Laďa Gažiová: A Cloud In Trousers
24. 2 – 10. 3. 2016
opening: 23. 2. 2016
curator: Gabriela Kotiková
The fog is hanging around like a heavy impenetrable mass. Or is it smoke? Clusters of objects chaotically scattered along the dry land have the same grey-brownish colour as the air sticking to them. The horizon is not visible. It is windy and humid at the same time. It does not look like a nice place to live. The twinkling lights that shine through the fog every now and then do not make the dismal scene any nicer.
The sudden gust of sharp smoke from somewhere on the right is making me cough. I turn as far as my stiff shoulders allow me and against the light I see an outline of a person sitting hunched over. He is breathing heavily, I can hear him wheeze. A little further down I can recognize the silhouettes of more people also sitting down. Some of them are drowsily rocking. But it is too early to tell whether those are signs of life or after-death spasms. What if they are zombies? I should not move so they wouldn’t notice me. I realize that I’m sitting like the others: my head lifelessly hanging between my shoulders, my forearms resting on the smooth grey surface covered with lumps of ash and sticky spots. Now I can recognize the objects around me a little better. They are pieces of a dark brown, probably rusty construction, which are rising into the air like the bones of a chewed up carcass. Small figures are constantly running among the sitting shadows. The trajectories of their movement have no logic at first sight. It looks like they are trying to find asylum by those who are already seated in their places but they are always refused and must try their luck elsewhere. It is as if there was a threat that each of these short interactions could spill over into a conflict. Every time that the little moving figures come close to a shadow, I can hear metal jingling accompanied by barking voice expressions. Once in a while I can hear a few articulated syllables, but most of the time the voices get meddled into an incomprehensible cacophony. The sound backdrop is topped off by a dull heavy rhythm, as if somebody behind the corner was crashing a ram into a screeching door in regular intervals. The sound wall makes the same thick impression as the air filled with sick fumes.
I feel disheartened and sick to my stomach. I need to drink. I fumble along the surface that I have been leaning on with my hand and I find some small container. I fiercely bring it towards my mouth and drink the contents. The liquid is warm and bitter. I feel even thirstier now. The remains on the bottom of the cup are of dark brown colour. I come to realize that the colour spectrum in this space is reduced to the shades of dirt and rot; that instead of the alternation of silence and words I can hear only the not subsiding buzz; that I will not quench my thirst here or breath properly. What kind of catastrophe took place here that it made the environment so unliveable? And how did I get here? Is it just a figment of my daydreams, influenced by the dystopian vision of the horrifying future that our culture is full of?
I place the empty coffee cup on the table. I can order something else, all I have to do is call the waitress. In the meantime I can enjoy some passive smoking because the gentleman at the table next to me is lighting up a cigarete again. The café is half empty; there are only a few other customers sitting hunched over their laptops like me. The monotonous rhythm of the background music helps me concentrate better on my writing. Fortunately, no one is conversing close to me, so there are no foreign words entering my stream of thought. Therefore I can play with the questions that are spontaneously coming to my mind in the comfortableness of the café.
Isn’t there something noble about the act of drinking coffee when we take into consideration that it is being exported from countries that are losing land for the production of food for local residents because it is being used to grow coffee? Don’t we take that much more pleasure in smoking thanks to the morbid images of cancer eating away on lungs – images that were supposed to discourage us but they soon became ordinary? Aren’t the chairs in cafes that much more comfortable the greater the number of people is that were refused a visa into the country that these chairs are found in? Don’t we think that clothes fit us so well for the reason that the fabric is saturated with the sweat of the labourers working in a climate where practically no clothes are needed? Isn’t the glare from our laptop screens that much more alluring when we imagine that it comes from the depths of mines from where minerals are extracted without which our electronic equipment would not function? Is the heat that warms up our bodies that much more pleasant when we watch the photographs taken from bird’s eye view showing the scars on the Earth’s body caused by the plundering of energy resources? Isn’t perhaps our head cleaner as a result of the fact that the smog around the café is somewhat less dense than on the highway two blocks down?
The catastrophe has started but we are not fully aware of it. So far we have had the privilege to be able to pretend that we are not a part of it. And we can look at paintings at the same time.
Václav Magid
Jeleni Gallery exhibition program is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and Prague City Council
Media support: Artycok.tv, ArtMap, jlbjlt.net a UMA: You Make Art
