Page 52 - The Black Box Book

in gallery and educational institutions, which are automatically expected
to address their own identities and to take an active stance on general
social issues. Logically, the gallery is thus increasingly moving away from
its essential purpose, which is exhibition activity, towards community
activity. It is formulating disciplinary interests and looking for ways to
promote them. In the Czech environment, this tendency is represented
by the Skutek association, which was founded in 2013 and is the first
respected trade organization to emerge after the fall of communism and
the abolition of the concept of state-controlled culture.
4
It is, of course, tricky to specify the dominant trends in Galerie TIC’s ex-
hibition concepts, as such efforts can easily lead to reduction and gen-
eralization, but let us admit that in the second half of the 2010s, there
were apparent changes. The first half of the 2010s can be represent-
ed by exhibition projects that are based on self-reflexivity. A common
theme has been the revision of the institution’s history and approach to
the presentation and interpretation of art (Jak to vlastně bylo. Devadesát-
ky u Dobrého pastýře, 2016); the phenomenon of work has been given
thought (Svět práce. Live in Your Head, 2014) or the compulsive collect-
ing or archiving approach to art (Výběr ze sbírky, 2015). The exhibitions
were epistemological in nature, addressing how we think about art, how
we understand our own position in the artistic enterprise, or how we can
understand the events taking place around us through art. These were Figure 1: From left to right
curatorial projects with a rather authoritative, at times even manipula- Katarína Hládeková and Zuzana Janečková,
tive, treatment of the artworks represented in the interest of a curatorial co-creators of the Black Box project.
message that was itself an autonomous creative act. It is no coincidence
that these projects involved female curators who were also working as
artists. Incidentally, it was Katarína Hládeková and Zuzana Janečková who Feelings of skepticism about the environmental crisis and the im-
also participated in the creation of the Black Box project. At the same possibility of finding a workable alternative to the capitalist order re-
time, the aforementioned exhibitions can be understood as a symptom of inforce the need to escape into nature and the periphery. This trend,
the dissolution of post-conceptualist approaches, which overlaps with which has been growing in the Czech environment since the 2010s, is
trends such as the Emo-Romantic turn, speculative practices, identity illustrated, for example, by the Les festival (Forest Festival) organized by
crisis and critique of power. Curatorial methods are characterized not only the Institute of Anxiety. Representatives of the Prague art scene are leav-
by the mixing of artistic and curatorial positions, which is, in fact, a long- ing the urban setting and the usual institutional background and moving
term phenomenon but also by the awareness of collective identity with their cultural activities to the forest. The photograph of Vít Havránek,
5
attention paid to the political dimension of this reality. a curator and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, lecturing among the
tree trunks to the audience sitting and lying on the ground is apt in this
respect. Respectively, it is not so much about the captured situation as
4 This is not so obvious given the relatively small membership base (cur-
rently about ninety members), but it is a very important milestone in Czech it is about publishing its footage on social media as an important, if not
art. The formation of this association disrupts the general resistance to the the central referent of the whole situation. These projects are more or
institutionalization of artistic production and to art associations related to less rigorous or proclamatory performances of the transformation of their
the discrediting of the power apparatus during the normalization period.
See https://spolekskutek.cz. actors, which tend to be published on social media, where they represent
images of idyll and paradise regained. They combine the need to seek
5 In the Czech environment, a symbolic confirmation and institutional- authenticity rooted somewhere in romanticism with the need to escape
ization of this tendency is the creation of Kodex feministických institucí the economic and social ‘difficulties’ of the city. Hand in hand with this
(The Code of Feminist Institutions) in 2017which calls for ethical respon- goes the determined pursuit of the concept of authenticity and self-help
sibility and consistent compliance with gender and professional equality,
among whose signatories are (so far) only institutions from the circle of discourse. There is an emo-romantic turn that reinforces the importance
non-established culture, such as Artalk magazine, Artwall Gallery, Display, of feelings, authentic experience, sincerity and emotionality. In the drama-
Jindřich Chalupecký Society or tranzit.cz.
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