Lenka Klodová: I Was Terribly Embarrassed, But Only That First Time

A: That’s an interesting question. How do you recognize a work of art? If you create something, are you creating art? That’s just the outer label. I think what makes a work of art is the audience, the place, and the personality of the creator. If you make something for an exhibition, then it is a work of art. However, if you make it for yourself, then it is the result of some internal thing. If you are concerned with making a work of art, it’s a matter of function, the resulting reactions and accounts of the public. I suppose the main factor is that artists are making something that has never existed before. Whatever they produce, it is something no one else has ever done, it is unique. I want something completely new to exist, so I create it.

A: That’s all one does. That’s why you start studying art, because it seems that you can work at ease there, and that you might find some reasons for it. Actually, it gives you the space and justification to do it. I started Academy in 1990, but had decided to be an artist in ‘84, around the time of my graduation from high school. In Ostrava there was this group of something like twenty or thirty people who I enjoyed hanging out with. From there the path led to the Pedagogic Faculty, because at that time passing the entrance exams in Prague art schools was impossible. The aim wasn’t to become a professional artist, but rather to be in a more pleasant environment than in that gray communism.

The Pedagogic Faculties had another role, though: as there were only two art schools at that time, AAAD (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Pague) and the Academy of Fine Art, so the Pedagogic Faculties served as substitutes for them. The Faculty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem came directly out of the Pedagogic Faculty, and the Institute of Art in Ostrava split off from the Pedagogic Faculty in there. About half the people there weren’t considering teaching, but were rather there for artistic reasons. We were provoking one another. We had exhibitions all over the city, in people’s apartments and in strange places like the long passage under the Ostrava bus station. After the revolution almost all of us applied to study in Prague. The chance to study art normally was suddenly very appealing. So I applied to AAAD, but to study design. I didn’t dare study free art, because it seemed too boundless.

After that I made the types of things that I guess everyone does in the beginning. For example, a larger-than-life figure made of wire with hoses running through it, from which bodily fluids were dripping onto the ground. The other day, I was just discussing how all first-year students make the same things. For instance, when I was in my first year I made internal organs out of paper, and twenty years later, my student brought in internal organs made out of plastic bags.

A: It’s what occurs to you when you start thinking. If you are a philosopher, or you want to become a philosopher, you also start with those kinds of simple ideas – the world and me. People don’t think about technique in a deeper sense from the start. You think in a narrower way, which usually concerns itself with the body and figure. In my opinion, that is absolutely the first theme. It just doesn’t occur to you that the material itself could have meaning, or that geometric forms could have meaning.

Those first years in Kurt Gebauer’s studio were a megalomaniac time, when people started to make huge installations, and the students in the studio had a feel for that, people like Honza (Jan) Stolín and Jirka (Jiří)Kočí. Recently there’s been a return to making objects. The fact that those works took the whole space into account was a big plus, though.

A: I did my entrance exams when Mr. Appl was leaving the design department, and Mr. Šípek was meant to replace him in September, so I assumed I would be studying with him. However, without consulting anyone, the school also hired Mr. Diblík, an older gentleman who had emigrated to Italy, and the famous designer of Expo ‘58. So, Mr. Šípek and he both started teaching at AAAD in the same year. Šípek had his pick of the students, and the rest went to study with Diblík. Mr. Šípek changed the course of his studio to focus more on architecture, while Diblík’s concentrated more on industrial design.

He was such a sweetheart, Mr. Diblík. I had just given birth, and he was so touched by that that he brought me a package of paper diapers from Milan. Those were probably the first disposable paper diapers in the Czech Republic. What’s more, he had accidentally gotten me them in pink, so he took them back and brought me blue ones instead. He was like our kind grandpa. The only thing was, studying in his studio wasn’t for me. For example, we had to propose designs for chocolate bonbons, and he kept making me re-sand my plaster model, because he said it wasn’t done precisely enough, so I lost my patience. For another project, we were supposed to come up with pot lids that wouldn’t burn housewives, and to me that seemed like such an unimportant problem to deal with. In contrast, there was this incredible energy coming from Kurt, and his studio was attracting a lot of people. At that time switching between studios was a lot easier. One could constantly flit between them without having to do any paperwork.

