Breath

• "BREATH" Rafani00:00:03.805
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• Activities of the artistic group Rafani00:00:36.189
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• consist in creating art deeply implanted into the life of a society.00:00:39.585
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• The society provides us with both themes and forms,00:00:43.428
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• through which we seize our themes00:00:47.797
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• and the society itself becomes the material which we process.00:00:51.081
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• Our creation focuses on border situations00:00:55.686
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• that do not allow taking an unequivocal stand.00:00:58.303
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• It shifts the usual view of social phenomena,00:01:02.033
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• without offering an instruction manual for a direct action.00:01:04.968
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• The final goal of our direction is utopian.00:01:08.477
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• Our goal is the future with higher quality of humanity.00:01:11.274
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• The realization of this goal is pursued00:01:15.082
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• by drawing attention to frictional surfaces between00:01:18.580
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• the values of equality and freedom.00:01:21.803
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• This represent a kind of universal formula with which00:01:26.047
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• Rafani have entered the contemporary Czech art scene.00:01:29.380
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• Apart from all that is included in it, that is, a thorough social programme,00:01:33.872
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• it is admirable that the social programme is still valid00:01:38.869
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• and it can help to define this exhibition here in Brno, too.00:01:41.391
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• Rafani have, from the beginning, emphasized the need for a vision,00:01:47.909
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• yet, at the same time, they perceived dissuasiveness00:01:51.669
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• of consistent promotion of a concrete requirement.00:01:54.698
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• That is why they speak of a utopian vision.00:01:57.034
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• As a result, each exhibition delivers a new view on society,00:01:59.599
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• as well as a return to something already expressed00:02:03.439
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• which is then shifted to a new level and newly articulated.00:02:06.724
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• Here, it is the billboard on which, as a parallel to real events,00:02:10.610
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• the interests of a supranational company Nike, of the House of Arts,00:02:17.399
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• and the interests of Rafani penetrate through the already several times used00:02:23.894
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• Rafani´s credo: "Our connection is a higher form of individuality".00:02:27.910
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• Likewise, the repetition of combination of handmade activity,00:02:45.231
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• this time, the members´ fingerprints applied to the common artefact,00:02:50.324
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• transmit the already-lived experience of tribalism00:02:54.495
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• into the next reincarnation,00:02:57.559
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• and, at the same time, it connects to a new theme - sport.00:02:59.923
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• Sport is used here not as a possibility, or a solution for the society,00:03:06.604
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• but, in the sense of musings by Siegfried Kracauer,00:03:09.306
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• as an area where the political dissolves and crumbles.00:03:14.409
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• In the 2005 exhibition in Berlin, they exhibited a sign:00:03:18.646
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• "Art is the ornament of a society",00:03:25.271
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• which could now be mutated into "sport is the ornament of a society".00:03:30.234
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• The starting theme offers several basic principles determining00:03:34.160
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• the struture of the exhibition, as well as connotations such as manipulation,00:03:37.578
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• rhytmization, mechanization, animation, hordism, multiplication,00:03:41.458
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• intensification, mutation, variation, classification, and organization,00:03:46.676
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• which all contribute to this kind of ornamental image.00:03:51.902
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• This is not the first Rafani exhibition in the House of Arts.00:04:07.626
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• They have already exhibited here several times,00:04:09.655
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• in the main hall, in 2004,00:04:11.083
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• at the occasion of the announcement of the Jindøich Chalupecký Prize.00:04:12.496
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• That time, they followed the theme of observation in the anagram of knowledge,00:04:15.503
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• or two years later, as they performed social work in front of the House of Arts,00:04:21.419
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• cooking for the passers-by in the street.00:04:28.299
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• This was mainly appreciated by Romany children and adolescents who00:04:31.987
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• in turn decorated the walls of the institution with Rafani logos.00:04:36.961
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• This event taking place in front of the gallery00:04:38.781
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• was a reaction to a preceding event,00:04:42.481
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• when Rafani borrowed, on behalf of this institution,00:04:45.023
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• a Magdalena Cubrová´s painting00:04:48.584
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• "At the Edge of a Pit" from the National Gallery,00:04:50.432
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• which they then drowned.00:04:53.213
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• Today, finally, they occupy the entire exhibition floor.00:04:55.050
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• A proper exhibition in a proper exhibitional institution as they like it best.00:04:58.244
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• Exhibition as a total space.00:05:03.565
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• Order and breath are a significant feature of the exhibition.00:05:07.001
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• The requirement for a good sportsman, soldier, or a statesman.00:05:11.745
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• Inhalation and exhalation represent life mechanism.00:05:16.192
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• You go through the exhibition and return to the beginning.00:05:19.901
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• Two directions on one path.00:05:23.612
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• Breath distances the text from the ideological content,00:05:25.837
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• it is not a voice, nor a statement.00:05:28.833
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• Simultaneously, except mechanics of a body improved by sport,00:05:31.638
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• breath is the father of a spirit.00:05:34.936
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• That which connects art and sport00:05:37.892
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• is placed in the second consumer plan.00:05:40.930
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• What principally divides the two00:05:43.157
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• are the rules.00:05:45.093
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• Art, and Avant-Garde by its programme, should cross the rules,00:05:58.670
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• manifest new ones, alter the world.00:06:02.605
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• Sport is supposed to be played by the rules and, within those rules,00:06:11.856
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• it should keep reaching ever-higher perfection00:06:16.553
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• and demonstrate to the society the interest in preserving the respected order.00:06:18.461
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• Performance is also a building block of the exhibition.00:06:29.307
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• Performance as film, as art, as sport.00:06:32.192
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• Beginnings of film, slapstick,00:06:36.736
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• and recordings of the first perfomances from the seventies00:06:39.014
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• have, as Rafani realized during filming,00:06:43.707
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• common points of capture in one continous shot.00:06:45.554
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• At one point of the exhibition, the performances are manipulatively fused00:06:49.937
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• into one ridiculous complex as a victim of the story.00:06:52.308
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• At another, a football performance is broken apart into an absurd game00:06:55.059
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• with the rules that determine the prism of perception.00:06:58.472
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• Performance also forms a significant part of the Rafani´s retrospection00:07:03.771
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• that I prepared as part of the exhibition.00:07:08.057
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• Performance can be compared to00:07:11.865
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• a dark chamber where the past is being developed,00:07:13.982
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• it meaningfully accentuates conscious structures of Rafani´s activity00:07:16.265
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• that form the base of their work since the beginning00:07:21.143
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• and prove their strong and deliberate artistic direction00:07:25.405
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• that, however, does not leave room for experimentation.00:07:27.782
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• From these conscious steps and obligations00:07:31.050
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• I chose a selection of categories, methods, and manners of work.00:07:33.231
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• For example, the description, speech, scene, platform, metaphor, and00:07:37.139
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• themes such as nation, myth and democracy.00:07:43.360
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• Whereas Rafani's large retrospection in Klatovy in 2009-2010 featured00:07:47.978
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• plastic environment of a French garden and an enlightment plan,00:07:54.050
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• the present take on the past remains placed illusorily on the walls00:08:00.114
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• in order the new breath to stand out00:08:03.260
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• as a perfect carving in contrast with its background,00:08:05.502
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• in a traditional fashion and according to the rules,00:08:08.890
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• a representation determined for the past events.00:08:11.618

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