školská 28

Sala WONG and Peter WILLIAMS
talk...the...line (Series #1: Prague)
"talk...the...line" is a multimedia interactive installation examining the drastic socio-economic changes that have occurred within the city of Prague since 1968. Taking the famous Prague Spring as a starting point, we ask participants to re-examine the notion of the "historical site" in the context of a tourist industry. Each year, millions of tourists retrace the footsteps of the Warsaw Troops, snapping photographs around Wenceslas Square. In a sense, the individual tourist’s experience is fleeting. However, the unending influx of visitors seems to have forever changed this site and its historical significance. With this project, we use GPS technology as a means for recording Absolute Location (latitude and longitude) alongside images, sounds, commentary, and historical documents to reference Relative Location. These two spaces negate and contradict each other, raising questions about history, subjectivity, and the social construction of collective memories. Finally, the gallery visitor experiences the piece as a dead-end which can be opened with the sound of his or her own voice.
Toni CRABB
Of Some Animals and Their Movements in Their Respective Habitats
8mm/DVD, 6 min, 2007
The film (A). Of Some Animals and their Movements in their Respective Habitats follows 7 different animals around their habitats, using different speeds and time intervals to make visible how they move around (inhabit/possess) the space. The habitats or spaces chosen were intended to portray an obvious relationship between the animals and human beings (that is, they are not "natural" habitats.)
The work shows a spectrum of interrelationships, ranging from the caged spectacle of a jaguar in the zoo to pigs in a sty, city pigeons and a cat in a garden. The zoo space or pigsty are constructed spaces that become a physical manifestation of a way of conceiving the animal and in this case act to restrict, not only the animal’s movements and inhabitance, but also our own possibilities of perceiving it. Other possible spaces and forms of interrelating are suggested in the film.