A: Marek Rejent and I were kind of a dynamic duo, and there was also Martina Klouzová, but she left to study with Mr. Nepraš, and the Academy of Fine Arts suited her much better. Then there were older students, who I treated with respect. To me, they all seemed like aces. I was really disappointed then that most of them disappeared from the art scene, with the exception of Honza (Stolín), who is uncompromising and does what he wants. Looking at his work you might think that he is a perfectionist and a bit dry, but in reality he really brought the studio to life.

What was most enlightening was that nothing was assigned to you, and that “nothing” was terrifying. You were supposed to make a great piece of work without any guidance. There were also group activities that seemed frivolous, things like parties or tennis tournaments, but through those you actually learned production and teamwork. I felt that a by-product of all that was that we gained a lot of practical knowledge, and I have benefited from that quite a lot.

In year two, Marek and I decided to put together an exhibition in Proseč in the Vysočina region, which would be in the municipal house. The building had previously been social housing for an impoverished widow, but was then made into a gallery where they would exhibit Christmas cribs in the winter. We decided that the exhibition would be inspired by Proseč itself, and we really enjoyed working on it. We hinted at things there which were then made at school on a larger scale.

For example, I had a space there with hay in it with some of the stalks erect, and when you lit it up, it would create writing on the walls. For his part, Marek made this great pile of stuff. I think the bottom was rocks, then there was a layer of beer bottles, and on top of that a layer of feathers, and everything held its form nicely. We screwed the headlights of a tractor onto the stove, and that was how we lit the space. There were these completely stupid flowered curtains there that I embroidered tractors onto, using the flowers as the back wheels. Marek had also taken photos of tractors in the area that the local people had put together, these homemade DIY machines. I showed my first mermaid drawing as well, which was done with charcoal, and was hanging on the wall. The drawing was two meters high from the mermaid’s waist, but there was another five meters rolled up, where her tail was hidden, as it was in a room where you couldn’t unroll the whole drawing. As the show was in Proseč, and the village next to it was Zderaz, we entitled it Proseč Zderaz 3:2.

That was the first project where I started to enjoy doing specific work with real life: “life-specific” work.

A: My thesis was prefigured by a project that also foreshadowed my later work. When I came back from my second maternity leave, I had to present my final work for the semester in winter, and as I was having trouble with it, I ended up exhibiting my own children. All I did was sew them these little gold outfits. Matouš just sat there, and Boženka had this baby fence in the studio, because by then she could crawl on all fours, and was learning to stand.

It used to help me to go on walks when I needed to come up with an idea for a project, and I would always go to Letná Park for that, but I remember walking there that time, and nothing came to me. I felt completely empty. I realized that I didn’t have the time or space to do anything else than what I was already doing, so that was why I decided to exhibit the children. The only person in the jury who reacted positively to the work was Mr. Nešleha, who recalled an exhibition of Dadaists in which live children had also been used. Kurt, however, let me do the work again.

A: It was more that the jury saw the fact that it was a live event as inadequate. They had a problem evaluating it as a live performance.

I recall Kurt’s consultations and remarks, in retrospect. For instance I remember that in the beginning Iva Junková and Klára Froňková were doing personal performances, but they didn’t appeal to Kurt, and he would always criticize them, saying you shouldn’t be able to smell socks, that their authenticity was a defect. It used to be required that all internal inspiration should be impersonal, abstracted, and formalized. That’s still more or less the case with him, though he is open. Or maybe it is just an inter-generational misunderstanding. Nowadays the terms like identity, authenticity, personal input, are perceived as common and positive, but at that time formalization was what was called for.

