Krev, pot, slzy

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So... haven't been out of Prague this week, but managed to have one very inspiring cultural afternoon. My friend Jana and I were intent on doing something together today and were planning to try and go out of town, however the weather recently has just been depressing (run away from crap english summer weather and it just follows you, apparently), so it wouldn't have been a good idea. There's been a lot of poster hype around for this temporary installment by "contemporary visual artist" Douglas Gordon at the DOX gallery in Holešovice, which generally looked quite interesting as well, so we decided to go along and see what it was saying.

The piece's title was "blood, sweat and tears" and to be honest, we didn't get it at all. It simply featured a load of huge projector screens with footage of elephants' feet, and various other videos on repeat that you would really have had to watch from scratch in order to understand them. We spent about 10 minutes in there trying to work it out and gave up (having guessed the whole thing would take about 3 hours to see!)

The rest of the museum, however, was really quite impressive. There were two other installments - one of which was a bit of a propaganda piece about the Czech Republic's current EU Presidency, which featured a huge great cutout board with models of all the current EU states attached to it (although for some reason the UK was missing), and with each model decorated with something relevant to, and in some cases controversial, in that country. For instance, Sweden was in an IKEA flatpack (something which I lolled for about a minute at once I finally worked it out), Germany was a big scalextric track and Romania was a vampire castle. They weren't all that simple however - Poland, which was one of the more subtle ones, had some guys sticking a rainbow flag into the ground, presumably reflecting the comparatively lax attitude to gay rights there. The small model of the Czech Republic had an LED ticker with somewhat anti-EU messages scrolling across it.

The top of the museum was the part that kept us interested for longest - it was a display called "čtrnact S" (fourteen S) conceptualised around 14 themes, mostly states of being, whose names in czech began with S, and with each one (i think) by a different artist. Highlights were definitely "strach" (fear) which was this black box over a step ladder hanging from the ceiling which you could stick your head into, obviously it was just pitch black, and had this eerie 5.1 surround soundscape playing with a lot of sudden noises - so the music techie in me really appreciated this. Another hilarious one was "smrt" (death) which had this skeleton on a swing hanging from the ceiling, and a huge balloon which blew itself up every now and again with a big skull face painted on it.

The one of these I sympathised with the most was "souvislosti" (context) which I could probably quite easily have replicated with a few of the maps and drawings I've done in past years for my fictional universe... it had a load of diagrams of these houses, all of which were filled with really intricate, inane detail and somewhat satisfying to explore, really showing how much you have to plan a fictional setting of any kind in order to work within it and avoid continuity errors which arise from making stuff up as you go along.

Despite these displays and the permanent ones in the towers (which were of quite interesting paintings) being really fun to explore, it still didn't take us 3 hours to see, so we left and went for something to eat, and then decided to head down to Staroměstské Náměstí - the square right in the middle of the old town - which was alive like I'd never seen it, there was obviously going to be some show there that evening and the tourist activities as well as the locals were in full bloom.. there were even a couple of girls doing free hugs, in English, which we guessed meant they were after some handsome american or something..

The reason we came was because there was going to be a memorial for Michael Jackson here, and I was interested to see whether it would be anything like the flash mob moonwalk which apparently happened back in Liverpool Street station on Thursday. It wasn't - it was just a few guys drawing a memorial banner on the floor with candles, which was hard to see over the crowd, and actually quite depressing, people were getting very emotional about it so we didn't stay long, and spent the rest of the afternoon in a bar back in Břevnov.

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Unrelated note 1: On Saturday I went to the Prague IKEA store in Zličín, which sucked. the. life. out of me. Trust me, if you're ever in Prague and interested in a comprehensive tour of communist suburban decay and an interactive lesson on "how to drop a shopping centre in bumfuck nowhere", get the number 164 bus from Bílá Hora tram stop to Zličín, taking in the magnificent architecture of Sildiště Řepy along the way, and then try and navigate the area by foot. So much fun.

Unrelated note 2: My aunt Rachel - who married my dad's brother Marcus in Croatia in 2007 - gave birth yesterday to my 7th cousin, Olivia Margareta. Mother and baby are both well, and for those who are interested, she has the same sun sign and moon sign, and very nearly the same ascendant as me 😊 Hopefully I will be visiting them in August.

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Photos

European Union Playset
I expect the UK is supposed to be in the top left corner. Perhaps it was removed to coincide with UKIP's success on June 4th.

Land der Erbsen, Land der Bohnen
Land der vier Trockenkühlturmen

Strach
Jana tests out her 5.1 perception

Smrt
Not sure what the red plastic bag was supposed to be about.

Thriller Night
MJ mourners in staroměstské náměstí

Comments

[Grandma and Granddad]

Good news
Welcome to Olivia Margareta. You are obviously enjoying Prague. Sorry about the weather. Lots of love from us.