english pdf - Janek Rous

janek rous
00420608351199
www.kvok.info
[email protected]
Jan Rous
born on September 19, 1981 in Prague, CZ
education
Gymnasium of Josef Škvorecký in Prague, finished in 2001
2001 – 2003 Charles University in Prague, faculty of philosophy, Hungarian and Romani language
2007 - 2013 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the School of Monumental Art, led by Jiří Příhoda
2010 - Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studio of visiting professor, led by GELITIN
2011- The Cooper Union School of Art, New York, USA
grants and residencies
2015 - Kultur Kontakt Austria A.I.R. (Vienna, A)
2013 - Tranzit - Salzburg Summeracademy (Salzburg, A)
2012 - Egon Schiele Art Centrum (Cesky Krumlov, CZ)
2011 - Visegrad Artist Residency Programme - SPACE gallery (Bratislava, SK)
awards
2015 - Other Visions, main award for Sound from the Desert (PAF Olomouc, CZ)
from 2009 working as editor in artycok.tv, international research, media and digital archive of the contemporary art, research institution focusing on the
young and emerging contemporary art scene in the international context
- for artycok.tv works also as a film maker, especially for the series of critically focused documentaries, which aim at symptomatic moments associated with
the art scene and its institutional and socio-political background and provide material for further study
statement
In a lot of cases my work mostly deals with different forms of possible perception of the past,
affecting and interfering with the present.
I mainly work with various specific local environments and contexts in which it is possible
to demonstrate a more general framework and global problems.
An inseparable part of my recent work are attempts to form cultural and social structures
or territories – both temporary and developing within a longer period of time and space.
Through direct or indirect performative means I aim at testing and applying different approaches
and models of social structures.
I try to find, overcome or completely eradicate borders of memory, history, communal spirit,
autonomy and free will in general.
solo shows and authorial events
2015 2015 - interview (GMU, Roudnice n. Labem, CZ)
2015 - The Apparition and Travertin - with Markus Hannakam&Roswitha Schuller (Austrian Cultural Forum, Praha, CZ)
2015 - I was keeping myself awake by a loud and regular clapping of my hands (galerie Jelení, Praha, CZ)
2015 - Sound from the Desert (Kostka gallery, Prague, CZ)
2014 - (sometimes the world looks as if there was nothing happening),,(ProjectPlus, Roztoky u Prahy, CZ)
2013 – J.A.R.O. - with Kateřina Zochová, Matyáš Chochola, Alexander Puškin (TranzitDisplay, Prague, CZ)
2012 - Cycle 4 (Jama 10, Ostrava, CZ)
2012 - Waiting for Turning (Kukacka festival, Ostrava, CZ)
2011 - fig.7 - the King (SPACE gallery lab, Bratislava, SK)
2010 - hvězdičky na špeku (galerie Pavilon, Prague, CZ)
2010 - Neue Dörflichkeit – with Jan Trejbal (Školská28, Prague, CZ)
2007 – Proč ne? with Aleš Čermák and Martin Boyer (Benzínka, Slaný, CZ)
selected group exhibitions
2015/16 - Teseract (GAMU, Prague, CZ)
2015 - How not to Want Anything? (4+4 days in motion, Prague, CZ)
2015 - Magnetic Leakage Fluxes (Dům umění města Brna, Brno, CZ)
2015 - SHARE, Too Much History, More Future (Depo Pilsen, CZ)
2013/14 - Suitable Desert for Fata Morgana, Aviaries (MWW Wroclaw, PL)
2013 - Hunky Dory (Karlin Studios, Prague, CZ)
2013 - Needless Cleanup (Meetfactory, Prague, CZ)
2013 - THE 01 (Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, Krakow, PL)
2012 - Festival Sudety (Cinoherni studio, Ústí nad Labem, CZ)
2012 - Motion on the Spot (Kokpit, Prague, CZ)
2012 - Would you like to play another game? (4+4 days in motion, Prague, CZ)
2012 - Culburb Ursus, akupunktura miejska (ARSUS, Warszawa, PL)
2011 - Performance Lab (DOX, Prague, CZ)
2011 - In Optima Forma (GEF, Ústí nad Labem, CZ)
2010 - Die Antwort/Odpověď/The Reply (Former Bell Street, Wien, A)
2010 - Shadows of the Past Utopias (galerie NTK, Prague, CZ)
2010 - ALTRUISMUS:kunst aus tschechien heute (Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, D)
2010 - Trial (Our House)/Trial Trail (Atelierhaus AKBILD, Wien, A)
2010 - Transgression (Videotage, Kowloon, HK)
2010 - AFT festival (Ústí nad Labem, CZ)
2009 - Drazí (Galerie Půda, Jihlava, CZ)
So this is the centre of the world from where the distance is the same in all directions
video (youtube)
performance and video
(00:11:25)
Our contemporary world lives by the present and tends to choose easily accessible solutions.
