Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu / Crusader School of Pure Humour without Jokes - Sundial (Eugen Brikcius) and Cocooning (Rudolf Němec)

AUTHORSHIP

Equal co-authorship: Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu / Crusader School of Pure Humour without Jokes

CLASSIFICATION

Classification: documentation -

DATES

Date of creation: 1970

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Duration: 00:09:26
Sound: Silent

EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Exhibited / Presented as part of: Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu, Galerie moderního umění v Roudnici nad Labem, 3. 12. 2015 - 31. 1. 2016
Compilation containing the work: Czech Performance Art: Film and Video 1956-1989, Edice VIDA 5, VVP AVU, 2015
Attachment included with work’s publication: booklet CZ + EN

NOTES AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Notes: Film by: Rudolf Němec
Appearances by: Jiří Boreš, Eugen Brikcius, Duňa Brikciusová (Slavíková), Rudolf Němec, Helena Wilsonová
Digitized VHS (color and black-and-white transfer, probably 8mm film without sound

Adopted text on the work: In the mid-1960s, poet, philosopher and essayist Eugen Brikcius (*1942) was working as an assistant to Jindřich Chalupecký at the Václav Špála Gallery. He was so taken by the concept of happenings that
he organized several early collective actions himself. Some of the best known include the well-attended Still-Life with Beer on Kampa Island (1967) and Thanksgiving (1967), during which most participants were arrested by the police on charges of collective hooliganism. Both Brikcius and Rudolf Němec (1936–2015) were part of the inner circle of the Crusader School of Pure Humour Without Jokes. In 1970, Němec filmed Brikcius’s Sundial, which possessed characteristics of both happening as well as land art.
Before sunrise, a group of participants in the “exercise” – as Brikcius sometimes called his actions – arrived at an abandoned quarry in the town of Roztoky just outside of Prague. There, they drove a three-meter stake into the ground and waited for the first rays of sunlight. Every hour on the hour, they stretched a white band along the length of the stake’s shadow, repeating this act all day until sundown. From the beginning, the concept behind Sundial called for recording the event on film. According to the plan, the cameraman was supposed to record every time they stretched the band showing the length of the shadow, and to briefly capture the group of seated participants as they passed the time between this hourly act. It is clear from the film that they filled the tedious day-long waiting with other actions and performances, including Němec’s Cocooning, which shows the happening’s participants wrapping themselves in plastic in order to become strange living objects. Němec repeatedly organized similar events in his studio and at other locations. Cocooning was a collective interlude during the realization of Sundial. Perhaps Němec had originally planned to cut out this sequence, but in the end it stayed in the film. Today, Cocooning basically plays the main role, with Brikcius’s Sundial acting as a kind chronological backdrop. For this DVD, we have digitized a VHS from Němec’s posthumous estate. The original film has been lost.
Source of text: České akční umění: Filmy a videa 1956-1989, Edice VIDA 5, VVP AVU, 2015
Author of text: Pavlína Morganová, Terezie Nekvindová, Sláva Sobotovičová
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INFORMATION IN PARTNER DATABASES

Artlist #1: Record at Artlist