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A continuous decline of trust in education and context awareness
Hello.
I'm glad to be on this stage again,
where, two years ago, the world premiere of my opera,
"Valley of Dry Bones" took place, asking the question:
What would happen, if people were born again, from the roots,
if it turned out the same way
or better.
If this " exchange of ideas "
or conference is about breaking stereotypes,
the best way how to break them would be
a proper lecture on the Czech history.
It would be such a break that we wouldn't stop wondering.
It would, however, take too long, many semesters, and I'm not doing this.
I'd better think about the state of things,
what man has realized in the form of arts,
and so on.
If we went back in history,
we would realize that –
if Napoleon III in France, late 19th century,
would do anything against views of Victor Hugo,
he would go to Jersey Island
where he would send pamphlets and would be an opponent from there.
The caesar was very interested in that and
the whole society was very interested.
When Émile Zola was doing the same in the Dreyfuss affair,
A few years later, it was also political and people were interested.
If we asked: "What would happen if they did it 35 years later?"
during the times of Stalin or Hitler,
there wouldn't be any sign of their existence anywhere.
And if anybody keeps doing it further,
the role of a single person, I have to say,
goes down persistently
for the sake of all sorts of media manipulation,
of large organizations,
an identity-seeking state,
and so on.
Therefore, one cannot wonder, that a simple man who does not have
a feeling of being heard, identifies with heroes like, the Lord of the Rings,
when it turns out that even a little man
can do something.
That's the butterfly effect.
The art in 19th century, the process was started by Enlightment,
where questions were asked: where does God live, how much does he weigh, how tall he is,
whether we can go to the pub with him.
If we ask this question, it is over.
The art has, actually, always served two purposes:
now, if students of diverse metasthatic fields of theory of culture of culture of culture heard me,
they would correct me so much
since we can distinguish it diagonally, vertically, whatever,
but let's talk about the two fundamentals:
Art is here to name and define the existence of man
bordering to something he cannot imagine,
that is the first one,
and the second one is: to amuse us.
Nevertheless, we can put all of art in these two categories.
Until the 19th century, art was a service.
The service meant
to publish something and touch it,
to touch its overlap, to release something in the artist
he did not know about and mediate it
by choosing such elements
which don't only count and multiply.
So everyone who sees it would have to wonder
and had a feeling of revelation and miracle, that is why it was called art.
It was enough to neglect the importance of the author in first stages, 67 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:43,000 remember the builders, architects of cathedrals.
Or the greatest Czech painter we have ever had,
the master of altar in Trebon.
We also don't know his name.
In 19th century, the art stopped serving the cult,
it became a testiment, related to Romanticism,
and the artist started deliberately bothering the consumer with his own problems.
If Beethoven bothered,
they were human problems, like all humanist have,
humanist who love mankind but hate people,
(Laughter) since they spoil their ideals,
devaluating the problem of private moments further and further.
It wouldn't be such a problem for the "craft" of the art,
making very interesting stuff happen, when anything is "on the edge".
In 20th century, another moment joins this,
when science and human sense reach amazing achievements,
and artists, notably theoretists, gained a feel of art not being science enough.
Art of the 20th century is one big analysis,
everything is being analyzed by everything,
however, as opposed to science, art is badly measurable,
while the brief, as opposed to science, is still the same.
Art does not need to help itself by various rational methods
like mathematics since it is a different discipline.
And math, as opposed to art, does not have a sound like a composition,
it does not have a physical, 3D form like a sculpture,
and so on and so on.
Therefore, suggesting scientific methods to art 94 00:06:55,000 --> 00:06:59,000 is nonsense and 20th century art hits a wall there.
Art becomes neither a service,
nor overlap, nor magic, it becomes a chain of information.
Information make sense if its continuous.
If it is not, it becomes worse.
My colleague here said she did not need to communicate due to the level of education at school.
Then, a question "What is communication about?" arises.
If you talk about something and people don't have a clue,
it's indeed a lengthy matter then.
On one hand, people are willing to learn incredible things.
On the other hand, fundamentals appear to be a problem.
One thing happened in 1990‘s: the computer revolution.
How? Something got into the hands of ordinary people that should not have. 107 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:06,000 It's one of the greatest crimes mankind will pay for some day. For sure.
Today it's not a problem to click and discover what some man in Patagonia had for breakfast,
or how many teeth some kind of fish living in Mariana Trench has.
What is, however, missing, is a concept of relations.
And as people say, a man is not what he eats but what he digests.
Paradoxically, we eat a lot
as if surrounded by food and opulent feasts
except that we have ulcers and may only have a little sip of something.
This is how society works now.
Being a maker is not about
listening to every critic,
because if I ride a motorbike and look everywhere, I'll kill myself by the first tree.
