Rivers of Babylon in Munich

Our doctoral student Mgr. Olha Norba has presented on the December 12th, 2024 at LMU München the literary context of Peter Pišťanek and his legendary roman Rivers of Babylon (1991), as well as his artistic works from 1980s during the normalisation period. The presentation, which is also a part of her doctoral research topic: “The Forms of the Grey Zone in Slovakia in the 1980s: Between Official and Unofficial Literature” (Supervisor: Radoslav Passia. Ph.D.), was aiming to show Peter Pišťanek and his parodical writings from the late 1980s as the part of the “aesthetical opposition”, highlighting their subversive potential. The event was organized by Matthias Melcher (LMU München) and Junge DGO Bayern (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde) as a part of the seminar for The History of Eastern and Southeastern Europe (prof. Schulze Wessel and prof. Arend) and was accompanied by the film screening (Rivers of Babylon, 1998). As the discussion after the film screening has showed, the combination of the literary aspects with the popcultural proved itself as a functional approach to demonstrate the uniqueness of Pišťanek’s artistic concepts, and to popularise Slovak culture in Germany.