Reassessment
of culture leads to the innovation of culture.
Revolution-over
is a work consisting of three unique insights into the lives of the
family affected at first by the second world war, then the communist
regime and subsequent revolution in former Czechoslovakia. It is a
story of a country going through a turbulent fall of dictatorships
and of one family caught in the events that affected a whole nation.
The
installation reveals a darkened room whose only sources of light are
flickering projections on the wall.
Close to the centre of the room stands a tower made of raw wood, resembling watch towers found on the edge of czech woods where
hunters wait for game through which 3 projections are streamed onto the walls. Three
stories are told by grandmother, mother and daughter revealing the
deep undercurrent of oppression which resulted in a unified national
resistance and the elation that came after the symbolic uncovering of
family histories, personal stories and experiences which had to
remain hidden for so long.
Although these stories are set against a chain of events that saw the end of the nazi occupation and the rise and fall of the communist regime, they are also uniquely personal – they are stories of three women, family members, living their lives as ordinary people albeit set in what to the western eye appears as extraordinary circumstances. This installation presents at once a comfortingly domestic scene and one filled with foreboding and dread. It is at once heart-warming and alarming.
(excerpt from proposal, Mariana Jandova, 2013)