Situation 51

• I brought a fifteen minute video,00:00:06.179
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• which I don't call video but rather an update.00:00:10.114
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• Once I discovered a text very important for my work.00:00:15.960
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• It's called Five Obstacles to Writing the Truth00:00:25.076
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• and it was written by Brecht in 1934.00:00:28.274
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• He wrote it in an exile and it's a form of pamphlet00:00:31.478
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• he sent to the Nazi Germany as an advice.00:00:37.363
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• He tried to summarize the difficulties00:00:41.234
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• of writing the truth in a complicated atmosphere.00:00:45.156
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• The text simply describes his definition of fascism00:00:52.518
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• and how to react to such situation in the society.00:00:59.497
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• Although the text was written in 1930s and00:01:08.998
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• directly reacts to German fascism and Nazism,00:01:20.710
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• it is still being relevant to the current situation.00:01:24.976
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• Brecht's definition is complex as he identifies00:01:26.710
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• fascism as the last stage of capitalism and imperialism.00:01:33.184
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• Whenever I read the text,00:01:39.199
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• I discover it is still up-to-date.00:01:42.149
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• It is an intellectual refreshment of defining00:01:48.523
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• the truth, how to treat it and how to write about it.00:01:53.201
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• It's aimed at people who write and he mentions writers,00:01:57.200
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• but I guess it has a universal value.00:01:59.882
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• I update the text every few years,00:02:01.720
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• whenever I have an opportunity like today.00:02:05.654
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• I usually come up with some art form00:02:08.573
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• or rather a visual art form to remind it not just to myself00:02:10.910
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• but also to other people.00:02:15.448
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• I've made use of a video many times.00:02:18.256
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• Recently I've made it into an installation00:02:22.696
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• and I used a form coming out from another installation,00:02:26.314
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• it's a slide show of black and white pictures with a short text.00:02:30.202
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• The form also comes out from Brecht and his00:02:35.647
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• reflection on various art methodologies.00:02:38.620
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• After the war he published a book, the only one with pictures he made.00:02:44.155
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• It was an anti-war book where he summarized a common war experience.00:02:50.984
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• It came out in 1946.00:03:01.070
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• In his emigration in Norway, America and other countries,00:03:03.838
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• he would collect photos from various magazines,00:03:07.611
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• he used them in his book and supplemented with00:03:10.085
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• a short text, epigram, poem or just a sentence.00:03:14.453
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• The pictures are black and white and the form is very suggestive.00:03:19.804
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• He didn't consider the pictures as text illustrations or vice versa,00:03:24.896
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• but there is a certain tension I assume to be an anti-thesis.00:03:30.873
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• I was trying to make a similar anti-thesis.00:03:36.473
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• I came across some pictures that would accompany the text,00:03:39.914
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• mostly on the Internet and I kept them in their original quality,00:03:43.477
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• the only change I made was reducing their colour.00:03:46.870
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• I made them all white so that the spectacularity00:03:51.195
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• of their colour didn't stand out too much00:03:55.006
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• and didn't overshadow the text signification.00:03:58.436
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• What to say more...00:04:06.832
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• When choosing the pictures I aimed for00:04:17.811
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• an anti-thesis as I've already said.00:04:22.669
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• I searched for pictures that are not directly connected00:04:26.759
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• with words or sentences extracted from the text.00:04:30.697
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• I tried to search for a certain fundament which00:04:35.327
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• would express exactly the text meaning but00:04:40.103
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• at the same time it brought about an unusual tension or attention00:04:43.334
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• and it supported the sense of the affirmation.00:04:49.937
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• Interesting about the update is that I didn't make it only in Czech.00:04:58.342
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• I participated in various collective exhibitions00:05:05.805
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• where the subject somehow fitted.00:05:09.654
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• For example Dóra Hegyi made an exhibition in Hungary00:05:13.027
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• that could be called anti-fascist as00:05:17.989
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• it directly responded to the political situation there.00:05:20.621
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• So the text is in Hungarian there.00:05:23.755
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• It have it in German, English and other languages.00:05:28.253
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• It has been translated into every language imaginable.00:05:31.346
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• Is the text available on the Internet?00:05:40.499
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• I guess it's not easy to find it on the Internet,00:05:45.360
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• but you can easily get it as it was published many times in the 1960s.00:05:51.264
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• It was translated by Ludvík Kundera00:05:59.520
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• in a book called The Ideas or an anthology The Cherry Thief,00:06:01.548
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• it's been included in many anthologies.00:06:05.464
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• You can get the books in second hand bookshops quite easily.00:06:07.724
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• Thank you.00:06:11.666
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• You are very welcome.00:06:12.882

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