ABSTRACT
For many people in Slovakia, life after the fall of the Iron Curtain became more diverse, funnier, even easier. However, many were stricken by poverty, depression, and disappointment. Due to stormy changes, barriers fell — real ones in the form of barbed wire fences as well as imaginary social and ethical ones. New possibilities for understanding, inspiration, and the realization of different skills and abilities opened up, but at the same time we were overwhelmed by crime, prostitution, and drugs. It became clear that under the former regime, people's sense of ethics and responsibility had not developed adequately. We suddenly found ourselves thrust into the wilderness of a new reality without sufficient survival skills. Our hierarchy of values had been destroyed. Commercial values took their place instead of the real values of a free and cultured society. It is now time for “soul ecology.” And what could be a more appropriate means of accomplishing this than through art? Recent history demonstrates that neither education nor religion protect people from negative new influences, but I am sure that art can. Even at the worst times under communist totalitarianism, it was art that opened up new experiences, consoled, kindled a sense of community, and elevated ethics and aesthetics.
