Intervention #18: Alžběta Bačíková

Our Space

An exhibition entitled Our Space and presented in Liberec by Alžběta Bačíková follows up on her project Setkání (Meeting), which won her the Audience Award at the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2018. The sound installation presented at the current exhibition came to exist as an outcome of a series of workshops with electronic music instruments, organized in collaboration with blind musicians Ráchel Skleničková and Michaela Blažková, and with Synth Library Prague. Alžběta Bačíková has long been focusing on the exploration and deconstruction of the audio-visual medium, i.e. film or video, therefore, Setkání (Meeting) is a kind of an experiment on how to work with film when the sound and the visual aspect are separated as two isolated and yet complementary entities. In terms of the storyline and structure, Setkání (Meeting) revolved around a micro-story of a real meeting between blind Alena Terezie and deaf Maco, both of whom also considerably contributed to the creation of the work.

Alžběta Bačíková continues her exploration of the possible means of collaboration with the blind and deaf artists, this year initiating a series of workshops, which are directly related to the current exhibition in the Regional Art Gallery Liberec. Alžběta started collaboration with the Synth Library Prague that focuses on experimenting and education in the sphere of electronic music. The project was also joined by two blind musicians, Michaela Blažková and Ráchel Skleničková. The exhibition itself is a specific public outcome of this project that, at the same time, offers a range of other facts and findings – for example, it shows in practice which obstructions a blind musician has to face when working with electronic instruments and technologies, and which are the potential solutions. Alžběta Bačíková’s overall attitude does not aim at pointing out the (often only presumed) limitations of authors with special needs but towards the search for practical ways of overcoming these limitations that are frequently mainly determined by the predominant conditions imposed by the society.

Photo: Tomáš Kajánek

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Curator’s text

The majority believes that blind people have a much higher tactile sensitivity as compared with the sighted. Those of us who rely primarily on sight find the ability of blind people to read very subtle surfaces using their hands (e.g. Braille letters) almost inconceivable. How does a blind person find his or her way around in the world, in the surrounding space? This certainly is a very complex issue; nevertheless, it is clear that in addition to the tactile sense (which is not limited to fingertips but can also be performed using a white stick) the most crucial sense is hearing that mostly surpasses the hearing capacities of the sighted.

However, even those with good hearing might be tone-deaf so not all blind people are automatically conditioned to become musicians. And yet, music is one of the artistic fields in which the blind – both as authors and performers – relatively often find their way to and excel. Artist Alžběta Bačíková who, either in her role of an artist, or a curator, has long been collaborating with persons with limited or absent sight or hearing experience (both as recipients or co-authors), decided to reflect on this fact. Her so far most notable artistic project in this respect was called Setkání (Meeting), presented last year as part of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2018. That won her the Audience Award.

Alžběta Bačíková has long been focusing on the exploration and deconstruction of the audio-visual medium, i.e. film or video, therefore, Setkání (Meeting) is a kind of an experiment on how to work with film when the sound and the visual aspect are separated as two isolated and yet complementary entities. In terms of the storyline and structure, Setkání (Meeting) revolves around a micro-story of a real meeting between blind Alena Terezie and deaf Maco, both of whom also considerably contributed to the creation of the work.

Alžběta Bačíková continues her exploration of the possible means of collaboration with the blind and deaf artists, this year initiating a series of workshops, which are directly related to the current exhibition in the Regional Art Gallery Liberec. Alžběta started collaboration with the Synth Library Prague that focuses on experimenting and education in the sphere of electronic music. The project was also joined by two blind musicians, Michaela Blažková and Ráchel Skleničková. The exhibition itself is a specific public outcome of this project that, at the same time, offers a range of other facts and findings – for example, it shows in practice which obstructions a blind musician has to face when working with electronic instruments and technologies, and which are the potential solutions. Alžběta Bačíková’s overall attitude does not aim at pointing out the (often only presumed) limitations of authors with special needs, but towards the search for practical ways of overcoming these limitations that are frequently determined mainly by the predominant conditions of the society.

An installation has been created in the gallery enabling listening to surround sound music composed by Michaela and Ráchel during several half-day workshops directly for this occasion. The two musicians also chose the name for the exhibition project. In Czech, Our Space can also be translated as “the space that surrounds us”, as well as “our universe”, which reflects on the form of the exhibition (surround sound) as well as on its levels of meaning. The songs themselves have universal undertones, basically an aesthetic rendition of cosmic ideas. At the same time, in the broader sense of the word, the exhibition can be taken as an insight (I see! This is another opportunity to realise how the dominant form of language expression is related to the pre-condition of seeing...) into the space which might so far be unknown, but which is as real as the space we inhabit in our everyday life. For the vast

majority of us, cosmos symbolises this distant space, the sighted visitors can also see it as a metaphor of the space of the blind. They can sit down, close their eyes and listen in to the beautiful sound-space that can be comforting at one time and disturbing at another. The main thing is to make sure not to forget that in our space, we are never alone