Václav Magid
- "It‘s none of anybody’s business where I come from."00:01:22.200
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- "In fact it doesn’t actually have to do anything with me."00:01:27.880
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- "I am not here to represent any wider social group – nation, race, class, gender or culture."00:01:32.920
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- "I am not here to represent any wider social group – nation, race, class, gender or culture."00:01:37.840
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- "But when someone asks me who I am and how do I differ from the others,"00:01:44.720
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- "my origin suddenly becomes quite convenient."00:01:50.400
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- "It’s fun to pick at xenophobic prejudices."00:01:55.560
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- "And in creative professions, an ethnic peculiarity is actually a boon."00:02:01.040
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- "In order to express my singular worldview,"00:02:31.600
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- "I have to find the right means."00:02:36.640
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- "They’re called time-proven methods."00:02:41.160
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- "The reason they are so labelled lies in the fact"00:02:45.200
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- "that everyone has been using them for quite some time now."00:02:48.000
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- "It means that the uniqueness one can express using these methods is ever the same."00:02:51.880
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- "Of course, I can go on as if nothing has happened"00:03:02.760
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- "and start up a wholesale production under the veil of self-expression."00:03:06.760
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- "Or I can venture into so-called inquiry into the means of expression."00:03:12.120
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- "I can be silent, too – someone might then say that I was radical."00:03:18.360
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- "Or I can laugh at myself and make a show of my own awkwardness."00:03:27.160
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- "No doubt, all of it has an undeniable social significance."00:04:31.760
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- "But it is not derived from the presence of a specific assignment."00:04:39.160
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- "It also makes no difference whether I believe that art can serve as a tool for social change."00:04:46.280
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- "The society itself sneaks into art no matter whether I want it or not."00:04:56.320
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- "Lo and behold, the art is produced under certain material – institutional,"00:05:05.080
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- "What is more, it is not just being produced,"00:05:13.480
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- "Truth to be told, it doesn’t actually have to do anything with me."00:05:22.640
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- "but under these conditions, it also operates in a specific manner."00:05:26.800
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- "Of course, to a large degree, I have no influence over these conditions."00:05:32.760
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- "At best, I can decide to what extent I will make them visible in the artwork itself, "00:05:39.000
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- "and how much I will vent my, essentially irrelevant attitude."00:05:46.000
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- "Does art have a potential to bring about revolution?"00:06:48.440
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- "Is it a source of the utopian imaginary?"00:06:54.040
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- "Does it illustrate the so-called realist view that there is no alternative?"00:06:57.960
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- "Or does it strive to touch on the Real we were prevented from accessing?"00:07:06.800
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- "Does it wince in the agony of negation or does it affirm its own irreducible truth?"00:07:15.040
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- "Is it a symptom of the problem or its proposed solution?"00:07:22.560
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- "To be honest, I find no support in any of these options"00:07:30.720
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- "when thinking about what I should do."00:07:37.960
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- "But to ask about the future means mainly and precisely to decide about the course of my action."00:07:44.600
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- "What shall I do next?"00:07:54.600
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- "How should I behave under the present conditions?"00:07:58.400
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- "I have already tried many things but so far"00:08:05.320
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- "I have come only to the conclusion that there is no right decision."00:08:09.720
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- "A beautiful soul wishing to preserve its hands clean will only doom them to passivity."00:08:16.360
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- "The most important thing is honesty."00:09:28.400
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- "But the only ethical position that allows me to be honest is cynicism."00:09:33.440
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- "That is what my art reflects."00:09:44.240
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- "First of all, I strive after truth. "00:09:49.800
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- "But wanting to say the truth as it is would only make me lie because speech always distorts."00:09:54.160
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- "Is it actually even me who speaks now?"00:10:05.880
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- "To reach the truth, I proceed in a roundabout way:"00:10:12.040
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- "I lie, but my lie is obvious enough to be immediately recognisable as such."00:10:17.560
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- "If you love the truth you cannot avoid irony."00:10:29.200
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- "I don’t have anything against the popular belief that art is concerned with understanding."00:12:21.440
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- "As the meaning of an artwork is slowly getting more and more clear"00:12:32.760
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- " you are starting to understand yourself better."00:12:39.160
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- "To halt this process all too soon would mean to miss the point."00:12:45.560
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- "That’s why an artwork must not be too easy to understand."00:12:56.160
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- "The best way how to accommodate the audience is to not to give a damn about it."00:13:01.200
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- "For the search for understandability to even start, you have to come across something strange. "00:14:06.880
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- "But at the same time, it should be somehow familiar"00:14:17.840
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- "– otherwise, you wouldn’t even feel a need to strive for understanding."00:14:22.120
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- "I am trying, therefore, to show what’s familiar as something strange."00:14:30.080
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- "Imagine coming back to a flat you once lived in."00:14:37.240
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- "There is an intimate familiarity, in a way, "00:14:47.840
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- "but at the same time, you see someone else has been living there for quite a while."00:14:51.480
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- "It doesn’t belong to you anymore "00:14:59.600
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- "and you don’t belong there anymore, as well."00:15:02.320