Authors
Eugen BRIKCIUS
Poet, fiction writer, essayist and visual artist Eugen Brikcius was born in Prague on 30 August 1942. After graduating from secondary school he did various jobs, including as a bricklayer’s mate, electric-float operator, and programmer. He read philosophy and sociology as an external student at Prague in 1966–68, and philosophy at University College, London, in 1968–70. He was finally able to complete his studies in 1981–82. During the 1970s he worked independently as a visual artist. Since 1982 he has lived in Vienna, where he initially made a living as an office worker, but is now self-employed. In 1966–70 he organized ‘happenings’, and resumed them after the Changes of 1989–90 in the form of ‘conceptual events’.
Brikcius’s first literary work consists of scenarios for the happenings with which he made a name for himself among the nonconformist artists and writers before the Soviet-led military intervention of August 1968. His subsequent literary output, including translations into modern Latin (Cadus rotundus – Sud kulatý [The Round Cask]) and essays on art and artists (Vyložení umělci aneb Kunsthistorické pohádky [Interpreted Absolute Artists or, Art-history Fairy Tales]), relies mainly on the principle of nonsense and inventive, at times brilliant games with language and its vehicles, an experiment inspired by Dadaism and the Theatre of the Absurd. On the one hand, Brikcius successfully archaizes his linguistic statement, shifting to an almost Mannerist stance, confidently employing manifold, sometimes mischievous or sprightly ritualized formulations, daring to use bizarre hoaxing, whereby the actual text is interpreted and defined as a conceptual act sui generis. (His Útěcha z mystifikace [Comfort in Hoaxing] deals with the theoretical side of this approach.) By finding the base of his work in language, on the other hand, the artist sees an opportunity to voice his ideas and preferred way of life. Both these positions, however, may be on the verge of parody or become parodied with great verve. Another side of Brikcius’s extensive artistic activity is his television ‘dreams’ series, which has recently taken on a literary form as Sny Eugena Brikciuse (The Dreams of E. B.). These are similar to the witty, even brilliant reflections of people in cafés, where the speech usually revolves around a single theme, almost always ornamented with some odd detail of which the others present know nothing. In his ‘dreams’ Brikcius always starts from a general situation and then directs his commentary towards some bizarre aphorism and resourceful punch line interlarded with poems – he is always concerned that his texts should be dominated by a ‘comprehensible poeticism’. Although he is addressing a learned, well-read audience, he seeks to entertain, distract, even delight. He writes mainly about things that elevate us in our everyday life rather than those that cause us to stumble and fall. In most of his ‘dreamlike’ texts Brikcius introduces himself as the ‘Czech from Vienna’. And in this conception, Vienna, which has long since become his second home, appears as Prague’s sister: his worlds are always pleasant and petite, and he enjoys inhabiting them, and allowing himself to indulge in the loveliest ‘hanky-panky’ there. He claims of his stories that they are almost entirely concerned with the ‘graceful defamiliarization of apparently obvious concepts, things and events’.
(vn)
The profile was updated in 2005
Deutsch 
Eugen BRIKCIUS, Deutsch.doc
En français Eugen BRIKCIUS, En français.doc
