Martin Kohout

• I don't think the fact I studied camera brings00:00:06.159
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• any further technical effect into my work.00:00:08.875
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• I grew up in a film family and I am certainly influenced00:00:13.704
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• by thinking through film scripts and stage crew.00:00:19.193
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• I see my work rather as film scripts or instructions.00:00:27.651
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• Something that can be repeated many times.00:00:34.218
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• Someone has asked me recently whether I was a performer.00:00:39.668
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• It was a weird question as I see myself rather as00:00:43.812
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• an author of the instructions but sometimes00:00:46.963
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• it's much easier to cast myself.00:00:50.195
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• Which is not the case of the Gotthard tunnel00:01:00.720
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• as I wanted to run through the tunnel myself.00:01:03.718
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• This May I run through a tunnel in Switzerland00:01:08.617
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• called Gotthard which is only used for cars and trucks.00:01:11.948
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• It isn't accessible to pedestrians.00:01:19.579
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• I run through the tunnel when it was closed00:01:24.886
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• over night for technical reasons.00:01:27.848
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• I run through the tunnel on my own, accompanied by a security car.00:01:30.448
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• Wait, this one is old, there is even a mistake.00:01:50.901
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• About the German Italian speaking areas.00:01:58.519
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• The idea has haunted me since I drove00:02:04.223
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• through Gotthard for the first time.00:02:10.086
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• It was a very intense experience.00:02:12.897
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• The tunnel has a black ceiling and a single lane in each direction,00:02:14.843
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• the distance between cars is regulated,00:02:18.620
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• nothing changes except for the cars going in the opposite direction,00:02:21.518
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• but that's just few lights dazzling you slightly.00:02:27.337
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• At the same time it's an area very specific for Swiss history and culture,00:02:34.535
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• it's a place where all the stories about William Tell take place,00:02:40.375
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• there was also signed the Swiss constitution.00:02:47.530
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• All this causes unusual feelings.00:02:50.606
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• The awareness of being in the middle of00:02:56.367
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• a huge mass of material and there is no way out.00:02:58.433
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• You are stuck inside in a peculiar way.00:03:02.133
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• This place also means a holiday border for many00:03:04.429
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• people coming from Central and Northern Europe.00:03:08.645
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• When you drive through the tunnel from north to south,00:03:13.264
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• you get practically to Italy.00:03:17.198
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• So the idea of running through the tunnel crossed my mind.00:03:20.023
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• There is a peculiar contrast as running itself00:03:24.734
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• is a very monotone and simple motion00:03:28.410
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• and the tunnel is just a line going through the mountain range.00:03:33.385
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• My run through the tunnel was a kind of a gesture,00:03:39.022
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• because narratively nothing else happened except for00:03:43.324
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• starting off at point A and after some time reaching point B.00:03:46.748
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• The time I spent in the tunnel isn't documented,00:03:50.924
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• there are just records of my start off and finish.00:03:54.431
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• And when I look back at the run,00:04:00.467
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• in my mind there are just few pictures of00:04:03.510
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• the tunnel going straight and then bending slightly in a distance00:04:09.275
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• or running past few cars completing some repairs.00:04:16.285
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• It is the third longest tunnel for cars in the world,00:04:22.660
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• not the first one...00:04:27.737
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• I haven't even published how long the run took me,00:04:29.881
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• so there isn't any competition.00:04:35.207
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• My name features there just to confirm it had really happened.00:04:38.684
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• But I guess the event or the thread stretching through00:04:44.206
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• the tunnel became for people who had heard about me and00:04:52.007
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• drive through rather independent or abstract.00:04:56.227
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• Of course I had time for other things,00:05:11.176
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• but training of the run affected my daily routine quite radically.00:05:13.645
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• I trained five times a week, mainly by the end and I had00:05:22.364
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• one serious injury, when my left leg ligament was torn.00:05:27.834
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• It resulted in one of my three-object series00:05:35.247
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• I worked on immediately after the run, called Wrong Step.00:05:39.850
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• When I was training for the project, suddenly many things changed.00:06:01.556
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• The experience I gained owing to the year of training and subsequent Gotthard run,00:06:05.732
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• became very important for me, as it helped me00:06:11.440
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• to realize how to carry on.00:06:18.468
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• It was a very different process from the ones I am used to.00:06:21.383
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• I had to subordinate almost every day to it.00:06:28.385
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• I had to find out and learn many things,00:06:31.806
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• I even started to like and fell for the run I had once considered boring.00:06:40.689
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• Does it fit well?00:06:56.432
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• It may look like a prevarication, but when I finish a project,00:07:01.082
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• I try to cut off and start from scratch.00:07:05.965
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• Of course the possibilities are relative as there are many issues00:07:10.418
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• I have been interested in for a long time.00:07:15.755
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• but on the other hand I don't want to seek00:07:19.208
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• any form to appropriate, deplete or repeat.00:07:22.270
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• Thereby I aim for some freedom, at the moment I'm working on a visual project.00:07:27.006
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• Every project logically changes my perspective00:07:37.230
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• of the next one, as I can't avoid comparing00:07:43.270
