Present: Perfect

From Byzantine soldiers charged with removing the portrait of Christ from the Imperial Palace’s Bronze Gate to the Suffragette attacks on art in British galleries to current activists tearing down colonial statues in the West. Alternative images, icons and narratives have always existed alongside the dominant ones, competitive and ready to pick up the slack at the opportune moment. And fanatical iconoclasts bent on the uncompromising destruction of a hostile ideology have always existed in tandem with a parallel crowd of equally fanatical iconoclasts defending the existing symbols with their last breath.

Present: Perfect explores the iconoclastic gestures through which we relate to the symbols of our past as the source of cultural identity. Performers Irina Andreeva and Tinka Avramova will guide you through our museum, which has many valuable historical objects in its collection, however, these only commemorate different versions of important historical events and it is hard to determine which are important, which are good to remember and which are better to forget. The representative spaces of this venerable institution of memory are slowly turning into a bizarre “rage room,” where events long past are transformed into the most current present, and forgotten history becomes a rocket launcher for the present.

WARNING: strobe lighting is used in the show.

Audience: adult, children 15+

Jan Mocek’s projects occupy a place on the border between theatre and the visual arts. Mocek’s performances combine elements of pop culture with politics and documentary to take on contemporary issues. His most recent shows Zářící město (2015), Shadow Meadow (2017), Fatherland (2018), Virtual Ritual (2019), I Am the Problem (2020) and Present: Perfect (2021) have been presented at foreign festivals, including Fast Forward Dresden, Submerge Digital Arts Festival, 4+4 Days in Motion, Use the City Košice and others. 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 that provides complex production support for Jan Mocek’s projects.