PRESENT:PERFECT

Do not make statues of gods. Exodus 34:17

From the Byzantine soldiers charged with removing the portrait of Christ from the Bronze Gate to the Imperial Palace, to the Suffragette attacks on art in British galleries, to today's activists tearing down colonial statues in the West. Alongside the dominant images, icons and narratives, there have always been alternative competing ones, ready to take up the slack at the appropriate moment. And alongside the fanatical iconoclasts uncompromisingly destroying all signs of a hostile ideology, there was a parallel crowd of equally fanatical iconoclasts who defended the existing symbols to their last breath.

Present: perfect is a performance that explores the iconoclastic gestures by which we relate today to the symbols of our own past as the source of our cultural identity. The original performers Irina Andreeva and Tinka Avramova will guide you through our museum, which has many valuable historical objects in its collection - but these only commemorate different versions of important historical events and it is already difficult to distinguish which ones are important, which ones are good to remember and which ones are better to forget. The representative spaces of the venerable memory institution 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.

Premiere: 14 September 2021, Alfred ve dvoře, Prague

About Jan Mocek
Projects of Jan Mocek occupy place on the border between theatre and visual arts. In his performances Mocek combines elements of popculture, politics and documentary, dealing with contemporary issues. His latest shows Radiant City (2015), Shadow Meadow (2017), Fatherland (2018), Virtual Ritual (2019), I am the problem (2020), Present: Perfect (2021), Landscape with Pheasant, Hare and Doe (2022) were introduced at foreign festivals, including Fast Forward Dresden, Submerge Digital Arts Festival, 4+4 Days in Motion, Use the City Košice and others. His works are introduced in cooperation with Táňa Švehlová as part of their own SixHouses production platform. Jan Mocek is a member of In-Situ network.

Sponsors

Creation of the performance was supported by Ministry of Culture Czech Republic, State Culture Fund of Culture of Czech Republic, Prague City, Prague 7 Art Distict

Presentation of Jan Mocek in Sofia is supported by EU – NextGenerationEU, Czech Recovery Plan, Ministry of Culture Czech Republic.