Josef Daněk, Blahoslav Rozbořil - Ambrose, the Feast of Feasts

AUTHORSHIP

Equal co-authorship: Josef Daněk, Blahoslav Rozbořil

CLASSIFICATION

Classification: documentation -

DATES

Date of creation: 1989

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Duration: 00:32:30
Sound: Sound

EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Exhibited / Presented as part of: Navzájem. Společenství 70. a 80. let, Tranzitdisplay, Praha, 22.3. - 2.6. 2013
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: Aleš Záboj and Blahoslav Rozbořil
Appearances by: Blahoslav Rozbořil, Josef Daněk, Jiří Havlíček
Digitized VHS with sound (spoken word, natural sound,
and added commentary by Rozbořil)

Adopted text on the work: The performance was first held on 7 December 1979 at Blahoslav Rozbořil’s Brno home while he and Daněk were still at secondary school. The video included on this DVD is the event’s first repeat performance nine years later (7 December 1988), and is the first of the duo’s performances to be recorded via moving image. The repeat performances were held at Daněk’s flat on three successive evenings, each time for around 30 people. According to Daněk, they wanted the audience to reflect “as diverse a range of worldviews as possible (intellectuals, artists, Catholics, Protestants and communists)”.
By 1988, Rozbořil and Daněk had made perhaps 20 joint works. Ambrose, the Feast of Feasts is one of many that were continuously being created on the basis of earlier works and that both authors would spend many years rewriting, often even on the day of the performance. They approached their spiritual and political lectures, which were a reaction to the sense of hopelessness in the 1980s, with serious humor, combining a preacher’s diction with childlike logic and the libertine nature of the cabaret. Their performances are enlightening mischief, something between a lecture and a mass. Ambrose, the Feast of Feasts is a “lecture” on how to celebrate all the year’s feast days on one single day. The theater props – here, an absurd bishop’s mitre made of melted plastic toys – were made by Daněk. Between acts, a member of the audience (art historian, artist, and teacher Jiří Havlíček) gave a lecture on the spiritual aspects of head
coverings.
The video was made by Aleš Záboj as part of the “Discounted Goods” series. With a camera donated by Britain’s Jan Hus Foundation, Záboj systematically recorded events, exhibitions and openings on the Brno art scene, in particular anything related to the independent exhibition space located in a discount drugstore (the “Discounted Goods” Gallery-Drugstore first opened in 1986). In 1989, Záboj, Daněk and Rozbořil edited down the film’s original length of roughly three hours to the version included on this DVD. Daněk further edited this footage with Barbora Klímová for the exhibition Mutually. Communities of the 1970s and 1980s, held in 2013 at the tranzitdisplay gallery in Prague.
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