Editorial

#2 min Pavel Vančát

1. 10. 2019

#34 archaeology of euphoriaEditorial

I’m going to a Prague metro station full of artificial palms, completed in 1994, in a Russian carriage built sometime in the late 1980s; the carriage upholstery and handles were renovated in 2005, and most passengers are staring at their Chinese cell phones. And I’m wondering: Are we even able to fully experience our own lives and the history passing by like a conglomerate of disparate entities, together forming the train we’re taking to a familiar, but never entirely certain direction? 

#34 archaeology of euphoriaEditorial

Introduction

#5 min Pavel Vančát

Introduction

#34 archaeology of euphoriaEssay

Although the term “contemporary history” is actually a contradiction, it refers mostly to the period of history that we lived in and that still directly affects us and our present. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent events leading to the collapse of the Eastern bloc are still a subject of speculation and re-interpretations that often lack a broader context. Such a context has a lot of parallel dimensions: a historical, geopolitical, social and media one, or a personal, family and local one (if we talk about the “history of the present”).