Trilogy on Art

Feature videos, 2008 - 2009

The Zurich video was inspired by an interview made for the Artforum magazine in 1973 in New York, featuring sculptor Robert Smithson, artist Nancy Holt and journalist Lucy Lippard remembering the prematurely deceased sculptor Eva Hesse. At the end of the interview, Robert Smithson remarked that it was her death that gave Eva Hesse’s works a great significance. The central theme of the Zurich video is the question whether the value of an artwork can be confirmed by the artist’s death. The context of the 1973 interview is not mentioned in the video so that its message can be generally applied to any art environment. The Zurich video is the first part of a loose trilogy dealing with the internal bonds and mechanisms of the art scene.

The video I voted for Myself as an Artist of the Year of the Year is a follow-up to the television debate Zurich. The protagonists meet again, however, outside the television studio, to have a wannabe friendly chat about their lives. Their phoney bragging is subverted by horror movie elements which are gradually intensified. Employed intentionally by Babanová, the loop symbolizes the inseparability of the desire for recognition and suffering.

Demigods is the final part of the trilogy dealing with the mechanisms of the art environment, the position of female artists as well as the immortality of art and artists. The characters featured in the previous videos became abstracted categories of the world’s most famous artist, the world’s most famous gallery owner, and Death who offers them immortal fame for a considerable price.

Text: Sylva Poláková
www.mediabaze.cz