Rudolfinum_Time-Based
As a follow-up to its exhibition project Domestic Arenas (19 January 2018 – 18 March 2018), Galerie Rudolfinum introduced Rudolfinum_Time-Based, a new series of presentations of international and local contemporary artists who use time-based media – film, video and animation – as their means of expression.
The ambition of this programme of regular screenings and lectures with authors of films, curators and professionals from related fields is to showcase various artistic approaches of contemporary time-based media, always framed into a specific and current context. The series invites the interpretation as a single collective “time-based” exhibition.
The first part of the series (curator Jen Kratochvil, supervision Petr Nedoma), which run in autumn 2018, acts as a conceptual bridge between the exhibition Domestic Arenas (curator Petr Nedoma) and the singular presentation of the work of Arthur Jafa (curators Hans Ulrich Obrist, Amira Gad and curator in Prague Petr Nedoma), conceived in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries and Julia Stoschek Collection, which was open to the public at Galerie Rudolfinum from January till April 2019.
As part of the long-term new media focused series, Olympia (The real time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic stadium over the course of a thousand years) by Belgian artist David Claerbout (curator Petr Nedoma) was on view at the Galerie Rudolfinum in 2020.
A year later, Galerie Rudolfinum hosted an exhibition of international contemporary video art Compassion Fatigue Is Over (curators Jen Kratochvil and Petr Nedoma). This series of narrative videos and films, alongside architectural interventions in the gallery’s historical space, aimed its attention at a set of essential topics of our times. Exhibiting artists: Candice Breitz, Anna Daučíková, Haris Epaminonda, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jeremy Shaw, Hito Steyerl, Aleksandra Vajd & Anetta Mona Chisa.
Exhibition Not Without Joy (curator Petr Nedoma), which focused on Blackness, was the first fundamental attempt at introducing the Czech public to work by artists who authentically live and reflect on highly diverse life situations, questions and issues whose importance far exceeds that of local and individual consideration. The exhibition featured Noah Davis, Ufuoma Essi, Frida Orupabo, artistic duo The Otolith Group, which deals with the work of composer Julius Eastman, and Sunday Service gospel choir with its founder, rapper Kanye West.
What is reality? And is there only one reality? Or are we offered the possibility to move between different versions and variations of what we otherwise take for granted and describe as reality? Similar questions were dealt with by the exhibition Shifted Realities (curators Eva Drexlerová, Jen Kratochvil, Petr Nedoma).
Rudolfinum_Time-Based offers specific subjective views of our present reality as a state of constant shift lacking anchor points, which fully represents the medium itself in time of dynamically shifting images. The films, videos and animations walk the razor’s edge of critique of our socio-political reality.
Photo: Naeem Mohaiemen, Tripoli Cancelled, 2017, Digital video, color, sound, 95 min.