WHY DOES NO ONE LIKE YOU? BECAUSE YOU'RE A LOSER!

Video Why Does No One Like You? Because You're a Loser! (2001) was produced for our solo show Whose Child is This? at MXM Gallery.

We asked our friends, artists and theoreticians (Headless Horseman collective, Petr Lysáček, Vladimír Skrepl, Jana and Jiří Ševčík) to share an idea, based on which we would make an art work. They could not influence our choice of form, technology, material and the final outcome. We wanted to research what is more important – the idea or the realization? We did not find an answer or a solution. All the participants of this project, however, have become the members of Kamera Skura. Vladimír Skrepl’s idea was the phrase: “Why does no one like you? Because you’re a loser!” We chose to make a video, a hand-made imitation of silent film. It was supposed to be comical to make the depressive and heavy message (woman’s contempt for a man) more bearable. The black and white silent film was used in order to emphasize its timelessness and urgency. Certain situations remain always black and white even if some things are left unsaid.

The art of the collective Kamera Skura (*1996) grows out of a shared mythology. Its members comment with irony the clichés related to the perception and interpretation of art. The choice of medium is always subordinated to the message, the collective activities include mystifying parodies based on made up personal stories, pseudo-intellectual lectures, pseudo-scientific experiments, spiritual séances, theater performances, social research gone awry etc. In 2003, Kamera Skura represented the Czech Republic at Venice Biennale.

In The Window to the Archive programme, the AVU Research Center in Prague (VVP AVU) in conjunction with Artyčok.tv regularly releases works from the VVP AVU video archive (go to http://vvp.avu.cz/idatum/search/artvideoarchiv?string=). The selection for Artyčok.tv focuses on older works (materials from the end of the 20th century), works bordering on video art, film and documentation, or on purely documentary materials related to the recent development of Czech and Slovak visual art.