I did my thesis project right after the children. I came up with the theme myself: a non-figurative memorial for Božena Němcová. That idea partly came to me because I really liked the fact that AAAD was a school from the 19th century, and that it still looks that way. I found the topic of National Revival entrancing, and I started to enjoy the writings associated with it, especially letters. My daughter Boženka had also just been born, and I found Božena Němcová a fascinating personality. Working on my thesis project resulted in a few by-products, and one of those was I Love. That was actually just a sketch that went along with what I was doing on Božena. I wanted to work through language, so at first I considered mixing Czech and German. I thought about projecting the words “Miluji” (I love) and “Ich liebe” over each other. Or to have an inscription of the words that would change from Czech to German with the pull of a lever. What resulted from that was the sign Miluji, which I installed in Neratovice.

The final form of the thesis, in which the words Bože-žena (God!-Woman) would blink on and off, came to me in a dream. Marek and I were able to defend our thesis projects together, as he had somehow managed to fail a year. I had repeated a year, because I had been on maternity leave, so we were able to present together. He had made these huge, slowly moving, laminated rocks. So the space had the blinking Božena, and every once in while one of those laminated objects would move.

A: I didn’t resume at all. After school I just hemmed and hawed by myself. The only group activity I took part in was when myself,

Jirka (Jiří) Černický, Lucie Nepasická, and some people from the Academy founded the artistic association Pradéšť (Ancient Rain), with the hope

of finding studio space. We entered the competition to use the completely amazing Kalina’s Mill in Divoká Šárka, which had a number of floors. We wrote a great proposal for its cultural use, and we won. Of course, we hit a wall when it came to signing a contract, because we didn’t know how to do that. Another problem was that we were all radical and engaged when it came to ideas, but practical work was too challenging for us, and it all began to slowly disintegrate. That was in ‘97. After that the place became a glass-cutting shop. Pradéšť was then able to find a nice studio in Holešovice that had belonged to the film director Otakar Vávra. We lived in Holešovice then; our apartment was 25 square meters. Martin (Klodová’s husband) went to work, and I was at home with the kids. He would get home around ten, because he was working with Rajniš (Architectural Studio), and they were always toiling away.I would go to the studio in the evening by taking the tram to Holešovice. I would get there, it would be cold, and I would eat a snack, struggle a little bit, and draw something. After midnight I would go back. That’s how it went.

That was kind of a strange time. I remember I was fascinated by flyers in drug stores, and I would secretly take them. We had a small flat, which was a mess, and on top of that we had the kids there. Those flyers looked beautiful, they emitted a kind of hope. I was enchanted by how well they had been made. I had boxes, which contained tons of them. That was when I realized that I probably had a problem.

A: It got lost somewhere along the way. I can’t keep things like that, because if I do, I’ll soon have a collection of everything. With that in mind, perhaps you can understand my paper dolls, which I started to cut out of porn magazines. At that time I needed to see the female body, and it didn’t occur to me to ask anyone. Actually, I no longer had access to the school, but there weren’t any pretty models there anyway.

A: Yeah, and when there were young women there, they tended to be strange, gaunt addicts. Taking photos of myself never occurred to me, either. So the easiest option was to use a porn magazine.

A: I was terribly embarrassed, but only that first time. That one lasted me a long time. When I came up with those cut-outs, I decided to write the editor. I got into the offices of PK62, where I was able to speak directly

to one of the people involved in putting out Leo (a Czech porn magazine). I went to their publishing house, which was somewhere near Olšany. The secretary there gave me a bunch of old issues, and I thanked them. I used those magazines for an exhibition, which was in the spirit of student’s events, things like the Four Days in Motion festival, which are put on today. The show was in a strange underground space somewhere under Lucerna. Teatr Novogo Fronta put on a performance there, and Hana Poislová had things on display to go along with that. I showed my first dolls and photos of birches there, but totally in a proto-state.

