Dušan Zahoranský
It is cheaper to create a new WORD than to keep it
Interview with Dušan ZahoranskýKarina Pfeiffer Kottová
KPK: What does a “word” mean to you?
DZ: It is a mysterious, yet everyday experience tool. Perhaps the simplest institute for sense. Cinemas, social networks or popular music are complex systems, within which we mirror, share or trade our visions and dreams. Words, on the other hand, are economical, pleasantly immaterial, cheap. Yet you may read just a few of those, ordered by someone, and your mind will be physically hit – changed forever.
KPK: How do you address the relation of visual and verbal language through your work?
DZ: One of the layers is formal. I have learnd techniques we use in order to make materials, colors and shapes “do something” for us since my childhood. I cannot get rid of those skills. One learns that these inanimate substances can be smart and kind, even smarter than you are. That is a pleasant discovery. To translate one’s own opinion through visual language is an adventure, where imagination and chance play a central role. For me those are crucial qualities, as opposed to more rational ways of understanding life, such as science or trade. I am interested in confronting words and concepts, defined by certain accuracy, with an unpredictable form.
KPK: Which text has had an influence on you recently?
DZ: Speaking of fiction, I had an intensive experience with Die Ausgesperrten by Elfriede Jelinek. It is a civil, yet poetic text about pathological social behavior. This probably partly drew my attention to the rising neo-Nazi movements in Central Europe. I also found a text by an avant-garde writer from Peru, José Carlos Mariátegui, in a paperback called 100 Artists’ Manifestos. It is a compelling and sharp summary of the roles art can play in a social revival. The author quotes G.B. Shaw, who states „art cannot be great unless it provides an iconography for a living religion, but it cannot be completely objectionable either except when it imitates the iconography of a religion which has become superstition“.
KPK: In your metal works, you shift from the word itself towards more complex, less neutral figures – sentence, slogan, antithesis… Do these stand for a certain interstate between your investigations of linguistic phenomena and the more engaged projects?
DZ: That’s quite precise. Slogans or antitheses are terms related more to the public than private sphere. I grew up in a totalitarian regime, which valued mediocrity over exceptionality or activity. No wonder that it failed in both economic and cultural terms. A society based on individual freedom and responsibility, which altered normalization in the 90s, was supposed to lead to general prosperity. However, the mistakes of the transforming economies warped the remains of the post revolutionary optimism and today the young generation once again has a rightful feeling that they are growing up in a distorted society. Manifests, slogans, declarations or visions are verbal tools, through which we define our goals. However idealistic or realistic they may be, it’s not always easy to fulfill them. The politicians become accustomed to that it might be cheaper to come up with a new phrase, instead of keeping their WORD. Those growing up here and now face an uneasy task to carefully watch the goals of their public representatives and evaluate their practical implementation. It’s not an entertaining homework from Civics, but I still look forward to it. This is definitely more hopeful than to fill your youth with news about the Communist party, with its humble goal to assure global piece, winning the elections yet again.
KPK: You also create neologisms, such as ‘metaspective’. How do you construct them and what kind of meaning do you assign to them?
DZ: METASPECTIVE is an original construct, which helps me to somewhat frame my creative attempts. It is a way of looking, which is aware of its focus and its limitations. We inhabit one Earth, possibly one universe. Nevertheless, we are capable of creating complex mental structures within this single, complete reality, assessing what “is” and what isn’t real.
KPK: Why do you use words in spatial objects and the medium of metal? Does it give them different weight, different dimension?
DZ: At the first glance the contrast of the robust form and the ephemeral term contributes to the creation of the overall expression of the object. I make deliberate references to the avant-garde discourse through my use of materials or compositions. In the beginning of the 20th century, sculpture was released from the tradition of monuments and equestrian statues and regained its role of a bearer of the author’s attitude. A form and material stripped of everything unnecessary is my homage to the straightforwardness of modernity.
KPK: In the Storch Heinar project you work with an acronym, which transforms the name of a clothes label popular among neo-Nazi sympathizers into its parody. You have infiltrated an object carrying a name of this ‘antibrand’ into a shop in Prague, which sells the original brand. What was your intention and how did you interpret the way the representatives of this store accepted the object?
