| Odradky (inhabitable spaces)
An intervention into several spaces located on the 3rd floor of the House by help of pataphysical eavesdropping visitor can browse through the archives and peer into the future of the gloomy building and its neighbourhood. Some works merely amplify the atmosphere of the dust-covered spaces and corners; others reveal a potential existence of hidden vistas between everyday life and a step into the fourth dimension.
Jan Bartoš: Shelters – slide projection and installation
In one of his short stories, set in the stairwell of an unnamed Prague apartment building, Franz Kafka describes meeting a grotesque creature to which he gave the strangely slavic-sounding name of “Odradek.” Standing on the grounds of the “Jewish Gardens”, probably one of the oldest Jewish cemetery in Prague and abolished by King Vladislav at the end of the 15th century, the somewhat spooky atmosphere of an abandoned house became an inspiration for several minimal interventions in a section of the 3rd floor of “the House”. Even though “Odradek” is only a clumsy and somewhat crafty but idle mechanism, homeless, “without a temporary dwelling”, built out of wooden spools and balls of thread, just his essential existence, which is somewhere in the realm of an insect creeping about, offers the metaphor for whimsy to some of the temporary tenants.
“Well, what’s your name?” you ask him. “Odradek,” he says. “And where do you live?” “No fixed abode,” he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves.
The temporary dwelling place and Odradek’s section is occupied by guests of Prague Nové Město who came from faraway Japan and America, and includes students from FAMU collaborating with their colleagues from Prague art and technical schools. Some of them chose as their subject the concrete memory of the House’s architecture. Others probed imaginatively into the layers of the seemingly empty building wherein history has stood still for 15 years, where the timeless residue lingers from the 1980s. There have been seemingly many changes behind the windows. However, if you think about it a little, this may be only our illusion or wish. Just the kinds and designs of Odradeks are today naturally much more sophisticated than a hundred years ago.
Kaoru Tsunoda from Japan conceives one of the rooms as an abandoned gambling room, where someone left behind a table with a strange game with unknown and pataphysical rules. http://www.kaorutsunoda.com
Timothy Nohe, US, has created a triplet of site-specific variations on kinetic sound objects made from found materials, dedicated to the Fluxus artist Joe Jones.
Lisa Moren,
US, exhibits a sound kinetic installation on the theme of
cleansing and purification.
Dan Senn, US, has built a sound and kinetic site-specific installation on the theme of Odradek. http://www.newsense-intermedium.com
“Shelters” by Jan Bartoš, a Czech, is a mutating slideshow dedicated to the documentation and rehabilitation of temporary architecture by people who haven’t had a permanent dwelling for a long time; and some of them, as if by chance, are lounging nearby at the metro station symbolically named “Národní” (“National”).
Paramlok – asanatorium is a therapeutic kineto-community hospital for orphaned, dying, and sick houseplants.
Ombea is an interactive environment with a spatial reaction to the visitor entering the room. There are four modules dealing with light and sound that respond to movements taking place in the room. Team: FAMU/DAMU/ČVUT/VŠUP. http://pash.tk In his installation “Behind the Wall”.
Pavel Sterec uses one of the oldest and most-used eavesdropping techniques – a cup. When placed against the wall, you can hear the sounds filling the House of 15 years ago, those of a dentist’s office.
A site-specific installation by Aleš Čermák called “Forgetful Plumbers” was inspired by architectural dispositions and indispositions in the House: dripping water, falling plaster, and creaky floors. Connections with the interior and objects are indicated and create changeable combinations of ambient sounds.
“Flash back” by Kateřina Držková is a sound and visual evocation of emotions and movements of someone trying to find his way through the House using only the information provided by a camera.
“Tele-re-portace” by Klara Doležálková consists of a mobile phone which ceases to serve simply as a means of communication, instead liberating itself from its owner and perhaps activating its own autonomous, but forgetful SIM card. Gabriel Vach dusts while adding various kinds of signs and orientation labels in the House.
Part of the Odradek project is a pilot broadcast for “Radio Jungmann” which the neighborhood can tune in on their receivers (around 107,5 MHz - frequencies will be posted on the announcement boards).
Participating: FAMU, ČVUT, KP Školská
28, Nový Prostor,
Organisation: Miloš Vojtěchovský,
Dana Recmanová, Pavel Sterec
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