A: That must have been ‘99, or maybe ‘98. I had a wall there in the hallway, where there was a niche that debris had fallen out of, so I covered it with that pornography. The models were wearing dresses that I had glued onto them, all made out of the same orange paper. The work stayed stuck on the wall there. After that I made a New Year’s greeting card that had a little doll in an outfit on it. I sent that to my friends, and it so impressed Radek Wohlmuth, that he told me to contact Krbůšek. After that, Mr. Krbůšek gave me a chance to exhibit in the small Václav Špála Gallery. That was my first solo exhibition. It was cute, because we had discussed it in the maternity ward. That was with Franta in 2001.

A: There’s a story from AAAD about that. I don’t know if Martina (Pachmanová) told it to me, or how I heard it. Anyway, the fact that she is concerned with gender inevitably leads to situations like when the jury comes to look at your final project and there is this theme present, no one deals with it and they all say: “Someone call Martina, this is her stomping ground.” That has to do with the fact that they already have the idea ingrained that this is women’s art, and because it belongs to someone else, they don’t discuss it. Things always work in two directions. Whenever a minority makes itself more visible, or practices positive discrimination, then that very visibility puts them into sort of a small ghetto.

A: I think that feminism is better than the term “women’s art”. That’s such a broad term, and what’s more, we can then call for “men’s art” to exist as well. It’s good to do a little experiment where you think of the opposite term, and that will help you see why the original shouldn’t be used.

A: I can imagine the term “men’s art” being set aside as referring to a certain extreme position. The work of Jirka (Jiří) Surůvka, and David Černý, for example. But the fact that men’s art is more visible anyway makes that redundant. When you look at the selection of artists that Chişa and Tkáčová made, it seems like they chose men with a particular disposition. Knowing David and Jirka, I can say that their masculinity is something integral to them, and is not only a subject they work with. Some people are more masculine in their behavior, and that comes out in their work as well.

A: When I was taking my entrance exams, Eva Kmentová had an exhibition on in the Municipal Library. There was one thing in that show that I particularly liked: a plaster frame into which the word “no” had been pressed with a palette knife. I also liked Nan Goldin’s show in the Rudolfinum Gallery. That exhibition’s informality was a revelation to me. There was a clear story there, especially in the slide show. The series with music, and the clicking of the projector were really instructive for me.

A: Definitely. The exhibitions that used to take place in the Belveder had an impact on me. Like that Italian, the one that then made those little constructions.

A: Parmiggiani. And Tàpies. Maybe it was also the space; I really liked the Belveder as an exhibition space. Rebecca Horn also exhibited there.

A: What was there really to see? For example, there was an exhibition that Jindřich Vybíral put together at the Pedagogic Faculty just before the revolution. He invited Michael Rittstein to exhibit his watercolors in our school gallery. They were of women on all fours carrying their shopping, more like sketches. That show was up for a week, and then they closed it. That was a strong experience. I also used to be fond of Zoubek, and I like big things in the landscape. I had photocopied Srp’s flagship publication, an anthology of minimal art. I have no idea how I was able to copy that whole thing. At the Pedagogic Faculty I was also given a present by an interesting guy who taught there: Chalupecký’s book on women that had been photocopied in purple. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was a book dedicated to female Czech artists.

A: That was good of him to do, because the underground was really patriarchal.

A: They chose me on the basis of positive discrimination. There was a wave of women’s editions of everything. Jirka (Jiří) Ptáček caught that wave, but he wasn’t much impressed when I showed up.

A: Martina Pachmanová was nominated, but she has a pretty complicated experience with them. It’s usually a problem with money. So she either refused the position, or couldn’t come to an understanding with Jirka. She probably felt that she wouldn’t be given enough space. I accepted on the grounds that I would only do the one issue, and then that would be the end of it. Umělec isn’t meant for scientific work, it has more of a guerrilla spirit. I wanted to deal with questions related to women’s art, and I was helped by research that had been done by Alice Červinková from the Center for Women and Science which mapped the strange repulsion that some have to feminism.

