Ztohoven

The activities of the Ztohoven art group usually fall under the heading of political art, i.e. art that attempts to respond to current events and which usually appears in public space or tries to connect up the gallery with public space. However, Jan Zálešák, for example, in Umění spolupráce (The Art of Collaboration), states that categorising the work of Ztohoven as political art is somewhat problematic. Unlike other groups, e.g. Pode Bal or Rafani, Ztohoven does not present itself by means of continuous work and is only minimally tied to the gallery space, and for this reason Zálešák prefers to describe their activities as a “form of general activism”.[1] Rather than political art we find ourselves on the border of artistic activism or engaged art. However, the group and its members are not so interested in whether their art is political but more in whether they receive feedback from society, i.e. if they reach the viewer and provoke the appropriate reaction in them. They view their individual projects on a continuum, emphasising context and connecting them up in the background by means of a narrative.

The group’s activities are focused on projects that examine the problems of modern society and which, according to the members, cannot be communicated by more traditional means. They call their works “media objects” [2] and seek new spaces and dimensions in which these forms can have life breathed into them.[3] The continuum mentioned above refers to the same direction and purpose that guides the group over the longer term. Their values and standards, crystallised in the project Paralelní Polis, revolved around an identical value spectrum that does not involve medialisation, but rather an effort to draw attention to certain systemic problems.

The group’s work provokes different, sometimes strong, reactions. Their events are often on the boundary of the legal, and it sometimes seems that the members take pleasure in provocation and breaking the law. They often interfere in existing artworks or public spaces, whose meaning they change and whose values they deconstruct by means of small, but fundamental interventions. At the same time, their projects are not simply small interventions in public space, but followed enthusiastically by the media, and the group does not set itself easily attainable goals. They work with the themes that resonate in society and whose relevance only time will show.

When it first started, the group consisted mainly of art students and might number as many as a hundred individuals, hence the title Ztohoven [pronounced the same as sto hoven or a hundred shits]. Another interesting feature of these activists is that for the most part we do not know who they are, since they often appear under pseudonyms. This anonymity lends their events a certain air of secrecy or adventure. However, during the media response to their activities, the identity of several members has been revealed. The main representatives of Ztohoven include the artist Roman Týc, whose style is particularly visible in their projects.

The group first came to public attention in 2003 through two events. The first, entitled Otazník nad Pražským hradem / A Question Mark Above Prague Castle, was an intervention in the form of a glowing neon heart by the artist Jiří David, which President Václav Havel had installed on Prague Castle. The day before elections for a new president, Ztohoven covered up half of the installation and for about ten minutes a question mark hung over the castle. This subtle intervention opened up many questions and provoked many interpretations. Was it asking who would take the place of Václav Havel, or what the world would be like without love? The accompanying text did not offer clear cut answers but offered room for reflection: “If love and understanding disappear, if humanity ceases to perceive what its members are saying and remains content to examine only form and not content, then only question marks will remain, along with a discourse on the future of the Czech thrones and the direction of humanity in general. So are questions marks closer to you than the certainty of beating hearts?” [4]

The same year the group drew attention to itself with another event eagerly followed by the media called Znásilněný podvědomí / Raped Subconscious, which was a comment on advertising and consumerism. The group covered up 750 advertising spaces on the Prague metro with white, translucent poster with a question mark on it and a link to their website. One might say that they swapped one advert for another, the aim of which was to provoke disquiet and to “attack” the viewer, without attempting to inveigle its way slowly into our subconscious.[5] In their group statement they attempted to justify this aspect of the project by pointing out that they were speaking about art for merely one day by means of an advertising ploy that, on the contrary, abuses our subconscious on a daily basis. The group received a great deal of attention for this project, not least because they were sued and forced to take down their posters.

