Artist: Zuza Banasińska
Title: Fix it in post
Venue: The House of the Lords of Kunštát, G99 Gallery, Brno
Curator: Ivana Hrončeková
Due to the closing of the gallery, the exhibition was conceived as a window installation, with the sound playing outside, in the courtyard. The exhibition centers around the former limestone quarry at Hády in north-east Brno. The terraces left on this ecologically important location by mining activities now serve as a somewhat post-apocalyptic setting for cryp-
tic images, text messages and love letters assembled from rocks. They resemble archaeological sites of in-digenous tribes whose rock-formations were probably ancient astronomical maps drawn in order to keep track of the movement of stars in the sky. They represented a non-human system, the universe, seen through the human eye. In contrast, the stone compositions at Hády serve a completely different purpose – they do not
record any natural phenomena. Their objective is not to create a map but to leave a testimony of an individual presence on the landscape surface. Apart from human eyes, these messages are read and written into maps by satellite lenses. The love messages are thus viewed by the eye of a machine circling the Earth. Zuza refects on this fact in a recorded performance. Wearing a green coat, on the surface of one of the terraces she assem-
bles a message from rocks. Directly addressing a satellite with the highest image resolution, she places its name, WorldView 3, in a heart.
Another coded messages can be read in the sound layer of the exhibition. The spoken word is derived from a patchy machine translation created by an application which directly translates a scanned photo. In this case, Zuza took a photograph of a popular-science text from the information board at Hády. The stylistic and logical inaccuracies of the translation construct a metaphorical text, a kind of conceptual language full of urgent pleas and sometimes even
mythological associations. Zuza thus assembles a picture from multiple temporalities; its reading depends on our ability to associate and the ability to create speculative scripts based on these associations.
The same principle is needed in the reading of the symbol of the green colour of the screen which makes up an important motif of the installation. In the flm industry, this technical element is an instrument of the post-production of tricks and special effects, and can be thus viewed as a space for fiction, a feld of endless possibilities of alternative stories. The mining of limestone at Hády left a distinct mark on the landscape. The chopped land surface in a satellite photo is also a message, a record of human past presence. The installation elements in the green screen color can function as a gesture of creating a free space for alternative care, for the healing of the exploited landscape, though only imaginary.
The phrase “Fix it in post” comes from flm production, the word “post” is an abbreviation for post-production. It is used by flmmakers when a take is not successful; they want to avoid the time-consuming process of reshooting and turn to the editors to fx the error. In the context of the exhibition, the ecological level of the mined landscape on the border of a nature reserve and tools of a film set, the title represents a slightly ironic yet valid approach.
Ivana Hrončeková
