We thought we were partying, but instead we were revolutionizing
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Marek Pražák was born on 26 June 1964 in Ostrava. From an early age he was inclined towards art and as a child he attended the Folk Art School. He did not manage to get into the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Uherské Hradiště, so he entered the Tallman Gymnasium in Ostrava in 1979. It was already at the time when he was discovering the free-spirited world of the máničky (longhair) and the associated culture, which inspired him to write and compose his own poems and songs. After a year he failed and was expelled from school at the same time. Thanks to his father’s intervention, he was allowed to enter the grammar school in Ostrava-Zábřeh, where in the 1980s a rigid regime marked by communist ideology and education reigned. It was a period when he fell into depression and introspection, which gradually shaped his aesthetics and poetics. From the age of fifteen, Marek Pražák travelled to Prague, where he met the underground community and also actively performed as a singer-songwriter himself. After he was accepted to the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague in 1986, he was offered the opportunity to sing in the alternative-industrial formation Svoz řepy from Gottwald (Zlín). In addition to that, during the following years - even after the Velvet Revolution - he was active in other bands. On 20 November 1989, as a student, he actively participated in the Prague occupation strike. During the revolution, students from his department produced, reproduced and distributed information leaflets. Marek acted as a liaison between the key sites - Ječná Street, DISK theatre and Laterna Magika, and also took part in persuading citizens in businesses or schools. He received his university diploma in 1992 and has lived as a freelance artist ever since. He has worked on projects for Czech Television, the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre and the National Theatre Ballet in Brno. He has won several awards. In 2024 he lived in Ostrava.
