FROM GREAT HISTORY TO SMALL THINGS

A panel exhibition on Masarykova náměstí in Benešov offers an unconventional look at the pivotal year 1989. Historical devices and technology from the MUD* collection bear witness to changes in everyday life at the threshold of two historical epochs: the ending socialism and the emerging capitalism. November 1989 did not only open the way to a new socio-political reality, but also brought tangible changes to everyday life, to the objects that surrounded us and to the way we used them.

Post-socialist transformation, the collective term for all changes after November 1989, is distinctive for its strong imprint on material culture. Many products and devices that for many years surrounded and accompanied every sphere of life were within a short time replaced by new, mass-available and rapidly evolving appliances imported from a quickly discovered West. Traditional telephones, projectors and record players, in a few proven standardized types, suddenly found themselves overshadowed by mobile phones, fax machines, video recorders and cameras of all kinds and many designs. The opening of borders and the market environment, and the "technological progress" associated with them, affected society not only through new aesthetics and consumer materials, but above all through a flood of new, previously unimagined functions which, under the pressure of omnipresent loud advertising, found their way into our homes, our pockets and our everyday lives.

Who still remembers how the spools were threaded into the Sonet tape recorder, or how much easier it later became to insert a cassette into a walkman? Did you develop photographs at home in the bathroom, or did you carry your films to a photo lab? Do you remember going to the video rental shop for cassettes? And do you know how to operate a rotary Tesla telephone, how long a sturdy Nokia 5110 lasted on a charge, or how many average salaries went into buying your first personal computer?

The individual devices captured in the photographs are not merely examples of technical development. They are also testimony to a way of life that began to change rapidly after 1989. Not long ago they were a common part of our homes, workplaces and leisure time. Stop at the panels and discover the stories of things that went through the period of great social change together with us.

Curator: Jan Krajíček