However, the need to project oneself into the future as one of the basic premises of „progress“ has not vanished.
Even though in the course of life most of us find ourselves outside the trajectories of our own plans.
Somebody suceeds in fullfiling his ambitions in a different field, somebody fails, but this does not necessarily mean a place
at the social bottom.
This work helps us to remember the usually muted difference between what we wanted or still want to do and what we actually
do (not only in the sense of making a living). This is based on about twenty volunteers who speak in the gallery about the way they
got into the situation they are in at present and to what extent reality differs from their plans and ambitions.
The result of this activity is a film recording of a performative situation which is repeatedly shown in the place where it was made.
Because all the people speak at the same time and the camera and microphone, floating freely in space, always capture only bits
and pieces of the monologues, the result is a sort of kaleidoscope of narratives, which is not meant to describe the fate of individual people but to activate the conscience of each viewer and to review their own desires and intentions.
Are their desires still relevant?
Can you imagine fulfilling them even perhaps with the help of your immediate surrounding area?
interview
Live broadcast interview with a fictional contemporary artist, whose answers are a compilation of texts of Czechoslovak artists from the 1960s,
that its contents and are very similar to the current situation in society and art
link to the audioarchive of Czech Radio Station (czech only)
fictional interview for radio broadcasting
(01:00:00)
local radio broadcasting in GMU Roudnice
...
We are born with a personal perception of the world.
However, from our early days we are exposed to brutal and violent upbringing of old people.
Why do we always hear “Just you wait, life will teach you a lesson!” whenever we express ourselves freely.
We defend ourselves, we become neurotic. We either give up or put up with it.
If we are born this way, then why should we insist on our world-view, our perception of the world?
Just by not doing it we acknowledge this truth.
Or does anybody feel that this is a disease?
Who keeps burdening his conscience with supressing it?
There are many of us all over the world who feel the same.
They are great models who foretold the arrival of a new era.
There are new uprisings and revolts which confirm that the tyranny of the old way of thinking is strong.
However, I declare - let this manifestation exist.
Or does anyone feel that this is a disease?
Who keeps burdening his conscience with supressing it?
There are so many of us all over the world who feel the same.
There are great models who foretold the arrival of a new era.
There are new uprisings and revolts which confirm that the tyranny of the old way of thinking is strong.
We do not know where we came from, whose descendants we are and therefore we have the right to express ourselves the way we do.
Each of us went through a different process of maturing and forming a world-view.
It is not possible not to tolerate the other side.
This era was foretold by scientists, technology and artists fifty years ago.
Inadequacy of education - in addition education for the old world - if we are to know the ropes, then we need new methods,
let´s stop that nonsense!
Old ideas must die away and they are already dying away but they are accompanied by the sound of fanfares
but only by watered down fanfares.
It is the beginning of a new sensitivity towards the surrounding world.
...
dramatization for Czech Radio
I was keeping myself awake by a loud and regular clapping of my hands
link on audio file from the installation (youtube)
audio installation
(00:13:50)
...
Are you sleeping? No, I´m not, I might forget everything.
I´m studying psychology. My father wanted me to go to an art school and he and mum used to have a lot of arguments about it.
In order to compensate for it a little bit I started dealing with mental disorders resulting from direct contact with works of art.
