Jiří Valoch receives the Bernard Heidsieck Prize 2023
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In the autumn of 2023, the Czech artist and curator Jiří Valoch received the prestigious award “Le Prix d’honneur Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou” for his outstanding contribution to the use of text in an intermedia art practice outside the context of traditional literature. This confirmed Valoch’s status as one of the Brno avant-garde’s internationally best-known representatives alongside Leoš Janáček and the Villa Tugendhat.
This international award, named after the French experimental artist and sound poet Bernard Heidsieck (1928–2014), has been conferred annually since 2017 by the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It is unique among literary awards for its focus on authors whose work transcends standard, book-based forms of literature to inhabit areas such as sound and visual poetry, performance, digital literature, and radio. In past years, the award had gone to exponents of experimental poetry and conceptual art including John Giorno, Franz Mon, Celemente Padín, Gerhard Rühm, and Esther Ferrer.
"Il y a tant et tant de choses à faire, à chercher, à créer. A combattre. & percer. A comprendre faire éclater. A exorciser. Tant et tant." * (Bernard Heidsiek in a letter to Jiří Valoch, 1967)
Valoch’s initial interest in visual and phonic poetry was sparked in 1964, while still at high school and in conjunction with his establishment of close contact with Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová, Jiří Kolář, and Ladislav Novák, the leading protagonists and promoters of this movement in then-Czechoslovakia. It was these figures, people twice his age, who facilitated his first international contacts. Exchanges such as, “Dear friend, write me what’s up, send me what you have been working on, has the new edition of the magazine come out yet?” – “I’m sending you snippets of my work” were a constant in Valoch’s correspondence—which, pursued intensely between 1964 and 1968, enabled him to become a well-oriented member of the global network of artists. That period also saw him become one of its neuralgic points.
One of these formative channels of communication led to France. At evenings of experimental poetry held by Grögerová and Hiršal in Prague, Valoch became acquainted with works by the poets Henri Chopin and Pierre and Ilsa Garnier, in whose magazines “OU” (Henri Chopin) and “Les Lettres” (the Garniers) he went on to publish his first texts abroad—including his “Optical Poems”, which met with international acclaim.
Valoch first wrote to Bernard Heidsieck in 1967, asking him to send him his phonic poems for an exhibition of Lettrist and visual poetry that opened on 7 April 1967 as an offshoot of the international UNESCO project “The Art of Writing”. Coming on the heels of his efforts to prepare an exhibition of works by the Czech artist Eduard Ovčáček, it was the first collective exhibition that Valoch organized. Heidsieck sent him poems—B2- and B3-format scores that had been published in “KWY revue”—and added two envelopes containing posters for exhibitions in which he had taken part. In subsequent letters, Heidsieck shared further works, exhibition invitations, and addresses of other artists—which, especially post-1969, offered the sole hope of remaining in touch with contemporary art world events.
By the end of the 1960s, Jiří Valoch—despite his young age—had become the main promoter of new artistic movements in Brno and Moravia at large. Visual artworks as well as phonic poems sent through the mail on Magnetophon tapes were presented at the festival “Malé divadlo hudby a poezie” [Small Theater of Music and Poetry], which took place at the Leoš Janáček House in 1969. The presented materials included works by foreign artists as well as Valoch’s own pieces. Much like Bernard Heidsieck and other visual and phonic poets, Valoch never drew an impenetrable line between his own practice and his presentation of works by other authors. His aim was simply to always be connected with art by all possible and available means. In 1967, perhaps influenced by Bernard Heidsieck and other phonic poets with whom he was in touch, he recorded three phonic poems of his own: “Aus jedem Satz”, “Variace”, and “Proměna.” These were found in the Brno Radio archive two years ago in connection with the process of preparing the publication “Česká fonická poezie” (Pavel Novotný, 2022). Valoch went on to invite Bernard Heidsieck to numerous further exhibitions (e.g. “Partitury” [Brno House of Arts, 1969] and “Vizuální texty” [Poznań, 1976]).
The correspondence between Valoch and Heidsieck, now divided between their respective archives, bears direct witness to the specific content of these exhibitions—which is in many cases not documented anywhere else. It helps give rise to a vivid impression of that era’s international art scene and documents quite vividly where and how his contacts there came about. Le Prix d’honneur Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou hence symbolically embodies a further letter to Valoch: Dear friend, your work is really good. Jiří Valoch appeared personally to accept the award at the exhibition “Origin of the Stone” at the Gandy Gallery in Bratislava on 10 October 2023. The award itself—designed as a box with folding Magnetophon tapes by Anette Conz, a German author living in France—was presented to him by Heidsieck’s daughter, Nathalie Heidsieck.
* “There are so many things to do, to search for, to create. To fight and break through. To figure out how to shatter, to exorcize. So many things!”
