Slovakia’s government felt the heat on Thursday as cultural workers from hundreds of theaters, galleries, and other institutions across the country threatened to strike.
The movement, known as Culture Strike, is coordinated by Open Culture! Platform, an independent civic group that was formed in January to “protect culture in Slovakia from the destructive actions of politicians.”
At a press conference in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, Culture Stike’s organizers laid out their demands. They said the culture ministry must halt “ideologically motivated censorship,” implement “professional and competent management,” and ensure “immediate financial stabilization of the [culture] sector, with an emphasis on improving the financial valuation of workers and their social security.”
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The ultimatum follows the culture ministry’s firing the heads of the Slovak National Theater (SND) and the Slovak National Gallery (SNG) in August, Matej Drlička and Alexandra Kusá, respectively. Drlička and Kusá told ARTnews their dismissals were part of a political purge by Robert Fico’s populist left-wing Smer-SSD party. The party won parliamentary elections in Slovakia in October and formed a coalition government with the center-left Hlas and nationalist SNS parties.
Representatives from student bodies, celebrities, and prominent cultural figures turned up to show their support for the strike at the press conference. The rector of Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts, Martin Šmatlák, and the actress Jana Kovalčiková made speeches, while employees of Slovakia’s public broadcaster STVR were in attendance.
Culture Strike’s organizers said the first phase of their action is an “alert” and will not interrupt work, but they called on supporters to wear clothes emblazoned with the movement’s logo and to post messages on social media. However, they said pressure could be “escalated,” they said, with sirens being sounded during theatrical productions and the strike’s demands being read out in middle of performances and at art galleries and museums.
“It is difficult to predict how the political representation will react to the demands of the Cultural Strike, since so far it has been completely indifferent to legitimate objections to the harmfulness of the enforced legislation or to objections to the leadership of the ministry of culture,” Katarína Mišíková, of Open Culture! Platform, told ARTnews. “Our hope, however, is to bring the issue of cultural management from the position of a hostage to political games to the center of public debate, to spread awareness of what the real problems of culture are, through a demonstration of the unity of the cultural community.”
During the press conference on Thursday, Culture Strike said almost 1,300 people had signed up for the strike alert, with 135 cultural institutions in Slovakia involved. Around 250 people from the SND, 100 or so people from the SNG, and 68 of 220 employees from the culture ministry have signed up.
Martina Šimkovičová, a former TV presenter who was appointed Slovakia’s culture minister in October by Fico, responded to Culture Strike’s demands on Friday. “The culture ministry rejects the statements made by representatives of Open Culture! Platform about the ‘radical deterioration of working conditions of people working in the culture ministry over the last 10 months’ – the working conditions of all employees… are fully in accordance with the labor code,” Šimkovičová wrote on Telegram. “Any allegations of ‘intimidation, firings, threats’ [within the culture ministry] are misleading and not based on truth… The culture ministry distances itself from Culture Strike’s [three demands], the ministry does not organize any ideologically motivated censorship.”
Tensions between Slovakia’s culture workers and the culture ministry have spilled over since Fico appointed Šimkovičová. Matej Drlička, who she fired as head of Slovakia’s National Theater last month, told ARTnews that after Šimkovičová’s appointment, “we realized we were entering a new culture war.”
Šimkovičová has mocked refugees on social media and publicly criticized homosexuals. Many people say she is not qualified for the job of culture minister.
In August, thousands of Slovakians protested against the culture ministry on the streets of Bratislava. Many of the protesters held banners. One read, in English, “GO FUCK YOURSELF,” which was likely aimed at Šimkovičová or Fico, or perhaps both politicians. Another read “FREEDOM AND NOTHING ELSE” in Slovakian.