Peter Bárdy in Artforum

We invite you to the presentation of the new book of essays by the editor-in-chief of Aktualít Petr Bárdy, East of Common Sense, on Thursday 4 December at 18:00 at Artforum on Hlavná Street in Košice. 87
The debate will be moderated by reporter Robo Hakl.

What to do when you don't get into university and an offer from the job centre literally takes your breath away? You go to a radio audition with a friend, after which the programme director tells you that you will 'never really be a presenter'.
When you nod in incomprehension when asked if you can read, he will make you read a storybook in a cubicle lined with egg cartons.

Only to conclude, after a few days of peculiar training, that you can read the morning news live. And you start making it in the media without ever giving it a second thought. No dream come true, just coincidence and virtue out of necessity. That, in a nutshell, was the beginning of Peter Bárdy's journalistic story, which, instead of a classic prologue, will open an imaginary door to a book with the telling title East of Sanity.

The latest book title published under the Aktuality.sk banner is unlike anything we have published so far. Not only in content, but also in graphic design, paper and printing. Through the collection of 22 essays you will enter the land of Dubček's rolls, holiday vouchers and bryndza, Tiso's villa with the archives of the communist secret service or pre-election, Hungarian and other goulash.

Peter Bárdy in his best book is not just the Peter Bárdy you know. He is the author of political bestsellers about Zuzana Čaputová, Robert Fico and Igor Matović. Editor-in-chief of Aktuality.sk and political commentator. He is a boy from a working-class family who became a journalist by accident, but has been one for almost three decades. And thanks to that, he has experienced first-hand the power games of the 'founding fathers', led by the once fearless Mufti, and the moment when the greatest nationalist, Ján Slota, discovered the internet. When the social democrat Robert Fico brought both Mečiar and Slota back into the game. When Igor Matovič did not defeat the mafia state and opened the gates of the government office and the doors of the National Council to 'our people'.

East of Common Sense is a collection of essays - stories from which Peter Bárdy composes a picture of Slovakia. Both sad and funny. Serious and funny. Kind and (self-)ironic. Personal and quite detached. Peter Bárdy does not build a myth about a nation whose DNA he carries deep inside him, nor about his country, from which he does not want to leave, although he considered it for a while. He layers on top of each other tales of bridges from which World War II munitions are dropped in childhood and which, in adulthood, turn into pseudo-bridges between East and West that divide. But he does not stay on either bank: he is neither against nor for, not with 'our' or 'your' people. He seeks to build a bridge that all can walk on, and to find language through authentic and in some ways universal stories that transcend personal experience. Not a common one, simply just a language. After all, who hasn't at least dropped a spittle from a bridge or run a red light in thought?

The event was jointly organized by Artforum and Aktuality.sk
Entrance is free

We look forward to seeing you in the bookstore