Studio / A room where carpets mean air
Roman Štětina invites us via the exhibition in Jelení Gallery to the world which forms an essential part of his everyday reality. He brings us to the Studio – a radio broadcasting environment that most of us know just from hearsay. There he works as a radio reporter and a director but also as a technician and a musician. He transmits his concern in sound and radio environment into a visual creation as well. He examines sound means of expression and its ability to intermediate a visual experience to the listener. He proves his strategies in radio interventions Nocturne and the video Rehearsal Studio. He uses them fully in his work Studio and its presentation involving the space of Jelení Gallery. A wall dividing the exhibition space is changing into a veil of Pythagoras, a barrier which deepens the viewer’s concentration and stirs up his imagination. At the same time it represents walls of a hermetically sealed radio studio and its parallels in a form of an artist’s studio – a place where pictures often reflecting the outer world are created. An imaginary third space where the viewer could go through a direct sound experience related to a haptic perception is missing. Roman Štětina makes also an attempt to intermediate this experience to the viewers when inviting them to visit together a radio studio in Pilsen – the set of a presented video but also a real room where carpets mean air.
- First I'd like to talk about the title00:00:13.560
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- "Studio - The Room Where Carpets Mean the Ether".00:00:19.362
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- It's an old witticism used by people who work for radio,00:00:24.800
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- a modification of the saying "the boards that mean the world".00:00:30.300
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- I used it to express the hidden visuality00:00:36.257
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- that can't be seen00:00:42.066
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- but still remains esthetic and interesting.00:00:45.612
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- The video was shot in Pilsen, in the Czech Radio building.00:00:59.060
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- It was the first building in Central Europe00:01:07.123
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- specifically destined for radio broadcasting.00:01:11.623
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- It was built in the 50's using a pre-war project,00:01:16.081
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- and that's why it has these large studios00:01:21.781
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- for recording radio plays.00:01:26.955
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- When the visitors enter the gallery,00:01:30.513
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- all they can see in the first room00:01:33.980
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- is a chair and a loudspeaker.00:01:37.480
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- This audio room also partly refers to radio.00:01:40.980
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- The viewers are visually confronted00:01:47.907
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- with the source of the sound,00:01:51.407
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- which inhibits their imagination.00:01:55.404
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- However, the video contains dark frames,00:02:00.446
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- creating a certain space for imagination00:02:07.385
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- that would exist when listening to the radio.00:02:15.982
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- Only here the image soon reappears00:02:21.061
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- to confront the viewer with the source of the sound.00:02:24.914
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- The video constantly shows a microphone00:02:30.431
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- that captures the sound.00:02:36.366
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- Naturally, the viewers observe it from a different perspective,00:02:43.289
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- a perspective that doesn't correspond with the sound.00:02:49.390
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- Do I make myself clear?00:02:55.080
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- For instance, the actor walks away from the camera,00:02:58.208
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- while the sound is approaching.00:03:03.280