Oskár Čepan Award 2014 – Matěj Smetana
“I express myself in various media, but above all by objects, installations and animations. There are accounts of the laws of physics, of the possibility to realize things and ideas, which often project themselves into my artworks. Right now I focus on potential interrelation between film or animation procedures and various strands of human activity. I deal with media transcription, creation and effect of a symbol and with the blurred borderline between human activity and artwork. I am not entirely interested in treating the artwork like a tool (be it a tool of political change or of something else). I believe, that for an artwork it is neither too functional, nor valid in the long run, nor very dignifying. It seems to me, that the power of art lies in much more fundamental and enjoyable reasons.”
Matěj Smetana (born 1980, Praha, CZ)
A graduate of the Studio of Intermedia and the Studio of Painting 3 at the Faculty of Fine arts VUT in Brno and of doctoral studies in the Studio of Intermedia II. under the supervision of Jiří Příhoda at AVU in Prague. Matěj Smetana works as an assistant in the Department of Intermedia and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. He lives and works in Prague, in Vrané nad Vltavou and in Bratislava.
- It's quite funny being here,00:00:11.768
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- in the flat where I lived since had been born till I was some four years old.00:00:15.860
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- I used to come here, one floor lower, to watch...00:00:20.033
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- I called it 'watching toy-cars', together with my cousin.00:00:24.215
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- I saw the glass brick sort of segmented into tiny 'toy-cars'.00:00:28.598
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- During my residency at FAVU in the Studio of Drawing00:00:37.906
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- in the third year of my studies I started to work on an animation,00:00:42.095
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- I have been retracing frames of a horror movie, and I quite enjoyed it;00:00:47.351
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- it was like a three months long R&R.00:00:51.680
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- The outcome was a series entitled "It's Just a Movie."00:00:55.848
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- But I don't see myself as an animator,00:01:14.559
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- it's merely an interest in the possibilities animation offers.00:01:18.969
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- Regarding animation, the essential matter for me is that in comparison to video00:01:23.448
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- or, say, capturing of reality, one can actually choose00:01:27.986
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- what of the reality he will use and what he suppresses.00:01:32.214
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- When you draw,00:01:36.406
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- or animate a character smoking00:01:40.679
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- then it's a character that is smoking and not a specific person00:01:45.048
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- who is, in reality, an actor or whatever.00:01:49.701
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- But you can choose what of the reality will you decide to renounce or to highlight,00:01:53.708
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- which is, let's say, actually the essence of style.00:01:58.180
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- I like to work with political messages00:02:02.562
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- in a specific, say, ignorant way,00:02:06.861
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- that is by belying00:02:11.932
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- the original content, re-combining and using it00:02:16.153
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- to create something weird.00:02:20.526
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- About the Taylorism, I am very much fascinated by the fact00:02:24.785
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- that some process that was originally meant to accelerate production00:02:28.883
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- by dividing complex actions into many simple and mechanic ones,00:02:32.974
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- a process that is basically the same in animation.00:02:39.262
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- Even in animation there is a division of singular phases00:02:43.621
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- of the work process and also with the finished film or animation00:02:48.053
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- there are frames that follow one another in fast sequence00:02:52.478
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- - the principle is similar to Taylorism.00:02:57.087
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- It's actually a plasticine movie,00:03:05.379
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- the kind of movie I know nothing about how it is made, I have no experience with it,00:03:09.769
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- and therefore it looks so weirdly distorted, sort of fatigued even.00:03:14.033
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- I wanted to make something utterly subjective, something that is not rationally motivated.00:03:18.241
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- Nevertheless there appear some conceptual elements,00:03:23.274
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- like an animation within animation,00:03:27.837
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- which is something I have always wanted to try out.00:03:32.095
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- Here there is a main character who wants to do an animation using a fan,00:03:36.429
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- but the fan is not stopping at a regular, fixed place,00:03:40.731
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- therefore it ends up generating merely this distorted circle-shaped smudge,00:03:44.935
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- and that's what makes the main character to stick his finger in the fan00:03:49.264
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- and make it stop abruptly and repeatedly just like in camera00:03:53.551
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- - it's called Maltese cross.00:03:57.780
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- For some time now I have been interested00:04:01.864
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- in working with objects that, in some way, refer to movement,00:04:05.838
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- like the star-shaped clock with each of hands transformed into cross,00:04:10.046
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- which means there are three crosses combined and turning on top of one another00:04:14.488
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- so that the star looks different every time.00:04:18.792
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- And what I like about these references to movement00:04:22.777
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- is the sequentiality.00:04:27.019
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- In this interview for Labyrint Revue00:04:38.572
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- I have said it all: that I am not interested in art00:04:42.922
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- understood as a tool either of political change or of anything else00:04:47.098
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- and that the power of art lies in much more fundamental and enjoyable reasons.00:04:53.944