Petr Štembera

“Once I was in a museum in the Hungarian town of Pécs. This was one of the best things. Unfortunately, I got terribly drunk doing that so I don’t know what was going on. I have fragments of memories and people also told me stuff. It was part of the self-liquidation project. I was preparing some dough which was then supposed to bubble up and put out the candles. I was drinking some really hard liquor while doing that – vodka. I am not used to that. Stage lights were shining on me. And as I am such an educated man I brought in a book by Heidegger written in Czech and German. Getting more and more drunk I was reading them out loud some of Heidegger’s sentences which I didn’t even understand in Czech. But I was thinking that it was all also about communication. Reading Heidegger in German to the Hungarians – that must have been a great idea! Meanwhile, I succumbed to the alcohol so I don’t know what was happening to me. I woke up the next day in some apartment. They loaded me in a car and dropped me at the train station in Budapest to catch the train to Prague. So I did. Later they told me that it was quite a mess because a part of the museum almost burned down. They probably exaggerated. Well, something went on fire in there.”

“Meanwhile, one of the people who did similar things and whom I respected the most was here. His name was Chris Burden and he was from USA, from LA. In 1976 he stayed a couple days at my place. He was then awarded a year-long curatorship of a private institution which was called the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. He probably liked my works. He went to Austria where he hired another guy and to Paris where he got Gina Pane. And he invited us all to participate. It wasn’t even clear whether it made sense for me to ask for permission to go there. I took the letter and went to the US embassy. The guy there told me: ‘Please, don’t show this to anybody, they would definitely not let you go. Your only chance is to request a tourist visa.’ So I did. And things had happened. I needed some sort of assurance. By chance, a classmate of my wife worked in a bank providing those assurances. She was working as a clerk and was in charge of issuing foreign exchange assurances. She gave me some US dollars and I went to the police to ask for permission to go. In the meantime somebody advised me to go on Saturday. They even worked Saturdays, it was great. One would go to Bartolomějská street but not into the prison building. So I brought it all there. And in two weeks they gave me the permission. I was perplexed. Then I realized that they had a record on me and perhaps thought that if they gave me the documents I would stay abroad. I have no idea why they gave me that permission. Anyway, I was able to spend a month in the US.”