COURAGE

connecting collections

Sándor Radnóti is a Budapest based former dissident writer, editor, and critic. Before 1990, he was an active member of the Hungarian democratic opposition. In 1983, he was offered a visiting fellowship at NYU by the Soros Foundation New York. Later, he received literary grants (1989, 1995) as well as a grand literary prize from the Soros Foundation Hungary. In the 1990s, he served as a curator for the Book Publishing Support Project of the Soros Foundation Hungary, and in 1996 he became the chairman of curators. His recollections offer insights into the aims, preferences, and working methods of the Foundation’s half-dozen special projects aimed to support contemporary authors, newly launched book publishers, periodicals, and the network of public libraries in Hungary.

Danilo Radojević is a Montenegrin literary critic, essayist, culturologist, poet, and historian.

Radojević’s field of interest is very broad. He has written poems, prose, and literary criticism. He has made special contributions to the Montenegristics, a recently founded scientific discipline examining Montenegro and its inhabitants from different linguistic, archaeological, historical, ethnological, economic, political, and cultural perspectives. He has been published in numerous newspapers and journals throughout the former Yugoslavia in addition to his eighteen books.

Radojević is a member of the Montenegrin PEN Centre, the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers, Matica crnogorska (a cultural institution which promotes Montenegrin national and cultural identity and language), and the Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts (a parallel scholars’ academy created in 1998 by academics who considered the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts to be dominated by Serbian nationalism).

During the communist period, Danilo Radojević was designed by the authorities as a Montenegrin nationalist and separatist because he published works discussing the particularities of Montenegrin culture, language, and identity. In 1972, he was officially banned from publishing in Montenegro, though he had found it practically impossible to publish even before the ban. Instead, he presented his views in some Croatian journals, which were also then soon to be declared nationalist.

Danilo Radojević was also listed in the White Book of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Montenegro. The White Book [Bijela knjiga] is a 24-page document, published from 1972, in which the League of Communists of Montenegro attempted to harmonize its activities with the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, following the 1972 arrest of Croatian writers and scientists accused of being members of the Croatian Spring. Danilo Radojević’s name was listed among the first group of nine authors who were strictly prohibited from speaking in public. Others include Danilo’s brother Radoje Radojević, considered to be one of the founders of the science of Montenegrin language and literature, and Vojislav Nikčević, best known for his work on promoting Montenegrin as a distinct language from Serbian.

He lives and works in Warsaw (Poland) where he received his MFA diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. He works with film, photography, installations, and creates interdisciplinary projects. His archive-based methodology crosses multiple cultural, historical, religious, social, and gender references. Since 2005 he is a publisher and an editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine. Founder of the Queer Archives Institute. 
His work has been presented in institutions such as the National Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; New Museum, New York; VideoBrasil, Sao Paulo; Cobra Museum, Amsterdam; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow and Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz. He has participated in several international biennales including PERFORMA 13, New York; 7th Göteborg Biennial; 4th Prague Biennial and 15th WRO Media Art Biennale.

Due to his young age Karol Radziszewski had not been directly affected by the socialist reality in Poland. His position towards communist times is rather nuanced - he does not comply with strict anti-communist narrative, as he rather sees socialism in a broader perspective of social history of gay rights, oppression towards gay people, and period of awakening of civil rights and queer identity.

Adrianna Rajch (1967) was a member of the Gallery of Maniacal Activities - the Orange Alternative movement's section in Łódź in the late 1980s. She cooperated with the Freedom and Peace movement, which leaflets and papers she distributed. At the end of the 1980s she co-founded Wspólnota Leeeżeć and took part in every action of this group. From 1988 till 1990 Adrianna Rajch, together with Michał Gralak and Andrzej Miastkowski, was an editor and author of Wspólnota Leeeżeć magazines: 'Tygodnik Leeeżeć' and 'Kau Gryzoni na Serze'.

As a photographer, she did not participate in happenings of the Gallery of Maniacal Activities, nor in planning them, but systematically documented the actions. Adrianna Rajch donated her photos of the Gallery's happenings to Krzysztof Skiba's private archive. The black and white pictures show the dynamics of the events from years 1988-1990.

Ainė Ramonaitė is a professor of political science at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University. Her main research areas are political elections and political sociology, and (non)Soviet society and its legacy and impact on today’s democratic system. Professor Ramonaitė is the organiser of the academic discussion social platform Socforumas, which holds annual conferences for young researchers. She is the author of several books and many articles on the process of democratic elections in Lithuania. After 2009, she initiated and headed two research projects on ‘non-Soviet’ society. The main aims of these projects were to look at networks of people who were not involved in either the anti-Soviet dissident movement or pro-Soviet activism, but rather stood between the two.

Although Ramonaitė was not involved in the anti-Soviet movement, her parents, who worked in academia (her father was a physics professor, and her mother was a Lithuanian literature and language professor), were involved in the non-Soviet ethnographic movement. This kind of activity inspired Ramonaitė as well, and carrying out research on this theme in history became a kind of personal moral determination. Contrary to the prevailing statements in Lithuania about the weak opposition to Soviet rule at that time, Ramonaitė thinks that this ‘invisible’ society was larger and more closely interconnected than is usually imagined.