Blair Hassett is one of the 25 .jpg)
English Teaching Assistants who help with English language at various Czech high schools across the Czech Republic. With an MA in Environmental Science, an interest in vineyards, and a passion for exploring rural South Moravia, Blair was placed at the Engineering and Art School in Hodonín, a 25,000 town bordering Slovakia. Blair's motivation to spend ten months in the Czech Republic was inspired by photographer and Fulbright alumnus Matthew Monteith and his book Czech Eden. Captivated by Monteith's photographs of rolling hills and his affecting style, Blair has used her time in the Czech Republic to navigate her newfound relationship with the Czech landscape in reconciliation with her personal identity. Blair believes that "[p]hotography is a distillation of the past or the future, whichever you prefer." This year, she has decided to focus on presence.
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Moravia is elusive. Passing through this region in late August after my arrival in Vienna, the hills seemed to extend in all directions, as memory does. At this point in time, my idea of Czechia was not entirely my own–I was predisposed to affection for the Czech landscape through my relationship with the work of Matthew Monteith, a photographer and Fulbright alum who shot a majority of his photobook Czech Eden, while on a grant in the early 2000s. I found this project by chance years ago, and it left me with a familiarity with the visual language of the Czech pastoral, the rolling hills, an isolated copse, the complexity of our pasts and futures.
From late summer on, my time teaching in my placement city of Hodonín at an art and industrial secondary school has been some of the best of my life. I am endlessly grateful to the people I work with and live amongst. This ease of transition has been comparable to the ease of transportation here, fluid and logical. This fluidity is of course made possible by a variety of factors achieved through labor beyond my comprehension, labor which I am immensely appreciative of. My mentor, colleagues, and students are inextricable from my idea of Hodonín–when I think of my placement, I think of them.
Throughout the past several months, I’ve taken to reflecting on Czech Eden and the concept of a place, how one fits into a place. I’ve seen Monteith's landscapes from the train window. Impending rain. The green of renewal. Milovice, Most–what we have done, what we will do. The expression of distance. Radio towers diminished. While one may view Monteith’s work as one reads Kafka’s, dealing in the language of seclusion, the act of readership or viewership is the act of duplicity. One can turn to the work of creatives like Kafka and Monteith to feel held, or at least suspended. Photography is a distillation of the past or the future, whichever you prefer. Czechia is a country that inhabits past and future, a burden that the United States shrugs entirely, existing as a country in a state of crisis, immediacy. (I will exercise the right of criticism until I no longer can).
All of this–Moravia, the Czech Republic, the European continent–relates to me and yet none of it is centered on me. An element of personal discovery can only be found abroad (Americans play this term fast and loose, as if everything in relation to America is abroad). As an American, a nationality of distasteful relevance, we can often only see ourselves clearly in relation to others. Individualism eats the collective. Imposing narrative on the world has consequences. I can only look forward to the possibility of adjustment and a recognition of what has been forgotten.
I’m not sure what can be said for my ability to distill a country into words, I am no authority. I don’t know what it means to be Czech, and I don’t entirely know what it means to be American. To compare the two countries is an impossibility, but here is an attempt. Smallness in Czechia is distinctive, smallness in America is derivative. The United States is a young country but so is the Czech Republic. Eden is an old concept but a recognizable one. I recognize that ideal here, to an extent, yet I also recognize that my subjectivity prevents me from speaking impartially–there is no perfection. But there is a recognition here of something necessary, something communal that the United States has neglected. I am no authority, but I can speak as an American, whatever that means. I can speak as someone who has been subjected to unfriendly markets, social and capital, those treacherous waters.
I admit to subjectivity. Even my reading of Monteith’s work is partial–his depictions of the Czech landscape are countered by portraits of isolation, heavy with implication. Photography is alluring and reductive. But what has been presented to me as speculation about this country I have loved, in all its fiction. In this era of opinion, reality seems to be uncategorizable. The world is changing in ways that outpaces language–the visible dominates and can be inauthentic, though the human response to the perceived harm of the inauthentic is very real and very motivating. Maybe there is no isolation–not between the past and the future, not between Czechia and Europe and the United States. We, the world, may be growing more similar. Centralism, centrism–assimilation as an indication of strength and abandon. I do not know.
Now for some attempted honesty: it seems this country has more to offer me than I can offer in return. I live three kilometers from the Morava. I live three hundred kilometers from Prague. My ability to walk to Slovakia from Hodonín amazes me, and will never cease to do so. This country has its polarities–chateaux and sídliště. Traditions abound. Hody, ples: untranslatable not in words but in feeling. I know I am almost home when I see smokestacks from the train window. This only after passing acres of farmland, countless vineyards. Czech as a language is as intricate as anything, language is a testament to what endures. I can still see a contract being fulfilled here, a relationship between those who live and those who govern. I hope this affection lasts.
In an attempt to assemble my time in the Czech Republic into words, I have to resort to allusion and elision. Fragmentation, more presentative than representative. Approaching the topic of a place laterally is my only chance at honesty. To rely further on metaphor, I’ll use someone else’s: there is no there there. A country is a collective–there is no distinctive Czechia, or United States–just passing time and gestures within that passing. Days pass despite our best efforts. Moravia beckons, the hills extend.