Oskár Čepan

My artistic practice spans the media of video, installation, and performance. A recurring thread throughout my work is the exploration of power dynamics that shape and occupy our identities. I articulated the foundations of my current conceptual approach in my master’s thesis titled “Emotional Lipgloss: The Deconstructive Potential of the Young Girl” This text became the basis for a long-term project combining video and performance, examining the phenomenon of hyperfemininity and searching for strategies of conscious feminist response through an understanding of social roles, identity, masks, and performativity.

Currently, building on these foundations, I am interested in how emotional affect is transferred and how it influences the dynamics of society and its capacity for active transformation. In my research, I explore this primarily through the lens of concepts such as the “resilient society” and resilience, drawing on the work of Czech philosopher Alice Koubová. I also delve into themes of anarchism and infrapolitics, and their quiet, civic forms of resistance—what James C. Scott calls the "weapons of the weak"—such as singing, whispering, pop culture, diary writing, or personal narrative. Through these lenses, I investigate how human and everyday emotionality can hold political potential and whether it can become a tool for collective resilience or mobilization in response to potential power structures or climate-related futures.

Through fictional narratives, performative techniques, and speculative objects, I explore the relationship between lived anxiety, quiet tools of sharing, and emergence.

A key element in my practice is also the use of personal, diary-like writing as a medium for reflecting lived experience. In my written language, I intentionally incorporate abbreviations, commercial brands, and affective expressions to capture and describe the nature of postmodern society as our shared reality. This writing becomes a performative element, generating moments of intimacy in public space and engaging with the idea of a contemporary form of oral history.

My artistic development has also been significantly shaped by my collaboration with Czech artist Markéta Slaná, with whom I have been realizing primarily performative projects. This collaboration has strongly influenced how I perceive authorship in artistic practice, opening up new perspectives and possibilities of collectivity.

Within the realm of media, I am particularly interested in the potential of video and the moving image in exhibition contexts. I reflect on the notion of the “video sculpture” and consider how to activate the viewer, including questions around temporality, beginnings and endings, and how the viewer’s presence becomes essential for understanding the work. I explore dramaturgical tools such as loops, fragments, and narrative interconnections. My aim is to make the moving image and video more accessible as objects for the audience.

Across media variations, my practice consistently addresses themes such as human vulnerability, collective futures, systems of sharing, emotional atrophy, and resistance—and the roles emotional expressivity might play in relation to the future. I strive to open broader discussions on the concept of resilience, using poetic and allegorical language to communicate perspectives on the current forms of society.