Mluv, abych tě viděl
Roman Štětina manages to capture a strange situation of perception, when authenticity – for example a joint display or synchronisation of image and sound – is seen as „out-of-place“. He records the hidden apparatus of radio broadcasting – studios, technology, radio staff – in other words of everything listeners „do not need“ to see. This leads to a reverse problematisation of our reception stereotypes – instead of the image and sound being asynchronous they are in surprising harmony. The broadening and transformation of perception may be compared to the transition from silent to sound films. Unlike this example in the author´s videos and films there is no „adequate“ adaptation of the original medium to the innovated one. It is as if we simultaneously released a spontaneously recorded audio recording of the entire filming into a film projection.
The exhibition presents Štětina´s latest videos called Tongue-twister and Untitled (Response), of which only the Tongue-twister was shown on a large screen in the cinema. By the way this constellation – a reflection of the medium of the radio by a visual artist shown in a classical cinema – creates a scrummage of media and professional apparatuses, which continuously makes us want to try to untangle it.
The artist does not only aim to show “the invisible“ but he also stages radio professionals doing absurd activities, showing their routine virtuosity in out-of-place situations. Watered-down automaticity of common actions thus acquires the character of a performance.
The radio editor Jitka Borkovcová does not edit an authentic radio recording but she „pointlessly“ cuts out slips of the tongue in the recording of a tongue-twister. We can see the tape with the flawless recording coiling onto the reel of the tape recorder on the right, however, we do not get a chance to hear it again. In the video entitled Response we can see the radio editor and speaker Tomáš Černý, who happens to be also the person who recorded the Tongue-twister, trying to pick up some radio station signal in a radio studio. Since the building of the radio is of reinforced concrete he can only pick up some buzzing noise. We become witnesses of an unsuccessful effort to return the final signal intended for the listeners back to its beginning, back to the radio studio. This is also an illustration of a long-lasting problem of radio workers – a lack of feedback. The repetitive rewinding of a recording on an editor´s desk, picking up a radio signal in a radio and finally the design of the installation suggest more general meanings of endless communication flows.
Marika Kupková
- Talk so that I can see you Roman Štětina Gallery Kabinet00:00:01.193
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- I present two works in the gallery, one is a projection called A tongue twister,00:00:05.892
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- originally shot on a super 16 mm film and then digitalized,00:00:14.941
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- I was filming Jitka Borkovcová, a sound engineer, who has worked in the Czech Radio since 1955.00:00:23.005
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- She is editing a tongue-twister recorded by Tomáš Černý,00:00:30.926
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- who is a professional speaker, but naturally makes mistakes after repeating the tongue-twister several times.00:00:36.734
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- The sound engineer listens to the recording and when she hears a mistake she stops it.00:00:49.718
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- She physically cuts the mistake out, glues the tape together and continues.00:00:58.804
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- The Super16mm camera was important for me, I was recording a tape with a camera which is the same as the tape recorder rarely used nowadays.00:01:03.972
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- So these two things are somehow related to each other.00:01:34.790
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- In fact it is work with something completely fundamental,00:01:40.930
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- tongue-twisters are often used as exercises by speakers before they start speaking into a microphone.00:01:56.170
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- It´s a sort of pronunciation exercise and of course it´s nonsense to record it onto a tape,00:02:04.554
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- and it´s even more crazy to edit the mistakes, but for me it´s a kind of allegory00:02:10.241
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- and the editor becomes a mythical figure who has enough time to edit and correct all the mistakes we make.00:02:16.366
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- One of my recent works is presented on an LCD screen,00:02:31.127
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- so far it has no title but the work title is Feedback.00:02:40.920
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- This work is more or less a result of an accident,00:02:45.953
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- while I was planning to record something slightly different00:02:47.331
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- with the radio speaker Tomáš Černý, whom you can see now.00:02:52.567
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- The concept was based on the idea that he would be listening to a radio broadcast in the studio,00:02:57.236
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- and he would describe what he hears. The only thing we did not realize was the fact that00:03:06.059
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- there would be no signal inside the concrete building of the radio, so it turned out to be00:03:12.476
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- a wild goose chase. I found it quite symptomatic00:03:18.618
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- that the radio workers were not able to hear each other in the radio building.00:03:24.833
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- All they can hear on the radio are different signal noises, rustling and buzzing, or complete silence.00:03:38.428
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- And it´s also an illustration of the radio´s chronic complaint that there is no feedback.00:03:44.033
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- That´s why the title is Feedback.00:03:53.045
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- And in a way it tunes in with what we see in the projection.00:03:57.100
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- And the last thing is a very subtle spatial intervention.00:04:07.445
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- It shows a tape, the same one, which Jitka Borkovcová was cutting,00:04:14.404
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- it is diagonally drawn across the whole room and intersecting in the middle.00:04:23.659
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- It is meant to create an illusion that the tape is stretching somewhere further,00:04:30.213
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- and in a way it is a great loop and we are able to see its centre.00:04:36.990
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- I feel that it illustrates the idea of both videos shown at this exhibition.00:04:42.153
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