DZ: I see neo-Nazism as unforgivable, asocial excess. I found a store, where they sell fashion associated with this movement without any hesitation. What I find especially perverse is that several brands can actually make a profit from the frustration of aggressive parties. So I have created an advertising dummy for them, which, however, held a name of an anti-fascist campaign. I brought this object to the store and asked the unaware shop assistants to sign the transfer protocol. The shop assistants did not reveal my message, and so they use this dummy as advertisement hoarding up to the present day, without acknowledging what is written on it. I understand the shop as a scene for parody and the fist made of polystyrene played a role of the Trojan horse within this scene. The viewer in the gallery can decipher the code encrypted in this artwork and become a imagery soldier hidden inside the horse.
KPK: Besides words you also work with visual signs, which can bear similarly ambiguous messages. For instance the object Gaskoil is a fusion of two logos of the companies Lukoil and Gasprom…
DZ: Regarding this installation, I am interested in the moment of the viewer’s suspicion. I have roughly derived the visuals from the logos of these firms. Their role in the local context is quite evident. What is crucial here is a principle of depth hidden in such signs. Two years ago, in the House of Arts in Brno, I worked with similarly scenographic methods in order to create an opening through one of the gallery walls. The initial visual information received by the viewer when entering the exhibition was destroyed through his motion, and only then the entire meaning of the work revealed itself. The viewer was pushed to reinterpret the entire situation and perhaps smile a bit about his primary fast judgment. Spoken in the language of my unfinished manifesto, the projects Grand Prix (2011) and Gaskoil (2013) became the first formally pure METASPECTIVE works.
- About two years ago we had a collective exhibition together with00:00:04.965
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- Michal Pěchouček, Pavel Sterec and Pavlík Karous under Martin Mazanec in Brno.00:00:10.731
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- The topic was exhibition strategies.00:00:21.626
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- At the exhibition I tried out analysing00:00:26.124
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- the attitude of art as a system of symbols.00:00:32.893
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- It's one of many aesthetic theories regarding art as00:00:40.322
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- a potential symbol strategy via which the author creates00:00:46.574
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- some situation or work and points out some significance00:00:54.102
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- he discovers knowingly or unknowingly during the process.00:01:00.906
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- In Brno I made use of stage designing and architectonic play.00:01:08.383
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- I divided the gallery space by a wall with a hole00:01:15.522
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- which appeared from certain distance as a two-dimensional sign,00:01:22.043
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- but when you came near or moved,00:01:29.164
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- you could discover the sign on the wall - the canvas00:01:32.982
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- is a not any canvas but a hole into another space.00:01:37.105
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- I am really interested in the activating ability of00:01:44.554
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- art gesture which draws the viewer's00:01:54.264
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- attention to his point of view or disposition.00:02:00.145
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- In 2008 there was a solo exhibition where00:02:15.885
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- I appeared as a guest with a German group.00:02:22.007
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- The exhibition's theme was sport, at that time there were Olympic Games in Beijing00:02:27.782
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- which provoked me by their power-mythy pathos.00:02:36.930
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- It was a mixture of ideology shrouded into00:02:45.079
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- rituals of human body performance and skills.00:02:50.425
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- It's a weird conglomerate of power, politics and body fascination.00:02:55.671
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- The sport appears dormantly in my current work,00:03:06.574
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- I'm quite tempted to reveal what's hidden behind00:03:14.538
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- the visuality and all the symbols representing sport.00:03:21.311
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- At my current exhibition I paraphrase and move a bit00:03:32.541
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- the logo citation of two powerful companies Lukoil and Gazprom,00:03:40.585
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- which are being presented as two strong sport magnates.00:03:47.527
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- Paradoxically, we both wanted to avoid accenting sport,00:03:56.913
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- but sport is a corridor via which the power00:04:02.769
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- imprints its visuality into public awareness.00:04:08.490
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- After my graduation I felt like experimenting00:04:17.226
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- with various art techniques which was certainly enriching,00:04:23.003
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- but then, in many ways, you waste your energy00:04:30.337
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- just on getting familiar with all the possibilities00:04:36.007
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- and before you reach some expression,00:04:39.803
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- you don't have any energy left or your ideas get old.00:04:42.676
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- So I went back to the technique I physically handle best00:04:49.158
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- and which doesn't mean any technical problem to me.00:04:59.217
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- Thanks to that, I am able to express myself quickly and effectively.00:05:04.017
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- The material and its force attracted me00:05:07.670
