Štěpánka Šimlová

• I don't come from any artistic family, my father was a research chemist00:00:03.539
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• and it looked I would follow in his footsteps.00:00:09.351
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• I was interested in biology and I even had a laboratory.00:00:13.474
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• I guess my liking for experiments remained.00:00:20.356
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• When I was 23 years old, I started to study fine art from different reasons.00:00:28.451
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• One of them was that there wasn't any great choice.00:00:42.389
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• My orientation wasn't specific enough to study00:00:50.565
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• at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design00:00:54.963
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• which was regarded as a liberal school.00:00:58.152
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• The Academy of Fine Art was in a totalitarian seediness then.00:01:01.589
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• In autumn 1989, the petition Několik vět (Couple of Sentences) was being signed everywhere,00:01:07.224
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• demonstrations were going on and the change was in the air,00:01:12.663
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• nevertheless the Academy was still very sterilized.00:01:16.871
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• But it took just one or two months so we could bear it.00:01:21.293
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• And then the great change came about.00:01:26.058
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• The first years until 1991, were a great party.00:01:30.414
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• There was this weird anarchy, nobody claimed rentals,00:01:36.244
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• the society started to behave economically, but it was rather00:01:44.044
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• at the level of taxi drivers and underhand money changers.00:01:49.544
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• We rented the Municipal House Gallery, but we didn't have to pay the rent.00:01:53.852
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• We would organize exhibitions for two years there.00:02:02.876
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• There were people such as Ivan Vosecký, Filip Turek,00:02:06.301
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• Martin Janíček, Trixi Weiss, all the students who00:02:09.416
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• met at the Academy and liked each other.00:02:13.645
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• It wasn't any programmatic accession to the art platform.00:02:20.853
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• There was a space where we could organize exhibitions00:02:24.501
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• and we seized the opportunity.00:02:31.125
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• I started to focus on the contemporary art in the 1990s00:02:39.323
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• and I am most favourable to installations.00:02:47.380
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• Installation is rather complex medium00:02:51.104
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• because it always has to coexist with certain space.00:02:56.602
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• When the exhibition is over and the space is being used00:03:02.045
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• for something else, nothing remains from the installation any more.00:03:09.323
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• However I find it very inspiring to work with00:03:13.901
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• the space and to place some artwork in it,00:03:17.059
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• to hold a dialogue with the space.00:03:22.647
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• Most installations are taken apart over there,00:03:28.246
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• they are in a kind of semi-state and I think it's best to present them00:03:35.133
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• on photographs as you can see how they worked with the space.00:03:41.647
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• The mirrors are nice, they are my cubism...00:03:52.407
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• I want to work on them further...00:03:55.968
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• I've wanted to work on them for a long time.00:04:01.186
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• It's a form that was only used in a certain space as well.00:04:06.354
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• Breaking the space by the reflection in the mirror00:04:11.392
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• and its slight deviation is also something that hasn't finished yet.00:04:17.219
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• Then there was a hunt for some cheap studio,00:04:26.611
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• I moved from one place to another which was a hard time00:04:32.620
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• for the installation and it was almost impossible.00:04:37.201
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• So I started to work on a computer quite a lot,00:04:44.571
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• I would make collages, all the landscapes were created then,00:04:51.101
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• but soon I started to get tired of this computer work easiness,00:05:00.342
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• of the possibility I could save everything in ten variants00:05:09.485
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• and that I can always go back...00:05:15.762
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• I felt an urge to touch the material again.00:05:17.741
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• So now I oscillate between these two mediums.00:05:24.265
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• Something is made from material and something arises just in a virtual form.00:05:28.075
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• I find it difficult to set an overall theme of my work.00:05:39.496
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• In the 1990s everything got very fast.00:05:45.524
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• Until then there were just few underground lectures,00:05:48.880
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• someone had occasionally smuggled in some catalogues,00:05:55.930
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• we would borrow each other everything, but it wasn't possible to go abroad much00:05:59.998
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• and there wasn't any confrontation.00:06:04.921
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• Everything was over friends and there weren't many sources.00:06:06.593
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• Then suddenly the boarders opened and many new issues appeared.00:06:11.447
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• It was necessary to set limits and to decide whether you're going00:06:17.029
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• to be a vegetarian or what is your sexual orientation.00:06:21.753
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• It was necessary to deal with these fundamental matters00:06:25.862
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• people in the west societies had been handling for a long time.00:06:30.004
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• The limits were being pushed and we got flooded.00:06:35.155
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• We had to focus our attention intuitively.00:06:41.527
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• Not only at work but also in life.00:06:46.473
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• But this naturally brought about many mistakes, leaps into the unknown.00:06:53.108
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• But we survived everything in all the euphoria and party time00:07:00.892
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• and I guess this attempt to grasp information was in my work evident.00:07:09.006
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• When I look back I am essentially interested in sentiment,00:07:19.750
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• I find the bounds of kitsch very exciting,00:07:28.256
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• when the sentiment becomes a motivating force of the society.00:07:34.072
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• For example charity is based on sentiment, it causes compassion00:07:40.472
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• and all the care for animals, ill children,00:07:46.970
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• and the emotion is becoming a platform causing changes.00:07:53.090
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• I never painted a lot, in fact I was never really able to.00:08:04.988
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• I studied at the studio of painting for one year,00:08:13.912
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• under Jirka David, after he had come to the Academy.00:08:18.562
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• Painting is an interesting medium but I will always make use of materials,00:08:22.966
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• I think I will never make sheer painting on canvas.00:08:34.002
