Moving Objects
The moving image provides artists with an exceptional tool for capturing the transformations of artefacts in relation both to external events and subjective perception. Audiovisual works thus become tools for recording performative interactions with objects, depicting the transformation of objects through the effect of natural processes, or imaginative play with artefacts that are extracted from the logic of everyday reality.
Capturing the transformation of art objects by their implantation into the landscape has been the subject of films made by the artist Miloš Šejn since the 1970s. In Braunův betlém [Braun’s Nativity Scene], he captured the morphing shapes of Braun’s nativity scene at the Kuks Hospital under layers of snow. The original volumes of the statues transform into spontaneously created environmental sculptures, in dialogue between the original material and the deposits of snow. In Zívrovy Prachovské skály [Zívr’s Prachov Rocks], the artist sets in motion a dialogue in form between sculptures by Ladislav Zívr and the formations in the Prachov Rocks, where the sculptures were temporarily installed.
A personal experience with a natural object in the landscape became the starting point for Lumír Hladík’s Už nikdy tenhle balvan [The Never Boulder], in which the artist decided to “deal with” a boulder that had irked him since childhood. Artist Pavla Sceranková also works with her own experience in the video performance Sáčkování [Bagging], though in this case, it is not a childhood memory but a need to come to terms with the reality of contemporary consumerist society. The borders between lived reality and its perception are also explored in the works of filmmaker Adéla Babanová, often through the use of manipulated images. In Prut [Rod], she let a fishing rod levitate above the calm surface of a river, as if it were an indelible component of this calm scenery.
Miloš Šejn: Zívrovy Prachovské skály [Zívr’s Prachov Rocks]
7 min, 1978
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Zívrovy Prachovské skály [Zívr’s Prachov Rocks] documents an art happening that took place in 1978: Ladislav Zívr’s statues were installed directly in the Prachov Rocks (Prachovské skály), the sculptor’s greatest inspiration. Miloš Šejn captures a dialogue in form between the rock formations and Zívr’s sculptures.
Jan Jedlička: Air (znělka)
1 min, 2001
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In 2001, Jan Jedlička was at an artist residency at the newly opened Centre for Global Dialogue conference centre, built in the small town near Zurich. His aim was to use various artistic means to capture the first year of the centre’s operation. Jan Jedlička filmed a short opening sequence for a conference that was to introduce a series of further conferences on climate change. The minute-long film, which sees a red balloon being deflated, was both a humorous and cautionary expression of climate conferences focused on air pollution and global warming.
Pavla Sceranková: Sáčkování [Bagging]
30 sec., 2004
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The short film Sáčkování [Bagging] captures Pavla Sceranková’s performance, which consists of the artist moving around in a life-size paper bag. The work arose from the artist’s reflection on consumerist lifestyle, specifically the phenomenon of oversize. Sáčkování is one of Sceranková’s first works in which she connects, in a highly original way, the media of sculpture, performance, and art of the moving image. The work was created during the artist’s stay at the Gray School of Art Aberdeen in Scotland.
Adéla Babanová: Prut [Rod]
2 min., 2010
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In Prut [Rod], a fishing rod levitates above the surface of a river in an infinite loop – provocatively and suspiciously, freely and easily. This image, so hard to answer, focuses Babanová’s capacity to express provocatively, with hyperbole, and with the exclusion of pathos the practically existential dimension of how things/people appear to themselves and to others and how they really are.
