Fotograf Magazine

A cell separated from its surroundings with a semipermeable membrane is in a permanent exchange with the environment and other cells. In this context, Australian theorist Astrida Neimanis speaks about the membrane onto-logics (“amniotics”), i.e. irreducible interdependence of various life forms and planetary processes which – according to the so-called hydrofeminism – manifests itself through the water cycle.

The material interconnection, in this case in salt molecules, which is one of the physiological constants of living organisms, is presented also at Pavel Příkaský and Miroslava Večeřová’s exhibition entitled Isotonic Song. On the one hand, the organically multimedia installation presents a kind of materialistic view of the world; on the other hand, it encourages its ideological reassessment in terms of the man as an acting and perceiving entity which is a measure of all the things around. The ethos of the exhibition corresponds with the contemporary ideas of post-humanism and environmental monism re-articulated by representatives of critical theory and feminism. In principle, the formal solutions of Večeřová and Příkaský’s exhibition do not go beyond the current globalized aesthetics of materially expressive objects contrasting with the “sterility” of the gallery space, involving other creatures in the process of creation (such as bulls whose licking formed salt “sculptures”), yet the artists enter a new territory that may enrich their creative processes in terms of practice and expand the concept of authorship – or, figuratively speaking, expand our anthropocentric conception of subjectivity.

Tereza Jindrová