Exhibition 64 – Kate Genever

Kate says: This poster is inspired by Vaclav Havel – the Czechoslovakian dissident who became Czechs first prime minster after the fall of the Communist regime – and writings by American historian Timothy Synder.

Havel proposed in his 1985 essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’ that the oppressed always contain “within themselves the power to remedy their own powerlessness…”  He argued that by an individual “living in truth” in their daily life they automatically differentiated themselves from the officially mandated culture; since power is only effective inasmuch as citizens are willing to submit to it.
It seems timely to revisit Havel’s desire for an “existential revolution – new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped sense of higher responsibility, a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community”.
Synder, in more recent times, supports Havel by stating “Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: we think we’re free if we can do and say as we please. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from, as freedom to – the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible”.

Kate set up the notice board in 2017 in the wake of Brexit with the only skills she has – art and ideas.