Miloš Houdek

* 1944

  • “November 17th came, and in Kolín, there was an exhibition, as I had to prepare the exhibition one month in advance, exhibition by Joska Skalník, who wanted to have an exhibition in his birthplace. And he set the date on November 17th, 1989.” - “For opening of the exhibition?” - “Yes, the exhibition. And as the day was getting near, on that day, November 17th, as students marched in Národní třída (National Avenue) in Praha, and they were physically attacked and brutalised, at 18:00PM, as the commotion was in full swing, Joska Skalník opened his exhibition at Malá Galerie and he was telling everyone: 'Something is going to happen in Praha.' And indeed, important things were happening. Many months later, I found out that at that time, Václav Havel has been hiding in his studio, which he left for Kolín.”

  • “The 80s were coming to a close and I would go to Kojice to an evening with David Vávra and his Theatre Sklep, and I noticed, it was in the spring of 1988, that communist officials who were present were just shaking their heads, wondering what David Vávra and Theatre Sklep were doing. How free they were while having fun, in a way no one had ever did there before! In Praha, after all... The cultural and artistic movement had been getting stronger in Praha, and thanks to the Theatre Sklep for example, it gave the impression of something absolutely fresh and free. I recalled the end of the 60s, when I had been living in Praha, and I thought that they were able to create an atmosphere similar to the end of the 60s. That the society had been moving in a certain direction and that I had to pay more attention to what was happening in the society, to perceive it in a more precise way, as David Vávra and his group got away with something that would had been utterly impossible in the 70s.”

  • “On August 21st, I borrowed a bike from my older brother, a Favorite bike, my older brother´s pride. I rode it to work and I got hungry. So I went to Černý Kůň (The Black Horse), a pub on the main road between Praha, Kutná Hora and Čáslav. Whole convoys of various military vehicles were passing by. And people in the pub were quite nervous about what happened and what would happen next. With my mind racing, I left the bike outside and I forgot to put a lock on it, as I was telling myself that I would eat a soup in a hurry and then I would rode it back to my brother. So I ate the soup and paid in a hurry, then I went outside and found that the bike was gone. Some moron just stole the bike, in such a difficult situation.”

  • “The order had been issued that the garrison library has to be modernised, and all the books which no one would borrow for more than five years, I guess, could be discarded, written off, taped up and replaced by two thousand crowns worth of contemporary literature, both Czech and foreign. So I was exhilarated as I was writing off the works of Stalin and registering the works of Hrabal, as I had been writing off book by Lenin, the works, which hadn´t been borrowed by anyone for more than five years, as I was ordered to do so! So I would write off Lenin and replace it by American folk poetry, that had been published back then, by African-American poetry, by Czech authors – Škvorecký, Hrabal, Páral, all that had been published back then. And in 1965, I would add: Jack Kerouac – October in the Railroad Earth, Robinson Jeffers; in brief – all of the sudden, there was modern, contemporary foreign literature in library in Kladno, where I was living, where I was doing my military service.”

  • “When there was a financial reform, my mother forgot some money in a book, a few notes of the first currency from times right after the war, with Masaryk and Štefáník on them, and she would send me to Česká spořitelna (Czech Savings Bank) by the hotel Savoy in Kolín, near the bridge, now it´s the Masaryk bridge, where I was supposed to exchange it for new banknotes. And as I went out, I met an old lady, well at least I thought she was old back then, she might have been forty years old, the age is relative, and she had a bag full of money and she went to exchange it. She had this leather satchel full of notes, maybe she kept it hidden somewhere, and she went to the savings bank to have it exchanged, and later, I found out that she was a fortune-teller, well-known not only in Kolín but far and wide, and the interesting fact I could add is that even Milan Kundera, the famous Czech writer living in Paris, visited her once.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    ED Hradec Králové, 11.06.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 03:06:07
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We have to constantly keep our lives in balance

Maturitní fotografie v 18 letech
Maturitní fotografie v 18 letech
zdroj: archiv Miloše Houdka

Miloš Houdek was born on January 4th of 1944 in Kolín, where he has been living almost his entire life. He graduated from Secondary technical school and from 1968 till his retirement, he had been working as a clerk and a training supervisor at local gasworks. Later, he also attended the Charles University in Praha while working, gradating in specialised subject teaching programme. But his life-long passion and interest had been the visual arts and literature. Due to his ability to synthesise both, he gave birth to his predominant artistic expression, the so called ‚literary poster‘. Since his youth, he was a Boy scout and an avid guitar player, and later, these interests brought him into the tramping movement. Thanks to that, he befriended Marko Čermák during his compulsory military service and formed a life-long friendship with him. In 1967, they founded Paběrky, a tramp settlement, with several friends. After his compulsory military service, he had been living and working in Praha for some time, organising literary evenings in local Camp Club. In August 1968, he was living in Kolín again. While his brother Antonín Houdek emigrated to Australia in 1970, the witness bought a house near Čáslav, which for the next five years served as an independent culture centre. There, influenced by land-art and body-art, Miloš pursued his interest in photography, graphical arts and literary poster. After his son David was born, he moved back to Kolín with his wife Jitka Šnebergová. There, in 1988, he founded and directed the Malá galerie Na Hradbách (The Small Gallery atop the City Walls). After 1990, he has been organising Mimoriál and Funkeho Kolín international festivals and several other cultural happenings and exhibitions. Under the auspices of Polabská kulturní společnost (Polabí Cultural Society), he had published dozens of catalogues and publications dealing with regional cultural history. He had initiated and organised important projects fusing the literary and artistic media: Umění čtyř nápojů (The Art of Four Drinks) and Krajinou čínských básníků (Through the landscape of Chinese poets). He has been writing poetry and published several books of his collected poems. He is a PEN Club member.