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• my present and past projects.00:07:47.512
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• At the moment I concern with the internet less than few years ago,00:07:51.125
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• which doesn't mean I don't pay attention to it any more.00:07:58.740
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• I started to deal more with the technology effects beyond the screen.00:08:03.286
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• I've always been interested in the way people use certain00:08:15.253
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• utility or new function rather than in their aesthetic qualities.00:08:22.527
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• It's called Watching Martin Kohout,00:08:49.465
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• I was watching YouTube for ten months and recording myself.00:08:51.641
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• This very specific experience affected my daily life as well.00:08:59.405
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• My plan was it should work as a parasite within the YouTube website.00:09:08.321
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• The most interesting part for me was that some of00:09:16.717
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• the project levels were unexpected, there was an interaction with00:09:21.671
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• other people watching it and recording their reactions.00:09:30.202
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• Also the way the whole project was perceived00:09:35.949
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• supported the process behind it.00:09:39.266
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• It wasn't confined just to the monitor boundaries.00:09:44.127
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• The life online and offline can't be separated utterly.00:09:47.781
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• In my work is evident my concern with habits00:10:09.622
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• brought about by new technologies or new working conditions and their00:10:17.745
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• impact on social structure or how the behaviour and habits of the users change.00:10:30.721
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• Owing to Facebook people speak to people they don't know,00:10:43.556
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• requirements on our reactions within indirect communication00:10:51.549
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• such as emails or text messages are different,00:10:58.090
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• many jobs expect the readiness to solve problems almost 24 hours a day.00:11:02.001
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• I guess you want to ask me about the hands...00:11:23.999
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• Well they are a motive returning back almost obsessively all the time.00:11:30.353
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• It's obviously not intentional or I am not aware of it...00:11:36.714
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• I don't want to analyse it excessively.00:11:44.845
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• Tactility is something which has been intensified recently,00:11:50.621
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• because many processes are getting abstract.00:12:01.375
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• Primarily the way we work is set in a semantic level nowadays.00:12:07.153
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• The way we treat information... Many people today work00:12:16.412
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• at the computer, they carry out the same physical acts00:12:21.038
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• whereas the mental ones differ a lot.00:12:26.489
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• It appears to me that our other senses are given00:12:31.093
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• a different weight from the times we worked manually for example.00:12:37.372
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• It's certainly something different, today it's a kind of hunger for00:12:43.230
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• touching something which takes place in an abstract level.00:12:47.672
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• I established the publisher in 2011,00:13:07.893
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• but it's not any registered company or any official activity.00:13:11.706
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• I'm not seriously interested in churning out one book after another.00:13:20.527
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• I'd like to discover all the ways different publications00:13:25.818
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• can be treated with the same mentality I approach my other work.00:13:30.613
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• I published this publication in the co-operation with PAF.00:13:38.208
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• It's called Linear Manual. I organized the publication00:13:41.344
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• by writing contributors a letter explaining I'd like to regard us00:13:47.594
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• as a semi confidential community which has a triangle in its centre.00:13:58.048
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• On two corners of the triangle were two of my works and00:14:02.602
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• and I wanted them to think of the third one.00:14:07.155
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• I wanted to create a publication appearing as a conference result.00:14:10.850
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• Conference that was neither the first nor the last,00:14:16.716
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• but one of many, without having the beginning or end defined,00:14:19.097
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• as it's common with publications. I hopefully made them writing00:14:24.938
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• not directly about my work but about all the things my work00:14:34.620
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• shares with their interests.00:14:39.283
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• Because I told them to focus on the triangle centre,00:14:42.764
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• they could take from it a bit more than if they had to stick strictly00:14:46.169
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• to some photo-documentation of the two selected things.00:14:51.468
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• The next publication is called Doubting and it tries to look like a zin,00:14:55.335
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• this is the fourth issue, but I didn't publish any other00:15:05.126
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• and I don't think I'm going to in the near future.00:15:09.487
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• I rather tried to deal with the form, which is somewhere standardized and00:15:14.182
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• I could break it in some of the parts.00:15:20.739
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• It's mostly related to the form, here the text goes over...00:15:24.355
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• I was interested in the format of zin also because I intentionally00:15:31.608
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• selected rather theoretical things and they fitted well...00:15:36.741
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• And I could simultaneously include other things00:15:45.654
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• that disturbed the concept somehow.00:15:48.282
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• The last publication came out this week,00:15:50.212
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• it's a classic theoretical publication of film studies,00:15:53.127
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• dealing with the significance of photographic picture in a film context.00:16:00.354
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• This topic seemed important to me00:16:05.944
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• and I wanted to try out working00:16:10.945
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• with such material as a publisher.00:16:15.589
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• For me, being an artist means also the way of life I lead00:16:36.051
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• and how I cope with things around me.00:16:41.405
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• I try to put my work together with my life00:16:45.125
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• so that it has further effect on00:16:49.573
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• my everyday life than just working in the studio.00:16:53.924

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