The creative submission for my dissertation includes two of my documentary works: They Will Take My Island, a thirty-minute multimedia collaboration with filmmaker Atom Egoyan for amplified string octet, electronic track, and film, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Paper Pianos, a ninety-minute staged collaboration with director Nigel Maister and projection artist Kevork Mourad. The written submission for my dissertation is an examination of the ways in which experiences around transgenerational trauma inform and manifest in my creative practice. I offer a summary of my own family history of survivors of the Armenian Genocide and Lebanese Civil War, as well as a survey of displacement amongst the Armenian community in the past century. Furthermore, I discuss identity processing as diaspora and the act of cultural preservation, as inspired by genocide survivor, composer, priest, writer, and musicologist, Komitas Vardapet. I later examine these ideas in the context of creating They Will Take My Island and Paper Pianos, both of which were constructively motivated by transgenerational survivor’s guilt and draw from extra-musical documentary and horror genre practices.

The main focus of this diploma thesis is Jiří Kotalík, his relationship with the United States of America and projects in which he participated as the director of the National Gallery in Prague. To understand projects, it was necessary to clarify the broader circumstances, especially the relationship of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic to the United States of America and the cultural policy of both states. Therefore, the time frame was extended, both in the historical introduction and the first exhibition of American art in Czechoslovakia in 1947. It was also necessary to put into context the purpose for which large traveling exhibitions and other US cultural projects were organized and what reception they caused in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The six largest exhibitions of American art, which took place in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in the years 1967-1990, were selected as a sample. In the end, other forms of cooperation of the National Gallery, respectively Jiří Kotalík with American institutions were indicated but also other forms of promotion of Czechoslovak art in the United States of America were indicated. Key words: Jiří Kotalík, National Gallery in Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, USA, Thomas Messer, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, propaganda, cultural policy,...