The New Nationalism at the Heart of Europe is a large photo and video-art project, in which Tomáš Rafa maps the public manifestations of nationalism, extreme right, racism and lack of tolerance in different countries. Since 2009, the artist documents meetings of radical and revolutionary groups, but also the anti-government and anti-extremist demonstrations, marches and supporting events for the rights of the minorities or clashes of anti-Fascists with supporters of ultra right movements. In his work, he often finds himself in medias res, whether these are events from native Slovakia or Poland, Czech republic, Hungary, or the west of the European Union (Germany, Switzerland). He also monitored the protest gatherings of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, and most recently, the change of regime in Ukraine (January – April 2014). During this period, he managed to collect material that serves as a document of its times. Films are carried out with an emphasis on the visual qualities of the shots, camera captures subtle details and unnoticed contexts. After several minutes of watching Rafa’s videos, it is obvious that these are not a classical information time-lapse, nor a documentary movie made with a particular aim. Thanks to the absence of any commentary, the frame of interpretation of the videos remains open, left to be concluded by the viewer himself. Although subconsciously we take a stand, the artistic optics unexpectedly realistically outlining the mass manipulation mechanisms characteristic to any protest events does not allow us to wholly succumb to emotions and lose objectivity. The unclear differentiation of attitudes and the differing individual revolution movements, extremist influences and diffusion of heterogenous ideologies into one protesting entity are problems, that Rafa’s work names indirectly. Through a specific work with the picture material that could be identified as an original style, he crosses several genres, while oscillating from documentary to video art. A large part of Rafa’s work directly belongs to the sphere of artistic activism and public space interventions. The most significant impact in Czech and Slovak society was made by Rafa’s actions commenting the position of socially excluded groups of Roma ethnic group. On so-called sports walls, whose real use is the division of Roma settlements and of quarters from the majority inhabitants, he carried out several large scale paintings, installed billboards or organized sports events with Roma children. An event in Sečovce was a success, when it was supported by local authority and the inhabitants. He processed the theme of membership of the Roma inhabitants to the national identity of the majority in a project called “A Competition for Making a Czech-Roma Flag”. Rafa made fourteen new designs of the flag, of which seven best were selected by the Czech and Roma committee. The winning flag was exposed in the public space and offered to the Government Office of the Czech republic. Apart from an intention to cause a social discussion, the artist thematised the misuse of state symbols at the marches for ethnically “pure” land, but also in the less radical positions (sometimes unconscious)nationalism and chauvinism in everyday life. A criminal complaint was made on Rafa for the project carried out for Artwall gallery in prague by the right wing Workers’ Party of Social justice. Although this was stopped, he was fined by the Prague 7 city district as part of an infringement procedure for breaking the law on the use of state symbols, while this case escalated to confiscating part of the flags by police without the knowledge of the artist (first time in former Czechoslovakia since 1989).
Diana Klempoch Majdáková