Palace of Culture aka NDK — a ghost building – semiprivate semi public, where entering becomes an obstacle. The second part of the film exposes the power structure dynamics at present, when it becomes apparent that hierarchical and authoritarian principles are still in place and they serve as an active tool and treatment to both citizens and workers by the ones in supreme positions.

The documentary style of the camera captures the present state of affairs and digs into the complex narrative or redirection, or the inability to access or unmask. The movie leaves us with the shadow of both – the benefit and the doubt, of what is there to be uncovered?

Questions remain: What is the meaning /or purpose of this monument-building such as NDK nowadays, becoming a ghost itself, reminiscent of the past looking at the present?

What does it represent and who does it serve? How important is Culture in the current status quo?

director: Voin de Voin
camera operator: Rayna Teneva
drone footage: Dimitar Yankov
video editor: Michaela Lakova
music: “Chaotic Sunrise” by Violetov General
archive footage: “National Palace of Culture celebrates 40 years”
Култура.БГ/Culture.BG, aired on 12.04.2021, Bulgarian National Television (BNT)
“Symbols of NDK”, aired on 25.02.2022, Bulgarian National Television
Commissioned by Humboldt Forum and
Financially supported by Singer-Zahariev Foundation

Voin de Voin (born 1978) lives and works in Sofia. He completed his master’s degree at Das Arts – Institute of the Advance Research in the Performing Arts and his bachelor’s degree at Gerrit Rietveld Academy and also obtained a diploma from SNDO- School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.

Since 2016 he has been running the independent art space Æther in Sofia together with Marie Civikov, with an outpost in The Hague – Æther Haga. Æther is a partner of Schloss Solitude Academy, Stuttgart, the Eastern European Networks extension and exchange program between 2018 and 2021. He also organizes and curates SAW Sofia Art Week, which has been held annually since 2016. Together with Dutch curator and educator Lisette Smith, he founded a platform for alternative education, School of Kindness, since 2020.

Voin de Voin works in various fields of visual arts, from performance to installation, incorporating his research on collective rituals and human behavior, gender studies, ancestral knowledge, psychogeography, sociology, and parapsychology. He celebrates art as activism. His work has been shown in institutional and non-institutional spaces, art fairs, performance venues, festivals, museums, public spaces, and nature around the world.

In 2023, his anti-war activities in Bulgaria confronted various civil society constructs such as marriage, prison, and media censorship. He also participated in a group exhibition in Munich organized by the Rosa Stern Art Collective, participated in the parallel program of the Kochi Biennale in India and had an exhibition at the Clearing Gallery in New York, the Macedonian Opera and Ballet in Skopje and others.

THE HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE – this imposing communist edifice, recalls the megalomaniacal obsessions of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. The irony of the building’s name is well known among Romanians, being rather a communist pretext to mask the truth: ‘The House of The People’ is not meant for ordinary people, mostly serving the political power (current Palace of the Parliament). Any grand construction involves sacrifice: in 1983, the dictator commanded the eradication of Bucharest’s Uranus neighbourhood in order to begin the construction of “THE HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE”.

This video is meant to project its ‘visitors’ into the geometrized interior of the palace, in which the human presence seems to be lost in the setting. It is an attempt to enliven a cold, impersonal space through a series of playful gestures and distorted perspectives (as in a ritual). In the end, the questions remain: Is it a waste of space? Does it deserve its reputation? Was it worth sacrificing the old neighbourhood? How long will this “patched” construction last?

Dora Huiban, born 2000, is an emerging artist, who lives in Bucharest, Romania. She graduated from the National University of Arts Bucharest. Currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree in Visual Arts (Photography and Dynamic Image). Her projects explore the connections between habitats and inhabitants (how do they influence each other?), focusing on metamorphosis and contamination. Since childhood, she has been intrigued by fantasy realms, which serves as a main source of inspiration. Her artistic practice involves large-scale installations with found objects, photographs, experimental films or recorded performances.