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- and I started to create these drawings I call word translations,00:05:17.645
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- as they transfer verbal word into a specific form and in fact,00:05:30.207
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- as I said before, I returned to a faster technology,00:05:41.272
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- I use the metal as a drawing.00:05:49.287
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- It's a method of three -dimensional drawing,00:05:54.579
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- which helps me to redefine or give an authentic meaning00:06:00.760
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- to classic words determining our opinion,00:06:12.207
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- from words such as here and now over motto and slogan.00:06:20.035
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- They are presented at my current exhibition,00:06:29.735
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- thesis, antithesis, manifesto...00:06:34.530
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- According to me, all these terms refer to public space.00:06:37.867
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- Words in public space are given certain meaning,00:06:47.611
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- they might be imposed or have form of an instruction,00:06:54.123
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- they belong to those manipulative words filling public space.00:07:03.137
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- I came across a group of scientists,00:07:17.105
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- living in Prague in the 1920s,00:07:23.923
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- Roman Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius, Havránek, Trnka00:07:32.031
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- and other Czech linguists, Mukařovský,00:07:36.666
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- who established the Linguistic Circle.00:07:41.849
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- The were connected by a certain structuralist idea.00:07:49.345
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- Scientifically it is a closed point of view,00:07:55.233
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- but I found it very interesting as it00:08:01.913
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- accelerated my experiments somehow.00:08:04.805
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- I make wire drawings, but I concern with00:08:09.952
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- the words' visual aspect whereas their meaning remains open...00:08:16.500
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- But I do accent the form in my sketches.00:08:27.060
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- We use language on a daily basis and often00:08:35.482
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- forget about its form and subject matter,00:08:41.182
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- but when we come across technical language00:08:47.769
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- or language we don't understand,00:08:51.069
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- language a specific group of people use,00:08:53.248
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- then the we see its meaning more clearly.00:08:58.430
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- I was captured by the linguists' correspondence.00:09:06.561
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- I didn't understand the details but focused on00:09:11.395
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- their line of reasoning, how they convinced each00:09:17.127
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- other of something, how they accepted or refused it.00:09:21.392
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- I found the movement in their communication very interesting,00:09:26.205
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- more than the subject matter I didn't fully understand.00:09:31.724
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- I'm practically interested in the words' visual aspect00:09:40.727
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- we are flooded and surrounded by.00:09:44.169
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- Also how they determine our lives and priorities.00:09:47.758
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- I came across a phenomenon of ultra right-wing extremists00:09:57.776
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- which has been here proliferating recently00:10:09.219
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- and I discovered that one label, Thor Steinar,00:10:14.627
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- is represented by a chain of stores in Czech Republic.00:10:21.959
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- After a minor research I found out there was00:10:28.738
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- a counter label assailing with humour and intelligence00:10:33.068
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- the pathos snowballing this fascistic aesthetics.00:10:40.874
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- Thor Steinar is a Nordic- Germanic construct and00:10:49.698
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- the name incorporates aggression and power.00:10:58.255
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- It's being parodied in German by Storch Heinar,00:11:04.958
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- which means stork Heinar and this anti-label00:11:10.013
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- embodies the aesthetics of a stork which is being00:11:16.132
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- dragged helplessly by the fascistic ideology.00:11:20.035
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- For the shop which is in Prague, I created a fictive00:11:27.552
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- promotional object, which is being used as a promo in shopping centres00:11:35.221
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- and I smuggled in the name of the anti-label.00:11:44.881
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- After a short attempt to sell the object,00:11:50.339
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- the sellers took it without noticing what's really in there00:11:54.859
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- and they have been using it till today.00:12:03.009
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- It's placed in front of the shop and it's00:12:05.636
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- probably the best result of my plan concerning00:12:08.767
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- this sad phenomenon I wanted to point out.00:12:13.845