From Byzantine soldiers charged with removing the portrait of Christ from the Bronze Gate to the Imperial Palace, to Suffragette attacks on art in British galleries, to today’s activists tearing down colonial statues in the West. There have always been alternative, competing images, icons and narratives running alongside the dominant ones, ready to pick up the slack at the appropriate moment. And alongside the fanatical iconoclasts who uncompromisingly destroy all signs of a hostile ideology, there has been a parallel crowd of equally fanatical iconoclasts defending the existing symbols to their last breath.
Present: Perfect explores the iconoclastic gestures through which we now relate to the symbols of our own past as the source of cultural identity. Original performers Irina Andreeva and Tinka Avramova will guide you through our museum, which has many valuable historical objects in its collection. Still, these commemorate different versions of important historical events and it is hard to determine which ones are important, which are good to remember and which are better to forget. The representative spaces of this venerable institution of memory slowly transform into a bizarre “rage room”, where events of the distant past return to the most current present, and forgotten history becomes a rocket launcher for today.
Audience: adult, children 12+
English subtitles available for you to translate into your language (Polish, German etc.)
About the company
Jan Mocek is a theatre maker and visual artist based in Prague. In his performances, he combines elements of pop culture, politics and personal experience to speak about the times we are living in, while also offering his audience an emotionally atmospheric and strongly sensual experience.
His most recent performances, including The Radiant Cities (2016), Shadow Meadow (2017), Fatherland (2018), Virtual Ritual (2019), and I Am the Problem (2020), have been presented nationally and internationally at festivals such as Fast Forward Dresden, Use the City Košice, Submerge Digital Arts Festival (Bristol) or 4+4 Days in Motion (Prague) to name but a few. Jan Mocek is a member of the IN-SITU - European Platform for Artistic Creation in Public Space. SixHouses is a production platform led by Táňa Švehlová, which provides complex production support for Jan Mocek’s projects.
