Industrial chapel (2019)

The main idea of our project was a sound interaction with a hidden and almost unused object – a pay phone. The scheme of the whole installation consists of communication between the gallery space and the village of Klenová through the pay above the telephone.

The viewer passes by the individual parts in a completely natural way, which are audiovisual testimonies about aspects of the visited place. Through a shrine with a text from a folk song by the Šumavan ensemble and a genre painting whose static nature is broken by slight moving details, the viewer reaches the climax of the installation. A mobile phone in a glass case ironizes itself as a sacred achievement of our time. Its purpose is to repeatedly dial a pay phone number, leaving the viewer at both ends of the apparatus unsure whether to manipulate the object or observe it.

The means of our expression arise from the combination of culturally traditional signs used in folk creativity in contrast to the contemporary world of new media and technology.

I created this project in collaboration with Lucie Růžičková.