An initiative of the
Breathless. A Documentary Film Project /
Vùng biên giới. A Theatre Project with Rimini Protokoll /
rádio d-cz. A Radio Art Project /
Vùng biên giới. A Theatre Project with Rimini Protokoll /
rádio d-cz. A Radio Art Project /
Over and Over
Original sound collage
Authors: Kateřina Šedá and Rolf Simmen
(DLR/WDR 2009), 53 min
Broadcasting dates:
14.09.2009, 00:05 (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
14.09.2009, 23:05 (WDR3)
22.09.2009, 23 (WDR1Live)
>sample clip
After the fall of the “iron curtain”, the fences between people’s houses started to grow noticeably in former Eastern Block countries. Czech artist Kateřina Šedá has a sense for tracing the political in the everyday private field. She literally climbed those post-socialist high fences in her hometown, Brno-Líšeň, thus provoking territorial conflicts on a small-scale garden format.
Kateřina Šedá likes to invite “ordinary” people to join in her artistic work, thus examining the mechanisms of the art world and everyday life alike. Her final examinations at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague may serve as an example: for the occasion she assembled a jury out of family members and asked them to give their opinion on the art works of her fellow students.A following piece was intended to draw her grandmother out of a massive depression; by prompting the old lady to draw from memory the objects she had sold at the household goods shop where she had worked all her life. More than 600 drawings emerged in daily drawing sessions, all of them “outsider art” in their own right while at the same time being incorporated in one of Šedás typical lively “social sculptures”. At Kassel’s documenta 12 (2007), the artist presented a project about anonymous city life in high-rise buildings: 1000 families were sent a shirt each, designed by Šedá, which featured a wild collage of the facades of the satellite town they inhabit. The shirts were allegedly sent by another, unknown, family, and the parcel contained no further comment. Šedá left the development of the project entirely up to people’s curiosity and dynamics. For her “rádio d-cz” contribution, Kateřina Šedá worked with the radio artist Rolf Simmen to document her current project “Furt dokola” / “Over and Over” from the very beginning: from the 5th berlin biennal for contemporary art (April 2008), where she confronted forty inhabitants of Líšeň with replicas of their own garden fences, only now erected on a strip of land once part of the Berlin Wall, over which, on identifying their fence, the Líšeňers climbed in a symbolic act. In June 2008, Kateřina Šedá then walked, climbed and ran through Líšeň along an invisible line drawn from a city map. In doing so, she had to overcome everything that was in her way: fences, hedges and houses (in the case of which people were kind enough to open doors for her). She thus enacted a symbolic violation and transgression of borders. From their on-location recordings and interviews, Šedá und Simmen developed a radio piece revolving around the voices of those everyday people who are always at the centre of the artist’s work. The ordinary people next-door, with whom Šedá seeks to try out social possibilities, which allow them to challenge their own situation, make hidden rules visible and search for alternatives.
KATEŘINA ŠEDÁ
born 1977 in Brno Líšeň, is one of the leading protagonists of the Czech Republic’s young arts scene, which is driven by concrete action. Her participation at documenta 12 in 2007 brought her an international reputation. Šedá’s work for “rádio d-cz” is her first ever involvement with sound-art.
ROLF SIMMEN
born in 1969, studied Slavonic Studies at Basle University. He works as a freelance translator and journalist in Berlin. From 2001-2004 he produced the radio series REPETE that covers the day-to-day life and culture in Central and Eastern Europe (for the free radio station LoRa, Zurich). Simmen has coached participants of community radios in Mali and has implemented the experimental contest “Soap Radio” in spring 2007, in which local radio stations compete with TV soapoperas.
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