The Power of the Powerless. Questions for Václav Havel at a Distance – Exhibition Opening and Exhibition

This is an exhibition with a remarkable story. It was conceived for the 40th anniversary of the first publication of Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless by a former Italian government minister, Maurizio Lupi, after his visit to Prague in 2018. Alongside many of his colleagues at university at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, Lupi decided to enter public life after they read together this perhaps most important of Havel’s essays. The Italian version of the exhibition was premiered at our partner festival, Meeting Rimini 2019, where it was seen by 15,000 visitors over a week, with 30 volunteers giving guided tours. That same year, the exhibition was hosted by Italy’s Chamber of Deputies; a Spanish version was unveiled at the Encuentro Madrid festival. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the exhibition toured a number of Italian cities, and now it reaches the Brno audience for the tenth anniversary of Václav Havel’s leaving.

„If the world is to change for the better, something must change primarily in the human conscience, in the very humanity of today’s man; man has to somehow rehabilitate himself. Under the orderly surface of “life in a lie”, the concealed sphere of life’s true intentions, its “hidden openness” to truth, lies in wait. This space, however, is hidden, and therefore perceived as quite dangerous by those in power. The change for the better will have to come from man, from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe.“

In collaboration with the Václav Havel Library.

Exhibition opening will be held in czech only.
Limited capacity of exhibition opening at July 26. We recommend you to book your place below.

You can see the exhibition till Sunday August 1 included, daily from 9 am to 3 pm.