Improvement

Date: 2009
Length: 5 min
Format:  16:9
Specification: Colour, Sound

A long line of people is waiting in a large warehouse setting for what appears to be a casting call. The video sequences alternate between wide, panoramic shots of a warehouse interior filled with typical backstage film paraphernalia: stage lights, make-up stands, camera equipment and close-up scenes of actors going through a set of metamorphosing procedures: new make-up, hairstyle and costume are supposed to transform them into different characters.
Yet what is the role they are preparing to play? The people in the video do not look like professional actors, and after their transformation they look nothing like a coherent set of film characters. Borrowing from conventional film-making vocabulary, Vackar brings together a number of homeless people who undergo a set of transformative procedures turning them into ‘normal’ people. After their changeover is completed, Vackar's actors remain motionless under the spotlights, modeling their ‘normality’. However, their new looks seem to be insipid and unimaginative compared to their pre-transformation appearance. Have they really been improved? Who has the power to establish the hierarchy of tastes and decide what constitutes the aesthetic norm – and what deviates from it?  

OC

Interview:

► 1. Your video has been chosen among over 1700 festival entries to participate in Videonale 13. How central is the video medium to your overall artistic production? Is it complimentary to other media you use or do you work exclusively with video?

Video has an important role in my work, I use it quite often, it is probably my main medium at present. Video has the possibility to show space and time at the same moment, I can play with time and work with repetition. For me video is something that can describe a utopia, dystopia or an impossible fictive situation in a way that sculpture or photograph cannot. On the other hand, I understand video as a different form from a narrative film or film making. I've never tended to become a film-maker. I use situations without my videos being narrative.

► 2. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

It is the society that intrigues me, new art forms and human nature. I think art is a part of life (and a way of life). It is important for me to do work with a reason, not only as a formalist decoration. Art is a way of communication with the world for me. So I am not the one-type-of-work artist. I prefer to switch and experiment with forms. I allow mistakes in favor of new experiments.

► 3. What artists do you relate to or find significant for your own art-making?

I cannot really say, I have many artists I like but I do not really admire one person. I like very much Francis Alÿs, Santiago Sierra, Claire Fontaine, Adam Pendleton, Philippe Parreno, Chris Burden, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Martin Creed, Karl Holmqvist, Jonathan Monk, Jorge Macchi, Roman Ondák, Jiří Kovanda, Ján Mančuška and many others who inspire my work.

► 4. Do you think the video medium can address social or political issues better than other art media?

No I don't think so, I think the best form for social issues is a TV documentary. But video can show things in different way without being formatted for a particular use (TV, film, etc.), it can allow to be more abstract, show another meaning, be cruel, more or less involved. For both political and social issues I think it is quite important to use art, because it is the only way to get other ideas different from the current politics - a kind of incubator of new ideas. In the field of art you can allow to be more radical or less politically correct, more abstract on an idea-conceptual level. But I don't intend to make only a socially or politically oriented art, I depict various themes: formal issues of performance, text, video, connected with a kind of common memory, things that touch us all without being necessarily political statements, economy transforming our humanity, wide spreading product and economical thinking getting into our unconsciousness, the use of language as a valid tool of communication, art loosing its guru potential and becoming another product in the economy web. I take these themes and treat them in a more abstract way or just touch upon them in my research.

► 5. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Which of the two positions is close to your own art-making philosophy?

I would say both. I think the mirroring brings to reflection, which is a turning point into any transforming moment.

► 6. How do you understand success in an art-making career?

That is a difficult question. I think the way to succeed among other artists today is very difficult. There are many artists, many institutions, the strategies to succeed change very much every moment. I think today's achievement would be to survive one's five minutes of fame and continue working on for longer period. My idea of success is that of having a place on both local Czech and French art scenes and to function internationally as well. Today the art world is fragmented into many different groups, and also of different tastes so it's more a question of working within a certain circuit or creating one's own circuit.

► 7. What is the most difficult and the most rewarding thing about making art / being an artist?

When I am happy with a new achievement, a new challenge that I accomplish. And also when people younger than me start to like my work and integrate it, related to it. And obviously when I get invited to projects or exhibitions that are new challenging experiences every time.

► 8. What are your upcoming projects?

Three solo shows on approximately 300 - 500 square meters in each space, two in the Czech Republic, one in France. I try to challenge bigger spaces with installations.

► 9. What do you do when you don't make art?

I read books, watch films, play music and nourish my soul or do sports and hang around with friends-artists. Earn money for living. And take care of my family, I have two kids.