Interviews about sound 13 – Zbyněk Baladrán

• Interviews on Sound00:00:08.141
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• Zbyněk Baladrán00:00:10.116
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• First I started to work with a video essay,00:00:19.638
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• of course, there is a VoiceOver or a text line in the image,00:00:31.162
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• either spoken, or written ,00:00:35.461
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• which leads the narrative.00:00:39.051
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• I focused on narrativeness.00:00:44.024
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• I got fascinated by sound and its imagination.00:00:51.275
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• By sound I rather mean a voice, which carries a piece of information.00:00:58.375
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• Before I have never worked with voice, only with visuality.00:01:04.503
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• However, the voice is also very visual.00:01:09.522
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• Because when I say a window and a picture of a door appears before me,00:01:15.460
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• consequently, there is a strange imagination transformation00:01:19.258
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• representing for me the right content.00:01:23.416
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• But still it is not a clear interpretation because00:01:30.633
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• each of us see it differently.00:01:33.430
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• The interaction happened differently in each human brain.00:01:36.958
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• When we say a window,00:01:42.621
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• all imagine different things, though, it works well.00:01:44.838
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• I have been always interested in this kind of openness.00:01:49.128
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• I wouldn´t say that the image is illustrative,00:01:54.064
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• but it is a part of a construct of the whole film.00:01:57.105
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• Once I worked like you.00:02:03.000
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• I made a film consisting in a voice line.00:02:08.385
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• My voice was saying what I was imagining00:02:13.178
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• before a movie started.00:02:14.709
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• I was thinking of the reason why I made films.00:02:18.218
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• Actually, I am still contemplating this theme, it is a self-reflection.00:02:22.548
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• Before a film starts, a man sits down and watches movies.00:02:26.952
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• When I start making a movie, I instinctively put there darkness.00:02:33.417
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• The darkness is not loaded there by the player,00:02:39.611
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• but it is me who like working with darkness.00:02:44.759
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• The film is one-minute long.00:02:48.022
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• It describes what I am thinking of00:02:51.591
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• what is going to happen during the seconds00:02:53.700
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• before the movie starts, during the expectation.00:02:57.709
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• It was a work with an image, but with a dark one.00:03:01.840
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• I´d say about me that I work with sound, but for me sound is visual.00:03:04.746
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• I recorded my first video essay,00:03:17.943
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• and my voice sounded horrible because00:03:22.807
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• I wasn´t used to hearing my voice because normally00:03:25.186
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• I didn´t listen to my own voice.00:03:28.747
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• I think it is a normal feeling. But it sounded horrible.00:03:31.480
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• There was pathos and sentimentality00:03:36.328
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• that a man doesn´t normally perceive,00:03:40.008
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• but when a man is listening to it through earphones,00:03:43.609
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• it is very irritating. It deformed the meaning I wanted to use.00:03:47.567
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• Finally I didn´t use it,00:03:52.328
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• instead of my voice, I used a narrative line.00:03:54.586
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• Then lately, I tried to get over it,00:04:03.990
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• because I needed to make some works quickly.00:04:08.300
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• I didn´t want to bother more with the voice, at all.00:04:14.520
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• So I decided to narrate my videos.00:04:20.239
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• However, it didn´t work, at least not for me,00:04:24.552
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• it may work for the others, but not for me.00:04:27.528
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• The others may recognize me and perceive it as a subjective utterance.00:04:34.588
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• However, I can hear all pathos there,00:04:39.695
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• which I consider extremely irritating,00:04:42.528
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• I don´t like watching those artworks retrospectively.00:04:44.689
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• Later on, I realized that there was an easier way and00:04:47.575
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• I decided to hire professionals.00:04:54.675
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• First I thought that professionals00:04:57.021
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• were deformed by their profession,00:05:01.904
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• that they intoned somehow, they put emphasis somewhere,00:05:07.121
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• I thought that it was too much and I didn´t want it, too.00:05:15.233