After a lengthy pause, in 2007 the group organised an event called Mediální realita / Media Reality. This caused an even greater uproar and filled the media not only in the Czech Republic but abroad. In its accompanying text, Ztohoven wrote that Media Reality followed on from Raped Subconscious “by questioning the space of advertising in principle and the space of a specific advertisement. On 17 June 2007 [the group] attacked the media space, the space of television. It disrupted it, interrogated its truthfulness and plausibility.”[6] The event involved hacking into the programme ČT2 Panorama while it was broadcasting reports from Czech mountain resorts, and inserting an image of a nuclear explosion taking place. The event naturally aroused strong feelings, some positive (the group won the NG 333 prize), some negative, with criminal proceedings taken against the group. The whole event was subsequently interpreted as claiming that media reality conceals genuine facts, and the work asked the question as to whether everything that television presents to us is real. Media Reality was in this sense a harbinger of what we now call the issue of fake news and its impact.

Perhaps also prompted by previous experience of criminal proceedings, in 2010 Ztohoven launched a project called Občan K. / Citizen K, which also ended in a police investigation. The title draws on the association with Kafka’s Josef K, who, like Citizen K, is searching for the boundaries of his freedom and asking questions regarding the misuse of personal data. Twelve members of the group changed their identity for a year. They created false ID passes which they used in a perfectly normal fashion. They travelled abroad, proved their identity at a wedding, piloted a plane and acquired a firearms pass. Some of the situations acquired an absurd form, as, for instance, when one of the artists was himself a witness at a wedding. The event issued an appeal to a society under constant surveillance. On the whole the group manages to film most of their projects, usually in the form of a short video capturing events. Citizen K was an exception. On this occasion the group shot a lengthy feature film with the same name, which to some extent revealed the identity of some of its members.[7]

After these controversial projects, in 2011 Ztohoven created a milder, even reverent project called NON MULTI SED MULTA. In response to the a monument to the twenty-seven lords executed after the Battle of White Mountain, which consisted of 27 paved crosses on Prague’s Old Town Square, the group installed a 28th cross to honour the memory of Martin Fruwein of Podolí, one of the most rebellious participants in the uprising, who committed suicide before he could be executed and was beheaded posthumously. The group drew attention to the fact, in a simple, sensitive way, that this Czech lord has been wrongfully neglected.

In 2012 Ztohoven launched the project Morální reforma / Moral Reform. This ambitious and much discussed event was divided into several parts. In the first part the artists created an illusion that they were exchanging friendly and apologetic text messages with politicians. This was followed by an exhibition at the DOX centre where the telephone numbers of individual politics, including the president and prime minister, were made public. This provoked many different reactions and the discussions arising examined, inter alia, the ethics of publishing private numbers (doxing), the role of political art and whether such activities could be called art. Professor Jiří Přibáň went so far as to describe Ztohoven as one of the most important groups of our time.[8]

In 2014 the group organised a project that was not simply a one-off event provoking short-term media attention. Instead, the group opened Paralelní polis, a space that its press release claimed “combines art, social sciences and modern technology, a space based on the idea of freedom, independence and the innovative development of society... Paralelní Polis operates completely independently of the state.” [9] This project delved right into the core of the group’s activities, namely, the endeavour to achieve some kind of independence from the state. Paralelní Polis did not receive any grants and focused on the development of new technologies, decentralisation, and crypto-anarchy, which it took to understand as a potentially reasonable social settlement. In its activities the project sought to contribute to discussions on related issues of the present day. [10]

In September 2015 some red boxer shorts fluttered over Prague Castle, a later symbol of the group and its disagreement with the government at that time. The event was called  Prezidentovo špinavé prádlo? (Rudé trenky nad Pražským hradem) / The President’s Dirty Laundry? (Red Boxer Shorts over Prague Castle) and took place on a weekday. Several members climbed onto the roof of Prague Castle and hung a huge pair of boxer shorts in place of the flag of the president of the republic. In their declaration they stated that “the standard of a man who has no shame whatsoever finally hangs over Prague Castle.”[11] The reaction of the Castle was less than enthusiastic. President Miloš Zeman called the participants “dickheads” and his spokesperson added that it was an offence to state symbols. The head of the security detail was dismissed, as well as the commanders of the Castle Guard, who had failed to prevent the artists from carrying out their event.

The following year saw a continuation of the event entitled Decentralizace moci / Decentralisation of Power. Ztohoven stated that it had cut the flag of the president of the republic into 1,152 pieces and sent them to randomly selected people. It also connected these scraps to the bitcoin network, with each piece acquiring a value of between CZK 5 and 1,500.

