Memorial plaque of the Czech poet and dissident Ivan Martin Jirous

Memorial plaque of the Czech poet and dissident Ivan Martin Jirous
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The campaign has ended 24. March 2025
Ivan Martin Jirous was one of the most important representatives of the unofficial underground culture in socialist Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 20th century.
Based on the natural need for free expression, the underground became an alternative to official culture, which mostly fulfilled the ideologically shaped idea of creation in a socialist country.
Its often politically engaged manifestations in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music can, for the most part, only be called culture with complete self-denial.
In contrast, culture in Jirous's conception, despite censorship, was from the beginning purely apolitical and free. His activities, especially in the field of music and literature, logically became inconvenient to the ruling establishment of the time, and Ivan Martin Jirous was severely persecuted. In the 1970s and 1980s, he spent eight and a half years in the worst communist prisons, the highest aggregate sentence of any dissident of that era.
The underground is still a vibrant part of society today. Its fans gather at concerts and readings.
One such meeting place is the restaurant Narodní dum in Osek, Czech Republic.
It was here that the idea of creating a memorial plaque to the poet Ivan Martin Jirous was born, which will be placed on the facade of the building.
Both the owner of the building and the operator of the restaurant agree with this idea. The author of the whole project is Otakar Dusek, who has already realized the monument to the self-immolated student Jan Palach and the priest Josef Toufar, who was beaten to death by the communist secret police.
The design of the memorial plaque consists of a 4000 x 1900 mm plate made of anodised aluminium sheet, which will be fitted with nearly seven thousand stainless steel beer crown caps made especially for this purpose. The corks will be fixed to the plate with bolts and nuts.
This is symbolic of Jirous's passionate relationship with the drink that inspired him and was denied to him during his years of imprisonment.
The plugs are made into a verse text that refers to the notorious poem by the greatest Czech poet Karel Hynek Macha and the continuity of his work in the work of Ivan Martin Jirous.
The text reads:
Hynek! Vilem!! Jarmila!!!
everything has been drunk here.
Ivan! Martin!!! Jirous!!!
You're still with us.
The preliminary budget for this project is $11,000. So far, $1,808 has been raised. Therefore, I am taking this opportunity to respectfully request financial support in the amount of 9,192 USD to make this project a reality.
I thank all donors in advance from the bottom of my heart.
Otakar Dusek