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• I couldn´t describe what I wanted.00:05:21.100
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• I wanted something in between. But I couldn´t reproduce or describe it.00:05:24.272
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• But speaking with professionals, I realized that they exactly knew00:05:36.437
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• what I wanted and they were able to reproduce it.00:05:49.428
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• Sometime when the video forms a part of a big exhibition00:06:07.071
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• I prefer using the earphones as it could disturb other artworks00:06:16.215
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• or be disturbed by other artworks.00:06:21.165
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• Ideally, I would like if a viewer could perceive the video separately00:06:23.516
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• and the sound could be around him, like in a booth or dark room.00:06:31.153
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• I am realizing more and more00:06:41.701
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• that I work with a kind of controversy00:06:43.919
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• because all my films are online. So anyone can watch them.00:06:47.542
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• I want the movies to be accessible, it is important to me.00:06:54.339
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• Because the narrative I use is very complicated for perception00:06:57.123
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• and for a viewer it is very difficult to understand the narrative00:07:01.506
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• standing in the gallery, and even,00:07:05.112
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• a viewer gives up watching it beforehand.00:07:06.591
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• So the Internet is, paradoxically, ideal for me,00:07:12.084
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• because the viewers can watch it several times.00:07:18.269
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• In my exhibitions, I work intentionally with different ways of presentation,00:07:33.313
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• one video plays loud, the others are with earphones.00:07:38.288
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• The video helps to create the context00:07:41.266
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• of the interpretation of the whole exhibition00:07:44.303
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• by the voice speaking there, a man can perceive it00:07:47.758
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• while observing other objects or video installations.00:07:52.670
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• I realize that even curators work intentionally00:07:57.767
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• with it because of the same reasons.00:08:05.192
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• They turn up or turn down my video.00:08:07.254
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• It differs from case to case.00:08:14.508
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• It is so open that everybody can work with it.00:08:16.932
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• I know that lot of artists think00:08:20.314
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• that their artworks are autonomous,00:08:24.527
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• that they should be closed in a special room,00:08:29.665
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• they dictate conditions under which00:08:32.857
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• the artworks can be exhibited, such as size, place and volume.00:08:34.683
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• I have never written such parameters into any terms.00:08:39.667
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• I think that it is necessary to adapt the artworks00:08:44.714
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• to the context of the gallery space.00:08:47.650
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• Now, I will speak about the exhibition I made in Paris in a private gallery.00:08:57.349
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• As it was a private gallery, one can assume00:09:07.388
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• which artworks would be presented there.00:09:11.908
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• The exhibition was called a "Preliminary Message".00:09:21.705
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• In a certain sense, it was a sum of my artistic or human knowledge00:09:24.580
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• that I tried to transform into a visual appearance.00:09:35.169
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• When a man enters the gallery,00:09:38.283
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• the first thing he sees is a narrow paper stripe00:09:39.672
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• tangling up above the viewers´ heads in the gallery space,00:09:49.274
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• and there is a text on the paper stripe.00:09:53.727
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• I want viewers to read the whole text.00:09:59.058
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• Viewers had to walk strangely00:10:02.438
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• stretching out and crumpling to manage to read it.00:10:04.921
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• Suddenly, a strange choreography originated.00:10:09.607
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• This time I tried out physical presence of viewers.00:10:13.801
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• There are also other artworks such as two-channel video.00:10:21.249
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• There are two LCD monitors laid down on the floor00:10:34.226
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• creating an angle of 60 or 80 grades.00:10:42.906
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• The voices from the videos, where is a VoiceOver,00:10:49.881
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• are driven through the space. It describes and explains the exhibition.00:10:57.389
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• The video is also called a "Preliminary Message"00:11:01.315
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• as well as the exhibition.00:11:03.446
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• In the video, there are seen pictures placed over each other.00:11:05.020
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• The text is an adaptation of a Freud´s text.00:11:13.975
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• It is one of his early text on hysteria.00:11:19.060

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