Martin Zet/Mark Shepard: 1931 (We need the time)

three channel site specific video instalation
granary
Fairy-Tales, 1999

Fucking news. And what do you think they say when ask what is the most valuable minute in TV Broadcasting? The minute when everybody is watching and absorbing? In the beginning they are all reluctant. Our public TH channel representatives are too suspicious to even talk about it. Why should anybody besides themselves know it? What could anybody need it for? How could it be misused? All the funnier when you find out that they all pay the same one agency to do the research. The man from that agency answers in a friendly voice: „After 7:30 PM.“
Mrs. Kornatovsky´s house in Plasy can only get three channels. It is in the valley. The waves are in the air. Just imagine receiving them all at once. What do you think they broadcast in that minute? News, News, Euronews… But it could be even worse.

Martin Zet, November 14, 1999 Libušín


Martin Zet is Czech visual artist. In his performances he allows time to act in its two basic dimensions and meanings: time as a process, movement and transformation and in a second case as a status, image and representation. Although Zet completed classic studies of sculpture at the Academy of Creative Arts (AVU) in Prague, he did not remain satisfied with works as a static unit, as an immobile snapshot. On the contrary, he favoured the understanding of artefacts, which he viewed as open, fluid fragments. Martin Zet’s creations often take the shape of metaphors. He enlists the help of copies of certain, visible features to reference their meaning. Most of all he uses the possibilities of mutual interchanging of near and far, known and unknown, spoken and unspoken or concrete and abstract.

Václav Hájek
https://www.artlist.cz/en/martin-zet-100434/