Traces of time
Project idea by Krystof Blazek
Copenhagen / Prague / Luxembourg
A / Motivation
- Our vanishing old civilisation is so much time-controlled that we are no more apt to perceive all signs and symptoms which represent this invisible reign. What more, every level of evolution and every epoch of history has come with its specific kind of time and we cannot but live in all of them simultaneously.
- Geological or biological time dominates in the wilderness, cosmobiological time pulsates until now in the countryside, historical and chronological time has started up with the coming of cities.
- However, when we visualize these "classical" times we can get a chance to see, against this contrasting background, if there are some new kinds of time, connected with the emerging new civilisation. It could be a time of not fully predictable events, a radically open time, maybe a discontinous time.
- If ephemeral art is truly contemporary phenomenon, then it shares its temporal structure with the emerging civilisation. We can make it more understandable against the background of this plurality of times. My exhibition could thus offer an interpretative frame for the ephemeral art.
B / Project
- The aim of my project is to visualize the invisible structures of different times, as they are present in cities. The citizens of cities are psychologically blind to many crucial urban phenomena, and most of all to the temporal structures. In order to see them, we can confrontate our own city with a foreign one.
- At the occasion of my artistic stay in Copenhagen, in March to May 2000, I have started to portrait the visual traces of different times in this Danish capital. After my coming home, I could much better perceive the temporal structure of my native Prague.
- Now, I would like to construct a triangle of European cities which could be helpful for the awakening of the time sensitivity of their citizens: Copenhagen X Prague X Luxembourg.
I will bring to Luxembourg two mutually interrelated sets of photos, reflecting different times in Copenhagen and Prague. It means that I will offer two thirds of the whole triangle project. In a week disponible for the artistic work I would like to create in Luxembourg a third thematically coordinated set of photos. Thus, I could present here at the end of the week an exhibition of (about twenty) triplets from these three cities (i.e. about sixty photos).
As I am an art student in a postcommunist country, without any regular job, I am able to pay travel costs and daily expenses, nevertheless to cover technical costs of photos would be out of my possibilities. Thus, I dare to ask you: if you decide to accept my project, cover, please, the costs of five films (I can buy them in Prague where the price is about 1000,- Kc) and of their development and about sixty positive photocopies (21 x 15), in order to have a choice from a broader selection (the prices of laboratory work in Luxembourg are not known to me).
C. V.
Krystof Blazek
* 27. 9. 1977, Prague, Czech Republic
Studies:
1992 - 1996: Graphic design at Private Master School of Art Design, Prague
Since 1996: Architecture and design at Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design , Prague (4th year)
Study stays:
- 1994: USA (two months language training)
- 2000: Danemark (three months at Danmarks Designskole, Copenhagen)
Exhibitions:
- 1995: "Town Pribram (Czech Republic): 69 question marks"
- 1995: "Pribram (Czech Republic) vs. Weimar (Germany): mutual mirroring"
- 1998: Photos from the village Libceves (Czech Republic), XXIVth Summer Film School Uherske Hradiste
- 1998: Problem photos from the housing estate Scampia in Naples (Italy) - part of the group exhibition of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts "Artwork in Public Spaces", Prague (repeated in entrance halls of two Czech universities)
- in preparation: "Traces of Times / Copenhagen vs. Prague" (in the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, Prague, and paralelly in Copenhagen)
Publications:
- cultural quarterly Souvislosti (collections of photos to copies 1/1997, 3-4/1999, 1/2000)
- cultural quarterly Umeni & remesla (report about photos from village Libceves, 3/1998, report about photos from housing estate Scampia, 4/1998)
- portrait photography for monthly Technicky magazin, weeklies Literarni noviny, Reflex and Tyden, daily Lidove noviny and many others
