Page 54 - The Black Box Book

turgy of Galerie TIC, this tendency is represented by the curatorial project
of Katarína Hládeková and Zuzana Janečková, Boží dílo (God’s Work),
which took place in the summer of 2018. Its significance lay primarily
in its simultaneous placement in the gallery environment and outside
of it. It was not, therefore, a programmatic abandonment of the exhibi-
tion institution and the use of alternative forms of art presentation, but
an ‘ecumenical’ merging of these two modes. And not only that, it was
also about combining what is called ´professional art´ with ´spontaneous
art´, not distinguishing between the work and the private, and juxtapos-
ing real nature with its artistic representation. If the sudden impetus for
the Black Box project had not been the global pandemic and lockdown,
then we could consider this project as an expression of the continuity, of
the institution’s longer-established programmatic and ideological diversity,
including its inclination towards collective curatorial practice. It is clear
that this is not specific to Galerie TIC, but rather a more general tendency
that the pandemic has only reinforced.
6
In his 2011 text, The Paradox of Authenticity, the Danish philosopher
Somogy Varga speaks of a pandemic of depression motivating the desire
for authenticity and spontaneity. (Varga, 2011, p. 13) As Václav Magid
aptly notes in his article Jinde a jindy, “The fundamental value that con-
temporary art embodies and celebrates is the freedom of the individual,
breaking down all obstacles that stand in the way of his self-realization”
(Magid, 2021, p. 23). However, the push against alienation instead of
self-fulfillment encourages additional stress related to the performance
of one’s own uniqueness or the over-projection of emotions into the work.
One of the paradoxes of contemporary attempts to achieve authenticity
is that the process of stepping out of the status quo of neoliberalism is
simultaneously an affirmation of it. Into this constellation enters identity
politics, which only reinforces the need for individualization.
Figure 2: Markéta Filipová (2020). The equilibrium has collapsed, we have destroyed our climate,
Aquarelle, author’s archive
we admit that we cannot replace the exploitative system of capitalism,
and we watch our mental state being eroded by anxiety. Yet, as late as
the end of 2019, we suspected future threats. The forms of the apoc-
alypse were being formed, the symptoms of crises were detected, and
less often, ways to confront and escape the threats were sought. These
were not, in any case, crises that particularly clearly affected our daily
lives as the pandemic of Covid-19. For some, the climate crisis was more
or less an abstract threat, a weighty but rather distant one that we were
only occasionally aware of, like the fact that, for example, Syria is still
at war and that people are suffering and dying as a result. For others,
civic engagement has become a defining link to society, a way of life,

6 The curator Zuzana Janečková, who worked at Galerie TIC between
2013 and 2020, continued in this direction even further: she moved to
the village of Važec in the Tatra foothills to run a residential center and to
search for the most “authentic” of all possible worlds, both in accordance
with her own origins, mood and current interests.
54 55