Oskár Čepan

„Interdisciplinary artist and writer Ondřej Houšťava creates performances, videos, and sculptural installations, which focus on themes of resistance and transmutation. They give access to socially suppressed knowledge via archival displays, text and object assemblages, or spoken word pieces. Building on queer and decolonial theory, Houšťava‘s commanding video installation Preparation for A Public Hearing (2020), incorporates strategies of refusal and asynchronicity to counter dominant strategies of oral narration. He shows how the fight against discrimination needs to involve a public presence over histories of embodied knowledge and ways of life that hetero-normative nationalist societies have been violently silencing for too long.“  V rokoch 2018 až 2020 študoval na Vysokej škole výtvarných umení v Bratislave, kde získal magisterský titul v Ateliéri VVV Martina Piačka. Jednotlivé semestre počas dvoch rokov štúdia strávil aj v Ateliéri IN pod vedením Ilony Németh a Jara Vargu a v Ateliéri hosťujúceho profesora Pavela Brăilu. V rokoch 2017 a 2018 študoval Media Art na Accademia di Belle Arti Frosinone v Taliansku, čomu predchádzali štyri roky bakalárskeho štúdia na Fakulte umení Ostravskej univerzity, na Katedre maľby v Ateliéri maľby II. Františka Kowolowskeho (2014-2018).

Foto: Ľuboš Kotlár

Stanovisko

In the last several years my work revolves mainly around the exploration of problems how to meaningfully and intelligibly communicate complex topics related to my interest, in theory, social issues of minority policy, and a whole web of interrelated topics such as ecology and economics. Specifically, I am interested in ecological and social crises/conflicts culminating in the disintegration of political imagination. While working I like to think along with queer and decolonial theory as a catalysator which offers alternative ideas of future/present as well as varied emotional scope with which to think and process

While studying intersections of queer theory, trans studies, and decolonial theory I am specifically interested in chronopolitics and the possibility of constructing another type of embodied temporality through the disruption of dominant normative historical narratives by the subversive force of queer performativity – which I do not consider an aesthetic canon or sexual identity but rather as an original political and philosophically productive acreage of subcultural practices and alternative relationships to space and time, as another type of care of oneself and others.

Kurátorský text

Ondřej HOUŠŤAVA študoval v rôznych ateliéroch intermédií na Vysokej škole výtvarných umení v Bratislave a mediálnemu umeniu sa venoval aj na Akadémii umení v talianskom Frosinone. Žije v Prahe. - Performancie, videá a inštalácie interdisciplinárneho umelca Houšťavu komunikujú témy rezistencie a transmutácie. -- „Interdisciplinárny umelec Ondřej Houšťava vytvára performancie, videá a sochárske inštalácie zamerané na témy rezistencie a premeny. Prostredníctvom archívnych exponátov, zoskupení textov a predmetov, či hovoreného slova poskytuje komplexný prístup k spoločnosťou potlačovanému vedeniu. Video inštalácia Príprava na verejné počutie (2020) vychádza z dekoloniálnej a queer teórie, využívajúc stratégie odmietnutia a asynchronicity ako prostriedky odporu voči dominantným stratégiám ústnej narácie. Poukazuje na potrebu prítomnosti verejnosti v boji proti diskriminácii cez poznanie sprítomnené dejinami a spôsoby života, ktoré heteronormatívne nacionalistické spoločnosti pridlho násilne umlčiavali.“ (Margot Norton, členka poroty)