Jana Kalinová
“Why choose the simple way when you can choose the complicated one,” we sometimes say in situations in which somebody works in a unnecessarily complicated way when there is a much more straightforward solution. Extreme illustration of this saying are the actions of the animated duo Pat and Mat, in whose case the solutions are not only overly complicated, but eventually also mostly non functional.
In our every day “providing” we try to use efficient procedures that ensure the best required result with use of as little means as possible. It is called practicality. The field of art is unique in this sense: effectiveness can be suppressed in favour of other values, “pointless intricacy” can be a quality of itself. Jana Kalinová (born 1978) knows a lot about this, commenting on this aspect of creative work.
This multimedia artist, graduate of FaVU in Brno and occasional curator declares the use of the trial and error procedure even in the title of her website. However the essential thing is that despite the lengthy preparations and number of rejected attempts in the background, the works themselves do not feel ponderous. With a little bit of hyperbole we could compare such phenomenon to ballet: the requirement to master this art of dance is an incredibly hard work, but when the dancer lifts the ballerina into the air, we only see elegance with no signs of strain.
An essential feature of Jana Kalinová’s work is a certain amount of humour, almost absurdity and self irony. That is Natural substitute of a fake Christmas tree (2004), photocopies of towels (3D xerox, 2002), giant non flying paper plane (Big format), “ancient” containers made of electric cables (Archeology, 2003) or mini golf on a kitchen counter (Unisex, 2002). At the same time, her individual art work is just as important as her organisational and collective activities- in Brno gallery Eskort, citizens association Parallel or Matěj magazine.
In 2011 Kalinová released a statement that she no longer wishes to participate in group exhibitions.
This gesture of institutional criticism has probably been her most radical “conceptual action” so far. After all, even Marcel Duchamp took a step back from the art world at one point in his life to engage in the game of chess and work in seclusion on his grand work Étant donné. Let’s comply with the wish of an artist who declares: “If you are interested in my work, let me work in peace.”
Tereza Jindrová
- Here...00:00:11.659
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- At times there’s just something that crosses one's mind,00:00:37.722
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- for example based on a visual correlation,00:00:39.948
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- something looks like something else and he finds it interesting,00:00:42.805
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- he thinks to himself, that’s good,00:00:47.244
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- just like with the joke,00:00:49.130
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- it told you the joke with Christ…00:00:50.720
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- Christ is riding a Turkish crescent,00:00:56.145
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- and just like the Venus of Florence,00:01:03.939
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- he is very chaste,00:01:07.229
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- as he is ascending from the waters,00:01:08.992
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- his hand like this, the back wrap flying away,00:01:12.219
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- he is shy, long hair, full beard,00:01:22.615
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- and I started thinking…00:01:25.862
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- So Christ is riding a Turkish crescent.00:01:28.355
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- I am no religionist so i don't not know if00:01:31.739
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- the Turkish crescent only relates to Turks00:01:36.040
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- or if it is a general symbol of Islam,00:01:40.371
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- I am really not sure exactly, not even exactly,00:01:46.983
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- so I thought, water.00:01:52.493
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- So should he float on water or should he be the Moses00:01:58.466
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- who divides the waters, the good, the evil or I don't know,00:02:01.569
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- one has to work on it a lot00:02:07.160
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- and eventually the result might be some sort of lightness.00:02:12.615
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- A levorotatory swastika is walking down the street00:02:16.370
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- and suddenly sees its reflection in a shop window00:02:19.837
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- and goes aaaah!00:02:24.375
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- I am very nervous when the reading is quite clear.00:02:30.058
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- I really am no caricaturist00:02:37.806
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- who’s initial wish is to criticise somebody,00:02:41.402
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- the urge to make a clear statement about a certain problematics.00:02:45.032
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- I don’t feel that way.00:02:49.636
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- There’s always a certain connection I find interesting00:02:51.873
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- and I think it could be worth trying out.00:02:54.738
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- And most importantly, the actually execution takes me incredibly long,00:03:02.129
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- for example the photo in which I am aiming at the landscape with a remote control,00:03:05.437
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- it’s such a silly thing,00:03:11.521
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- one thinks, well I will just take a picture of a woman00:03:13.299
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- aiming somewhere with the remote control,00:03:17.530
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- but it took about three years00:03:19.463
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- to make it look exactly the way I wanted.00:03:26.579
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- We also tried it out with my father in the garden…00:03:29.164
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- Also a major issue was that I am not good at taking photographs00:03:31.705
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- so I guess it took a little longer than if I was a professional photographer.00:03:38.411
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- The most unambiguous exhibition I had was the one in NoD,00:03:46.734