Jana Písaříková is a curator and art theorist. She has been collaborating with the artist Jiří Valoch on processing the materials in his collection and archive, which he donated to the Moravian Gallery in Brno, since 2014. In her curatorial practice, Pisaříková focuses mainly on conceptual art and has realized numerous exhibitions on contemporary art. She lives and works in Brno.
November 2023
This international award, named after the French experimental artist and sound poet Bernard Heidsieck (1928–2014), has been conferred annually since 2017 by the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It is unique among literary awards for its focus on authors whose work transcends standard, book-based forms of literature to inhabit areas such as sound and visual poetry, performance, digital literature, and radio. In past years, the award had gone to exponents of experimental poetry and conceptual art including John Giorno, Franz Mon, Celemente Padín, Gerhard Rühm, and Esther Ferrer.
"Il y a tant et tant de choses à faire, à chercher, à créer. A combattre. & percer. A comprendre faire éclater. A exorciser. Tant et tant." * (Bernard Heidsiek in a letter to Jiří Valoch, 1967)
Valoch’s initial interest in visual and phonic poetry was sparked in 1964, while still at high school and in conjunction with his establishment of close contact with Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová, Jiří Kolář, and Ladislav Novák, the leading protagonists and promoters of this movement in then-Czechoslovakia. It was these figures, people twice his age, who facilitated his first international contacts. Exchanges such as, “Dear friend, write me what’s up, send me what you have been working on, has the new edition of the magazine come out yet?” – “I’m sending you snippets of my work” were a constant in Valoch’s correspondence—which, pursued intensely between 1964 and 1968, enabled him to become a well-oriented member of the global network of artists. That period also saw him become one of its neuralgic points.
One of these formative channels of communication led to France. At evenings of experimental poetry held by Grögerová and Hiršal in Prague, Valoch became acquainted with works by the poets Henri Chopin and Pierre and Ilsa Garnier, in whose magazines “OU” (Henri Chopin) and “Les Lettres” (the Garniers) he went on to publish his first texts abroad—including his “Optical Poems”, which met with international acclaim.
Valoch first wrote to Bernard Heidsieck in 1967, asking him to send him his phonic poems for an exhibition of Lettrist and visual poetry that opened on 7 April 1967 as an offshoot of the international UNESCO project “The Art of Writing”. Coming on the heels of his efforts to prepare an exhibition of works by the Czech artist Eduard Ovčáček, it was the first collective exhibition that Valoch organized. Heidsieck sent him poems—B2- and B3-format scores that had been published in “KWY revue”—and added two envelopes containing posters for exhibitions in which he had taken part. In subsequent letters, Heidsieck shared further works, exhibition invitations, and addresses of other artists—which, especially post-1969, offered the sole hope of remaining in touch with contemporary art world events.
By the end of the 1960s, Jiří Valoch—despite his young age—had become the main promoter of new artistic movements in Brno and Moravia at large. Visual artworks as well as phonic poems sent through the mail on Magnetophon tapes were presented at the festival “Malé divadlo hudby a poezie” [Small Theater of Music and Poetry], which took place at the Leoš Janáček House in 1969. The presented materials included works by foreign artists as well as Valoch’s own pieces. Much like Bernard Heidsieck and other visual and phonic poets, Valoch never drew an impenetrable line between his own practice and his presentation of works by other authors. His aim was simply to always be connected with art by all possible and available means. In 1967, perhaps influenced by Bernard Heidsieck and other phonic poets with whom he was in touch, he recorded three phonic poems of his own: “Aus jedem Satz”, “Variace”, and “Proměna.” These were found in the Brno Radio archive two years ago in connection with the process of preparing the publication “Česká fonická poezie” (Pavel Novotný, 2022). Valoch went on to invite Bernard Heidsieck to numerous further exhibitions (e.g. “Partitury” [Brno House of Arts, 1969] and “Vizuální texty” [Poznań, 1976]).
The correspondence between Valoch and Heidsieck, now divided between their respective archives, bears direct witness to the specific content of these exhibitions—which is in many cases not documented anywhere else. It helps give rise to a vivid impression of that era’s international art scene and documents quite vividly where and how his contacts there came about. Le Prix d’honneur Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou hence symbolically embodies a further letter to Valoch: Dear friend, your work is really good. Jiří Valoch appeared personally to accept the award at the exhibition “Origin of the Stone” at the Gandy Gallery in Bratislava on 10 October 2023. The award itself—designed as a box with folding Magnetophon tapes by Anette Conz, a German author living in France—was presented to him by Heidsieck’s daughter, Nathalie Heidsieck.
* “There are so many things to do, to search for, to create. To fight and break through. To figure out how to shatter, to exorcize. So many things!”
Jana Písaříková is a curator and art theorist. She has been collaborating with the artist Jiří Valoch on processing the materials in his collection and archive, which he donated to the Moravian Gallery in Brno, since 2014. In her curatorial practice, Pisaříková focuses mainly on conceptual art and has realized numerous exhibitions on contemporary art. She lives and works in Brno.
November 2023