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• I don't make use of this dimension at my work.00:08:39.659
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• I'm interested in spray painting on polythene.00:08:42.548
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• Painting those boards or curtains are good as well.00:08:47.240
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• I don't think I am ever going to make a classic painting.00:08:55.531
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• This is painting on curtain.00:09:07.023
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• I don't feel any urge to explain or defend things any more.00:09:14.651
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• Everything comes naturally and I have no reason00:09:21.080
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• to regulate or hold it back,00:09:27.010
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• because a kind of fragile sureness emerges there.00:09:31.292
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• I essentially believe in the role of art,00:09:58.883
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• although the role is not completely clear,00:10:03.121
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• but I profoundly believe art has a role in society.00:10:07.411
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• I find it very interesting to be at school00:10:10.958
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• where art originates and appears.00:10:14.510
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• The most exciting about the whole work is the moment,00:10:20.517
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• when the subject matter connects with the form,00:10:26.209
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• when it fits together somehow. It can take a very long time sometimes.00:10:32.321
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• But when there is something you want to express00:10:38.429
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• and you suddenly see how to do it or vice versa,00:10:43.199
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• when I have a concept of the form, but I'm seeking for the content,00:10:49.028
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• the moment when it fits together is the most important for me.00:10:54.356
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• Something always fits together to the students at the school.00:11:03.353
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• And I want to be present.00:11:10.727
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• When my student comes with an idea, I know exactly how he should work on it.00:11:14.129
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• But I never know how much should I tell him,00:11:23.065
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• how much the thing he's coming up with, will exceed my horizons00:11:27.688
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• or how much should I prevent him from discovering America.00:11:34.845
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• These are fundamental things.00:11:38.323
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• Also not to leave them get too much overwhelmed.00:11:41.068
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• It's very interesting. My clarity and at the same time00:11:46.150
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• fallibility and projection into their work is a great challenge.00:11:52.355
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• The art of surviving the longest war in the world. A report from Karen State in Burma00:12:07.432
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• Civil war in East Burma has lasted for over 60 years. Burmese armed forces attack mainly ethnic minorities.00:12:20.210
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• Burma is a state in Asia nobody knew much about,00:12:28.008
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• but recently it has been getting into public awareness.00:12:36.450
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• There was an important representative of a democratic movement00:12:39.339
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• Aun Schan Su ŤTij who was house arrested for a long time00:12:46.734
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• and whose close friend was Václav Havel.00:12:50.934
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• Burma is a state in a huge totalitarian pickle.00:12:54.596
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• Seriously.00:12:58.216
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• As a consequence of endless combat and human rights violation,00:13:22.706
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• over half million people were forced to leave their homes.00:13:26.243
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• There are areas we call minority, although the minorities number00:13:30.141
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• several million people who are at war with00:13:35.213
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• the regime for more than sixty years.00:13:42.724
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• It isn't possible to send anything there, there are only state banks,00:13:47.135
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• and if you send money there, the organizations won't get it.00:13:55.194
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• If you want to send them some help, the only possibility is to take it there.00:14:00.237
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• There was an initiative of People In Need,00:14:06.174
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• they sent money to a village that had been burned down00:14:10.735
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• and they needed to have it documented.00:14:15.049
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• So I went there and I was so captivated...00:14:17.562
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• It was such a strong rip-away from reality.00:14:26.731
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• I brought some video material and had a moral urge to make00:14:32.204
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• a documentary film so that people here learnt about about it all.00:14:38.406
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• But the material wasn't very quality, it was quite chaotic,00:14:43.606
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• so I went back to finish it.00:14:49.473
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• In June 23, 2010, the village Tha Dah Der was mortared00:15:00.873
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• and burned down by Burma army. Hundreds of villagers had to flee.00:15:04.631
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• Burma army started to mortar the village.00:15:11.258
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• The heavy fire destroyed a lot of our things.00:15:15.689
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• Local people do not bear the blame00:15:19.332
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• for anything what is going on here.00:15:23.167
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• It's looks a bit different here now.00:15:28.331
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• burned down in the past 15 years.00:15:33.160
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• I knew that I wasn't capable of making any authorial or innovative documentary film.00:15:37.965
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• So I started to work on a exhibition which00:15:53.691
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• aimed to explain my feelings about it all.00:15:58.813
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• I acquired several things owing to it.00:16:12.980
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• An absolute respect for documentarists is one thing.00:16:19.063
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• Another one is the peculiar experience of stay in a war zone.00:16:24.235
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• You touch absolutely basal matters.00:16:34.084
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• The saying about blood running cold is not any phrase.00:16:40.000
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• When you hear the gunfire near you, your blood really runs cold.00:16:47.738
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• What are our worries in comparison with theirs,00:16:56.961
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• there are people who have much harder lives,00:17:01.403
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• the resources are limited, it's hard to take some action,00:17:09.781
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• but we need to turn inside,00:17:18.551
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• these people are in a huge jam but we may get into a similar one00:17:21.939
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• and we need to deal with it rather here.00:17:28.045
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• Somehow.00:17:34.110
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• People who live in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones.00:17:35.847
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• Many things are very hard to mediate.00:17:55.381
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• Art may help all this and help all the world.00:18:06.521
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• I don't know how, but I guess there is no other method00:18:11.814
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• except for philosophy how to change the world.00:18:19.262
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• Business is not going to do it, I guess...00:18:29.594

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