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- I think what I liked the most was the tiny thing on the wall,00:03:53.513
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- the leaves that were only cut around,00:03:59.955
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- you just cut an apple tree leaf into the shape of a beech leaf.00:04:04.820
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- I had a feeling that I surely had seen it somewhere before,00:04:11.247
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- so I wrote to them that if somebody had seen it before,00:04:15.218
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- they should send me this information,00:04:20.762
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- but I guess nobody had seen it anywhere…00:04:24.131
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- But I still think I did not make it up,00:04:26.744
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- that I surely had seen it somewhere.00:04:29.116
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- There was the hill that was so complicated to make,00:04:34.082
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- I made a metal construction so it would move,00:04:38.615
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- little legs that move,00:04:42.837
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- so that when somebody leads the hill on a leash00:04:45.396
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- it would look like it is walking00:04:49.680
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- a thing that I know see as completely useless,00:04:52.258
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- it was very expensive, for me,00:04:57.678
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- I would never do it that way again.00:05:01.954
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- Now I know it would be enough if it was any trolley00:05:04.291
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- with a pile of dirt on it,00:05:09.802
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- maybe I would reinforce it with some sort of a net,00:05:15.423
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- and then it would be, one the first glance, second, fiftieth,00:05:23.515
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- it would be a hill that is covered with grass,00:05:29.496
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- and somebody pulling the leash would set it in motion,00:05:34.343
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- but it wouldn’t be any dynamic movement,00:05:39.925
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- like nothing would move inside the hill,00:05:42.620
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- it would just move because somebody lead it.00:05:46.702
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- So I lost way too much energy making up the inner system,00:05:49.060
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- I also wanted there to be some pots with evaporating water00:05:58.025
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- and it would nurture the roots, like a grassy carpet,00:06:04.646
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- which is also a total stupidity because if it was a big mass of soil,00:06:09.519
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- the water would stay inside without any help of any complicated device,00:06:14.488
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- anyway, I made sure I would never do it that way again…00:06:19.577
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- Well that is beautiful…00:06:28.610
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- Now it could crash into my arrow that isn’t even standing yet...00:06:32.533
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- See, he has a firm grip of it.00:06:38.758
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- So beautiful.00:06:43.883
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- I thought this could be an arrow00:06:45.883
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- that would have to be held up by several people to stand up,00:06:52.865
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- and these people would have to pull on the same end of a rope,00:06:59.992
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- and also they would have to try to make the pull even, on both sides,00:07:06.278
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- so there's some sort of symbolism again,00:07:18.269
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- although it could also be that if somebody saw the statue from a tram,00:07:22.300
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- he would have no idea how it was made00:07:27.836
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- and could understand it in a completely different way.00:07:29.974
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- You know, going around stuff,00:07:37.798
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- when you realize that some things that seemed to be necessary00:07:40.578
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- are a mere symbol, you understand, right,00:07:44.488
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- it could seem that for the arrow to stand up,00:07:48.748
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- it is necessary for the people to pull on the same side of the rope,00:07:56.786
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- figuratively as well as literally,00:08:01.145
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- but then it turns out it could just be a symbol,00:08:03.145
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- because it is not true, I could pull one rope,00:08:07.800
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- use a peg, second, third, fourth,00:08:10.715
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- and the arrow would stand up in the exact same way,00:08:14.928
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- and if it was raining, or thanks to changes in humidity or pressure,00:08:18.119
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- the ropes would loosen, the pegs could get out of the soil,00:08:25.127
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- and the arrow would react exactly the same way00:08:29.816
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- as it would react to somebody pulling more or less.00:08:33.642
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- I like discovering what is actually a symbol00:08:39.922
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- and what is the real need.00:08:47.048
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- I feel that at some point it was a popular motto,00:08:52.502
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- through art we will, an artist is here to try out some principles and blah blah,00:08:57.505
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- but I still enjoy it, and I still feel it that way,00:09:04.237
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- so I guess I am unusable, because nothing remains…00:09:09.176