Pamela Kuťáková: „This Can´t Be the Place But the View Is Nice"
November 14 – December 9, 2018
opening: November 13, 2018 from 6 PM
curator: Václav Janoščík
We're only tourists in this life
Only tourists but the view is nice
And we're never gonna go back home
No we're never gonna go back home (all right)
It is not just about searching for a home; David Byrne’s songs are generally linked through their relationship to a place and the tension from it. I sense some sort of a feeling of dislocation – being outside of the predetermined place and time.
It is as if I became adult prematurely, as if I were making a first decision without a clear plan, without preparation. I travel outside of the rhythm and I feel tension, as well as pleasure. I feel shy but excited.
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me around
I feel numb, burn with a weak heart
Guess I must be having fun
Today the feelings of happiness and depression, tension and release, understanding and apathy are closely related. It is as if we had to be happy; as if happiness was not tranquility but movement; not safety, but tension.
David Byrne himself searches for places and metaphors with certain humbleness. His songs have a positive but somewhat tired tempo - movement against home; death against love; music against silence.
I'm just an animal looking for a home
And share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I'm dead
It is not about the big things outworn in pop music such as home, love and death. I feel much more uncertainty and tension, as if all other feelings were temporary, but mainly as if every home was only temporary.
Home, is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home, she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place
At the same time this dislocation is something we experience in photographs. They take us to different places (Benjamin), and remind us of another time (Barthes). Or to be more exact, they create a different place and a different existence.
It is as if we were not able to disentangle the relationship between WHERE we are and WHAT we see. The view and image are not exoteric for us, but on the contrary they always locate us – in space, in history, but also in politics or relationships.
I wish I was a camera
I wish I was a postcard
I welcome you to my house
You didn't have to go far
I would like to be a photograph so I could move freely, circulate and open up new places. My body would be outside instead of inside. It would be identical to the space and movement.
Perhaps we are closer together. I can write to you any time. I can follow your profile online, but every piece of news, every interview is immediately followed by uncertainty and temporality.
We're only tourists in this life
Only tourists but the view is nice
And we're never gonna go back home
No we're never gonna go back home (all right)
We need a home, and yet there is nowhere to go back to. We want to understand one another, do something purposeful, and be right once in a while. And yet we are only staggering between places, people and images.
[This can't be the place, but the view is nice].
Václav Janoščík
The program of the Jeleni Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7
Media support: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net and UMA: You Make Art
