Tomáš Ruller - 8.8.88

AUTHORSHIP

Equal co-authorship: Tomáš Ruller

CLASSIFICATION

Classification: documentation -

DATES

Date of creation: 1988

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Duration: 00:44:48
Sound: Sound

EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

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: Tomáš Ruller
Camera: Tomáš Zika
Appearances by: Ivan Kafka, Vojtěch Lindaur, Zdeněk Lhotský, Stefan Milkov, Aleš Ogoun, Tomáš Ruller
Digitized Betamax with sound

Adopted text on the work: Tomáš Ruller conceived of 8.8.88 as an expansive performance held in the surroundings of the cultural center in Opatov. In the 1980s, curator Jaroslav Krbůšek’s rigorous exhibition program presented exhibitions of the most important figures on the unofficial art scene. Ruller’s exhibition was banned, and so on the day of the opening he led visitors away from the closed cultural center through the Opatov housing estate to a former concrete plant, where he had prepared some plaster and colored pigments. After coating his body with these materials, he printed his impression on the plant’s rusting pipes. He then clambered up a mound of gravel towards the feeder belt and repeatedly hurled himself down the hill. After a sequence of other situational positions, he doused himself in flammable red paint and lit himself on fire, falling with outstretched arms into a large puddle from which he emerged entirely covered in mud. Then he lifted a rusting piece of steel onto his back and dragged it onto a nearby hill, where the performance ended with refreshments consisting of bread and wine to the sounds of Janáček’s Glagolithic Mass.
According to Krbůšek, the performance was interrupted by the arrival of the police, who had probably been alerted by people watching the entire event from the windows of the nearby high-rise apartment blocks. Fortunately, the officers could be convinced that the event was a film shoot, and they left after checking several people’s documents. Ruller’s work from this time was influenced by his experience with butoh dance and experimental theater. His performances are marked by an original combinations of alternative theater, street theater, a sense for sitespecific elements, 1970s body art, and his background as a sculptor capable of sensitively perceiving the quality of the material and creating complex environmental works. The film on the DVD is his reconstruction of the original edited film from 1988: Because the original film had been preserved only on a second-hand VHS copy, in 2008 Ruller re-edited a digitized copy of the original material.
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