The disorder is called after an 18th-century writer who described it using his own experience,
however medicine began to deal with it seriously only many years later.
The disease manifests itself the following way: people feel suddenly dizzy after looking at an art object,
they suffer from hallucination or they panic and they often have to be sent to hospital.
It used to be colloquially called "the inability to bear the beauty of the world" and it could break out for example
when watching a vast landscape. This did not use to be a common phenomenon but nowadays it happens almost daily.
Many hospitals in towns with great galleries and museums have special wards designed especially for those patients.
In our town we have one, too. Department of Psychiatry IV.
The people who are mainly affected are usually of my age, mostly under 40.
A syndrome has been described and named after a Baroque painter, according to which the sight of a painting might cause
strong erotic feelings which might result in spontaneous orgasm. All this is well described on Wikipedia.
I feel I somehow unpleasantly understand it.
Are you sleeping?
No, I´m not, I´m watching beauty in hospital.
...
Sound from the Desert
link on a preview video, not for exhibiting purposes (youtube)
film installation
(00:25:14)
...
Yeah, I could still tell you how I lost my arm.
It really took dreadfully long to realize that my arm was gone.
For a terribly long time I could still feel my arm as if it was there, it was painful, I felt cramps…
Whenever I wanted to catch something or lift something I always wanted to do it with my lost arm, even though I hadn´t used it much
before.
I kept telling myself – this is not possible, I haven´t got my arm, so how can my fingers be so painful or stiff in winter for instance?
Well, just try to imagine what it´s like. Something is annoying you terribly and you can´t do a thing about it.
And you know why?
Because it doesn´t exist! Fata Morgana!
In fact you feel an urgent need to do something about something that doesn´t exist.
Fatamorganic pains, fatamorganic problems.
You think you know what it´s about, you have a familiar feeling and therefore you feel that you have an inevitable influence
which is not true because you only strengthen your fictitious position towards a fictitious enemy.
This distracts you from really serious problems to which you should pay attention.
...
the Apparition
A great number of people regard the work they do rather as an activity which is necessary to earn a living than something they feel they really want to do.
Not finding fulfilment through one´s own work goes hand in hand with economical disillusion and thus becomes a trap without a possibility to escape.
link on the video (youtube)
sociological research and video
(00:08:00)
1
(sometimes the world looks as if there was nothing happening)
There are times when we do not doubt that we are confronted with true reality.
performative situaton
(02:00:00)
2
The Museum of Railway Modellers in Roztoky originated as a project of enthusiasts
who wished to create a true model of the railway junction Prague Vysočany and its surroundings.
In course of time the place started changing so fast that the modellers could no longer keep track of these changes.
They were gradually forced to give up modelling the true appearance of the location, a true diorama and started to add more and more fictitious details.
1
2
3
3
...
When dealing with the debris of time we can easily assign to things around us any sense, meaning or role.
At that moment we are free of all historical connotations and thus we have an opportunity
to create a new reminiscence for the future or the historical myth.
We define a new form – a slowly growing pile of alternative reality.
So you have sat down at last, haven´t you?
Are you sitting comfortably?
That´s good, stay here, I´m going back alone.
...
link on the live audio record (youtube)
Fata Morgana as redrawing of memory
Fata Morgana as a false reflection in the mind
Fata Morgana as a created recollection
Fata Morgana as a non-existent recollection
A suitable Desert for Fata Morgana
link on a preview video, not for exhibiting purposes (youtube)
film essay
(00:20:10)
...
If we try hard to cast light on certain places in our memory we shall most probably simultaneously cast shadow on other places.
It is often easier to set a Zero point from which everything can start again. Theoretically this point can be set, however, its basis
will always stem from repainting the blurred picture in the memory which one can never get rid of.
...
liberation of a right hand
with Aleš Čermák
...
- These people must be in a situation when no one experienced anything...
- Nobody knows anything, nobody remembers anything, no one experienced anything and suddenly everything starts to build
entirely anew...
- Yeah, but what if we again encounter and becomes what happened before ...?
- There will be no experience at all, on which basis would be possible to avoid something.
...
experimental film
(00:08:15)