Comprehensive, interconnected foundations are the most important.
I don't think that Antonin Dvorak (famous Czech composer) was some very clever man.
Few classes of some village elementary school,
two years of organ school of elementary level
and that's it.
The man had, however, precisely defined relationship
to food, plants, animals, nature, his wife, sex, children, life, death
and made such a comprehensive foundation
that he could have created a piece of art
that if a man drives around on New Zaeland or Fiji at noon
and turns the radio on, one hears a strings serenade
and one is proud that half-illiterate butcher from a village
worked his way up to be a property of whole mankind like
Dante, Beethoven, Rembrandt, or Einstein.
And this is just the beginning and the end. 134 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:02,000 It's important what I digest, not what I eat.
Art is seeking various forms,
various border forms,
which is, of course, possible and it is good.
Nevertheless, the state of affairs, e.g of Chalupecký Prize,
is presently suggesting a feeling that everybody in this country
moved to the borders or far beyond the borders
with nobody left living in the middle.
That's a weird situation.
As everything becomes more and more scientific,
various fields and interfields appear and
fields that should be service ones come from the behind,
putting the wagon in the front of the horse.
Thus, absurd situations arise.
A curator, not a very creative person, prescribes the maker what he should actually do.
That's nonsense. Nonsense, of course.
It's like if God created something and then said:
What will this be? A corkscrew?
A dog? No, it'll be a hand.
It contradicts, even in nature, the saying:
The purpose dictates its devices, resources.
It's more like: The sense dictates its devices.
Even in art, everything seeks what could it be.
If it is an opera when I go by tram and pick my nose.
Or if the art is when…
And thus some marginal stuff emerges, teetering on the edge,
paradoxically penetrating other fields where they wouldn't succeed. 161 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:52,000 I mean, I see thousand of bad theatre pieces
or plays and sketches which would go unnoticed,
but they are successful as „performance“.
I see boring and useless TV snow a lot –
now, please, don't consider me a damn conservative,
that I don't respect videoart or performance or something,
of course there are wonderful pieces, especially when it’s about conquering, adventure,
it's nice when Malevich was looking for possibilities of an empty square –
but when 30 thousand Maleviches pop out, it's suicidal.
When there was one Joseph Boyes who went mad, burnt –
now in the West, Boyes is considered a guru, an initiator, but –
the sculptures are missing.
And that‘s difficult when you claim to be the greatest sculptor of the 20th century.
That's a problem.
We therefore get into persistent, repetitive ways –
when you visit any biennale, you see some installations.
I just think that with a heritage of such socialist sculptors
and conceptualists like, with pardon me, Richard Wagner,
for whom music was not a composition but manipulation,
and he was doing it well,
therefore he was liked by great manipulators of the 20th century
like, among the negative ones, Hitler, Stalin;
not the others probably
but by other socialists manipulators like Mao, Pol Pot –
what do you want from these sculptors and conceptualists
who decide that one whole nation wakes up in a different place 5000 km away
than where it went asleep,
what do you want from them with a bag of rubbish?
I think that in times when skyscrapers are falling down,
we don't get by with picking our noses.
It must have adequate devices
and it must be aware of art being magic;
One must start with himself, from his inner personality to make art magic,
he must build up his personality.
The means are of not much importance,
but rather what is being said and who says it.
It's a very important moment.
When Paul Klee drew his little cat,
it's a one-stroke cat and everyone cat do it. They can.
But with Paul Klee‘s cat one can feel 201 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:27,000 that he, in his spare time, from his need, could calculate,
I don't know, relativity theory equations,
play Bach's suites on the violin and so on.
Late Shostakovich, it's like a score written for a children‘s art school.
And it's a very crushing evidence, Michelangelo's suite and such.
Art should help people, purify them,
have a cathartic element, not just inform.
There is so much information in the world, one doesn’t know where to hide from it.
The fact I see something and am able to explain it to myself
for I know the topic very well doesn't explain why I should marvel.
If I marvel and stop percieving it like subtitles under a film, That is where it starts for me.
There is communication, a code;
A communication code cannot go through information 214 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:34,000 in unmeasurable fields but through inner pressure,
radiation, through the magic where 1+1 is not 2
but 5000, infinity, or zero.
This is the important moment.
And just like after Renaissance
when man measured everything, weighed everything,
realized how to make elements,
found out various explanations,
realized that the Earth is round,
which brought about overseas discoveries,
thus so much gold came from those overseas colonies
that it looked like Garden of Eden and the New Kingdom Valley.
But suddenly, at the end of Renaissance,
people are not richer, happier,
and revolution against rational self-reliance arises: Baroque.
I think it's the time to mature to the next emotional revolution.
Because otherwise we will be beaten by our own rationalism.
Thank you.
(Applause)