We wanted to do these things so that they would still be allowed
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Vladimír Pospíšil was born on 10 June 1950 in Olomouc. He grew up in Bystrovany near Olomouc in a family strongly marked by the political upheavals of the 20th century. His family background - on the one hand stigmatized after World War II and 1948, on the other culturally and Catholic oriented - fundamentally influenced his values, his relationship to authority and his sensitivity to art. He grew up in an environment critical of the communist regime, and was strongly affected by the events of 1968 and the subsequent normalisation. Due to his family’s cadre profile, he was not allowed to continue his studies and trained as a machine fitter and worked in the Moravia national enterprise, later on the development of aircraft engines. In the 1970s he became involved in the alternative music and cultural scene, which brought him repeated clashes with the regime and the interest of the security forces. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s he was one of the initiators of the jazz club in the Mariánské Valley, which became an important regional centre of unofficial culture. The club was monitored by the state authorities for a long time and in 1987 its activities were closed down. From the mid-1980s onwards, the witness systematically devoted himself to artistic creation. In November 1989, he actively participated in the demonstrations in Olomouc, but perceived the political changes with reserve. After the decline in aircraft production at Moravia, he left the industry in the early 1990s and from 1994 worked as a school caretaker in Velká Bystřice, which allowed him to continue his artistic and cultural activities. Later he worked at the Museum of Art in Olomouc. His life story reflects the experience of a man moving on the borderline between official society and unofficial culture of the normalized Czechoslovakia. At the time of recording in December 2025, he lived and worked in Olomouc.
