Differentiated Visions

“Things never conform to the ideas that we have about them; there is always something more to them than what we are able to grasp. The world does not fit into our own cognitive paradigms and narrative modes of explanation. “Man” is not the measure of all things. This is why speculation is necessary.” Steven Shaviro

We observe the seemingly random movement of figures on a muted horizon. Who are they? What do they convey? What actually is the area into which they were thrown and in which they are moving from nowhere to nowhere? Is their constellation random or do they have something in common? Sound from the Desert balances on the borders of sleep and wakefulness – the moment when we start to realize that the preceding events, though very real, were just a dream.

The title Back To One refers to film jargon. It means to return to the beginning, to take a starting position before the cameras are turned on. This command enables the technical staff to ensure material film production without disturbing the film record. This is the moment I am returning to, so that I can construct it once again and in a different way.

I am entering the competition with a trailer of appropriate length. Let the application also include the final forty‐minute film. I would like to introduce it performatively as part of the exhibition and in such a way that the projection will be disturbed as much as possible. Let The Future Belongs to Helium be filled by an artist’s dream about star expansion.

I have sent a camera through a tubular post in the Motol Hospital in Prague.

The video originated within a project based on a system which uses another artist’s material. In my case I used Zuzana Žabková’s videos. The recontextualisation of her work by means of classical film structure did not work. Therefore I decided to work with a combination of two videos and their formal aspects: resolution, contrast, speed, rhythm and sound, and then combining the whole and the details.

This work originated as a multi­channel installation, the arrangement of which proceeded from the geometry of traditional mass compositions. It was an attempt to bring the experience of mass physical exercise (All­Sokol gathering, Spartakiad) closer to the audience and to become a participant. Except for the immersive situation, the video diverts the attention in a different direction: to the protagonists’ motions and expressions.

The authors set out together to the Carrara quarry in which high‐quality marble used to be mined and served as the raw material for many iconic sculptures. They work with spectacular settings which are used as a powerful visual and contextual background; they create simple gestures based on this background. They let the figures disappear on the horizon of stones; they let them merge into the sculptural material; sometimes they conversely revive them by their own physical presence.

Catastrophe is not something that either threatens to happen in the close future or has already happened in the past – rather, we are experiencing it right now. How long can the catastrophe exist without any new stimuli? What happens when no one comes up with something surprising?

„...this place, if I could describe this place, portray it, I've tried, I feel no place, no place round me, there’s no end to me, I don't know what it is, it isn't flesh, it doesn't end, it's like air...“ Samuel Beckett