The artist Tomáš Vobořil deals with colonial aspects of the civilizing mission that the Czechoslovak state carried out in Transcarpathia between 1919-1938. The Czechoslovak state was also represented by anthropologists and ethnographers, who could fulfil themselves professionally thanks to the newly acquired territories in the east.
The artist lays much greater emphasis on the affective aspect of art. Originally this work was an audio-visual installation accompanied by photographs from the archive of the anthropologist Vojtěch Suk.
Suk´s archive was used by Vobořil to tell the story of Czechoslovak activities in Subcarpathian Ruthenia in a new way. The alibi of the Czechoslovaks, which historically exempted them from responsibility for the era of European colonialism, is seriously undermined if we take a closer look at some episodes of Czechoslovak history and if we revise the attitude that Czechoslovak citizens took towards colonies and their people and what orientalizing ideas they created. This attitude certainly does not apply only to non-European people and cultures, but also within Europe itself, as Vobořil demonstrates in his work.
Vobořil also suggests that in the process of creating orientalizing ideas art may be complicit in the rationalizing views of a white scientist. This motif is personalised in the character of the writer Ivan Olbracht, who is mentioned in the video and who despite his leftism is indirectly complicit in creating a fantasmatic romantic version of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. This romantic approach can never show the real life of people living in this region because in fact it denies them inner complexity and demeans them to the positions of pure and simple souls living in a more primitive (and therefore more authentic) way. Finally, they seem to be here so that the civilized Czechoslovak realizes his own superiority and he is touched by their simplicity, which reminds him of where he came from.
What I find important in Vobořil´s work is the fact that he deals with how we make up our Others. Nobody is interested in the testimony of the Ruthenians themselves. As the author says in the narrator's voice: you hear my voice, but not my words. From the viewpoint of contemporary context we may say, with a bit of exaggeration, that if the Czechoslovaks did not have their Ruthenians, their own Others, they would have to invent them. However, stereotypisation and essencialisation are even today common starting points in the interaction with minorities. This is also why we need works like Reverse Ethnography of Subcarpatian Ruthenia.
Jiří Žák
The video is a part of Issue Sweep around your own front door
