Lumír Hladík - The Mirrored Sea

version No. 1

AUTHORSHIP

Equal co-authorship: Lumír Hladík

CLASSIFICATION

Classification: documentation -

DATES

Date of creation: 1980

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Duration: 00:08:11
Sound: Silent

EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Exhibited / Presented as part of: 35 let 7000 kilometrů: Lumír Hladík a Jiří Kovanda, Svit, Praha, 8. 9. – 27. 10. 2011
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: Petr Soukup
Appearances by: Lumír Hladík, Leoš Malík, Zbyněk Mareš
Digitized color 8mm film without sound

Adopted text on the work: Hladík’s crowning action, mentioned by Petr Rezek in his book Body, Object, and Reality in Contemporary Art (1982), was for a long time his only known work. The performance, including its filming, was meticulously planned, and grew out of Hladík’s vision of the sea as a symbol of freedom. Together with several friends who acted as his assistants, he traveled to the Baltic Sea with the aim of “not seeing” it. In the East German town of Warnemünde, his assistants erected a giant mirror on the beach so that it reflected the sea, and led a blindfolded Hladík up to it. After observing the ocean in the mirror for an hour, Hladík was again blindfolded and led back to the car that took them all home to Prague. Not long after this action, Hladík emigrated to Canada. Like his other two surviving films, it was shown with post-production sound and explanatory text. For this DVD, we have decided to show it in its original form without sound or text.

This entry describes version No. 1 out of 3 different versions of the work archived at the VVP AVU videoarchive:
version 1. - no sound, no text (included into the DVD Czech Performance Art, Film and Video. 1956-1989, published by VVP AVU in 2015)
version 2. - no sound, with the artist`s texts in the video (curated in 2013 in Window into the VVP AVU archive at Artyčok TV, eds. T. Nekvindová, S. Sobotovičová).
version 3. - added music, with the artist`s texts in the video
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