Just like in Dresden, Wroclaw and Bratislava, a student exhibition under the project ‘Vastly equal? Europe’s 1989’ opened in Prague. The exhibition took place from 16th November to 30th November 2009 at the NoD gallery in the very heart of Prague. It was preceded by a year of preparations. Its creators – young students from various fields – spent this time researching in archives, talking to eyewitnesses and discussing the form of the exhibition.

The students had almost complete freedom in the selection of topics. The choices reflected their interests and experiences. This was, after all, the goal of the project: to see what young people find interesting about those events of twenty years ago which they did not witness and learned about only indirectly. It took some time before two topics were chosen: one project about the East German (GDR) refugees at the (West) German embassy in Prague (by Tereza Procházková) and one on emigration from Czechoslovakia under the communist regime from 1948 to 1989 (by Jan Vařák and Martin Bednář). Eyewitnesses and their testimonies became the students’ most important ‘material’. They wanted to hear these authentic stories and to pass them on.

Visitors of the exhibition had the opportunity to watch these interviews on vintage TV sets of the ‘Tesla’ brand and listen to them on tapes. Two installations by Jan Truhlář and Tomáš Hencl were placed in the gallery: a Trabant car, sawed in half and installed in the flooring, and a replica of the Iron Curtain. These corresponded excellently with the exhibition’s atmosphere and enhanced its effect. In front of the German embassy, a Trabant car fully equipped with original artefacts – symbol of the mass escape of GDR citizens via Prague in 1989 – drew attention to the exhibition. Thanks to their cooperation with graphic artist and curator Dita Lamačová students learned to use untraditional means of expression instead of relying on texts and graphic materials only. They learned to cast plaster, to work with a reel-to-reel tape recorder; they found out what Formica is and that a Trabant is not as light as it may seem.

The Prague group differed from the other participating groups by its size. Five students participated in the preparation of the exhibition but only three of them took part in the final phase. This might give rise to lamentations over irresponsible and impatient young people. But it also attests to an infinite number of possibilities that the free world offers. The opening of the exhibition proved that members of this generation are willing to devote their free time to a project that offers satisfaction from a work well done.

All participants certainly were satisfied. With the benefit of hindsight it can be said that the Prague group succeeded in creating an extraordinary exhibition on a professional level. But the exhibition was not the only result of the project since the process of its creation was even more important. It was a journey on which the students learned and discovered a lot.

Miloslav Man acted as a mentor to the Prague team.