It is becoming clear that the individual projects of the Ztohoven group bring together and embody the principles of decentralisation. The significant attention paid to these activities by the media is not a negative point, since the aim of the group is to communicate with the largest number of people possible and to provoke debate. It has accomplished what it set out to do, unfortunately sometimes at the cost of a real impact on the private activities and lives of individual members in the form of protracted court proceedings that are, it goes without saying, exhausting. Its events and interventions are organisationally very demanding and can therefore only be undertaken once in a while. Nevertheless, the group also works on projects that are not, due to the absence of any significant media response, linked, but are no less important to the members of Ztohoven themselves. 

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The Ztohoven manifesto accompanying the work Media Reality.

“We are not a terrorist or political group. Our purpose is not to scare or manipulate society in any way comparable to what we see all around us in the real world and in the media. Whether it involve political interests or those of the market, firms or international companies, they are secretly manipulating and pushing their products and ideas in all possible ways into the subconscious of the citizen. We do not believe that the subtle disruption of this system and an appeal to reason and the non-susceptibility of the average person is damaging in a democratic country. It is for this reason that, a few years ago, Ztohoven deconstructed the public space of the city of Prague and questioned the space of advertising as a concept, as well as the space of particular advertisements. On 17 June 2007 it attacked the media space, the space of television. It disrupted it, questioned its truthfulness and credibility. It drew attention to the possible confusion of the media image of the world and the world as such, the real world. Is everything we see around us on our television screens reality? Is everything submitted to us by the media, newspapers, television and the internet true? Our project poses this question. We believe that even the free space of public television is capable of withstanding such an event and will survive being called into question. This will be an appeal for the future and a reminder to the media to continue presenting the truth. Thanks for a free media, free space for society.”  

[1] (JZ 170) Jan Zálešák, Umění spolupráce, Academy of Fine Arts, 2011, 170.

[2] Film Občan K, 2012.

[3] They had previously used the term “media sculptures”, but finally deemed this inaccurate, since the word sculpture comes from the Latin sculptura meaning to carve away, whereas their projects comprise layering. In: An interview with the director Michal Dvořák, Česká televize, https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10419749344-obcan-k/21256226971/6531-rozhovor-s-reziserem/ [accessed 12 January 2020].

[4] www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=32 [accessed 2 January 2020].

[5] www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=36 [accessed 2 January 2020].

[6] www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=45 [accessed 2 January 2020].

[7] See the interview with the director Michal Dvořák, note 3.

[8] The discussion Morální reforma / Moral Reform, DOX, 5 December 2012; ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/kultura/1130931-diskuse-moralni-reforma-o-projektu-ztohoven-a-demokracii-v-cr [accessed 2 January 2020].

[9]  www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=714 [accessed 2 January 2020].

[10] www.paralelnipolis.cz/o-nas/ [accessed 4 January 2020].

[11] www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=727 [accessed 4 January 2020].

2010
Občan K., Prostor bývalé lahůdkárny za obchodním domem Kotva v Praze

Manifesto of the group published with "Media Reality" work

"We are no terrorist or political group, our purpose is not to intimidate or manipulate the society in the very same way as we are witnessing in everyday real life or media. No matter the intentions whether political or those of market, companies, global corporations which secretly manipulate and exert pressure on their products and ideas through every channel possible into the human subconsciouness. Even the slightest intrusion into this system, appeal on pure human intellect, its ability not to be worked upon is by our opinion harmless inside democratic country. Hence the reason why artist group Ztohoven intruded public premises of our capital, Prague, few years ago and managed to impeached advertisement territory in principle as well as advertisement itself. On the June 17th 2007 our group invaded media and television territory intruded and impeached its trueness as well as its credibility. Pointed out the possible confusion of media presented picture of our world for the real one. Is everything that our media such as newspapers, television, internet offer on daily basis real truth or reality? It is this idea that our project is to introduce to general public, sort of reminder to everyone. We truly believe that independent territory of television governed by public law is that kind of media which can handle such thing even at the cost of self impeachment. Let it be this kind of appeal for our future and reminder to any media that the truth must be presented at any cost. We are grateful for independent media and independent territory for society."