BILDER ÜBER DIE KULTUR / DEN ALTEN BEKANNTEN
The English title is ‚Pictures About Culture: To The Old Acquaintances‘: an all-over lable for several installations and series of drawings that may be adapted and re-composed in the future. Dealing with the issue of how we rely on images, idols, key terms and key scenes when positioning ourselves within historical and political contexts, these works can be perceived as shredded comments, exploring and juggling with quotes, found objects, and stereotypes.
The installation HAPPY KNOWLEDGE forms part of this. A first site-specific version of this work-in-progress had been exhibited in 2015 at the Brno House of the Arts (Museum of Contemporary Art), at Brno, CZ. Since then, I have continued to work on groups of drawings and 3-dimensional elements which may form part of future realisations of HAPPY KNOWLEDGE.
Merging trivialities with profound issues and some auto-biographical allusions, HAPPY KNOWLEDGE is a multi-authored project: drawings are combined with found bric-a-brac objects, and text quotes from distinct sources. Expanding on various layers, the associative process departs from T.S. Eliot‘s famous post-World-War-I poem“Gerontion“ (1920).T.S. Eliot‘s collaging method of writing poetry is formally reflected throughout the installation. In “Gerontion“, the Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot unfurls the monologue of a bitter old man who is musing about the human inability to learn from history. Seemingly, the poet employs this speaking “I“ to forcefully criticise societal ignorance and chauvinism. Knowing, however, that the author was an outspoken anti-Semite himself, Eliot‘s astute criticism must inevitably turn against its author.