I was just talking to an American student from NYU about how difficult it was to explain feminist ideas coming from America to women here, especially when the States doesn’t even give women adequate time for maternity leave, not to mention lacking other conveniences. It’s a case of theory being in conflict with practice.

Anyway, in that issue of Umělec we had an article by Alice Červinková, which looked into the resistance to the term “women’s art”. Věra Sokolová and I also agreed that she would write an article about the problematic nature of the term “lesbian art”. Thanks to her enthusiasm, she was able to find a few Czech lesbians who were making art. You got a sense from her article that there was a real aversion to being labeled or to get together in organizations. We put quite a lot of effort into the section dealing with artists and their lives. In that, Jesper Alvaer and I (even if he actually did most of the work) asked artists about how much time they spend daily on their livelihood, how much on their art, and how they actually support themselves. I thought that some articles would be more radical, like the one written by Lenka Vítková on Jiří David and Kurt Gebauer’s exploitation of children. In the end, she let Kurt charm her too much, and in the end he just ended up giving her a monologue about how his Žanda could so expertly position apples when he was three.

In contrast, the interview with Jiří David was more radical; he openly spoke about how he had made the cycle My Hostages, which is quite edgy, and how it had repulsed his son Daniel.

Most of those articles were based on my experiences, for example on my work with children. I always think about this topic, about the degree to which I can make someone else’s fate my own, and to what degree I am able to inform a child about the objective of the work, because I often have no idea how it will turn out.

A: That was a long time ago. I have gotten bolder, and I now ask strangers to help me. The most recent work I’ve made like that is now on display in the U Prstenu Gallery. That was my last work with children, though not with my own (For Real (2007).

A: It’s a strange step shift. Every time I was pregnant I felt like I was in the minority, and that the world just wasn’t tailored to meet my needs. That was also because with a small baby you almost couldn’t do anything. Nowadays you can see the effect that money has had, how the baby boom has made mothers into a target group. My private life really hasn’t followed the mainstream. When being single and building your career was popular, I was walking around with a big belly. I’m quite happy, though, that I became a mother at that time, because Petra Sovová and I were able to be guerilla mothers, and to fight for home births. To me, it was really nice to see pregnant women demonstrating. Now, even the most personal things have been commercialized.

I have developed a real allergy to animated American films because there is always this sentimental representation of the family; the Incredibles always have to save the world together, as a family. In reality, though, the most important thing is the mortgage. They need the family to stick together so that it can pay the mortgage off.

I have already moved beyond all that. When I was around forty I became interested in the topics of divorce and alternative relationships; unconventional types of love and commitment that no one wants to legalize because doing so would not be convenient.

A: At the moment I am looking forward to meeting with Kateřina Lišková, who has just put out a book.

A: It was just the two of us grappling with pornography. She is a sociologist who now teaches at Masaryk University, her main concern being film. I, however, put my mind more to images. I am fascinated by print media. Surprisingly enough, magazines still have influence here. People thought that they would be pushed out by the Internet, but magazines have turned out to be oddly invincible.

When I presented my studies on porn in Brno, Kateřina and I were able to meet and we agreed then to form a working group. We decided to conceive of it anew, because Ženin (Klodová’s authorial porn magazine for women) was mine, it was too personal, and we wanted something with a broader frame of reference. The topic has in no way been exhausted.

I would like to involve students, but I think that’s impossible. There are things that can’t be assigned. Pornography studies take two years. In the beginning I pushed the theoretical side, but in the end the last half-year suited me best, as we started mixing in some practical and funny things. Once we succeeded in inviting Martin Jansa, who is a photographer for the porn magazine Leo. I sewed myself this outer skin, this disgusting pink thing, and he used me to demonstrate how he coaches the models, and I had to take the positions. He showed us his know-how completely practically and coolly. In fact he showed us what makes the magazine attractive.

A: Only quite decent ones. There weren’t many of them, though. I once bought a film called Princess Anastasia and the October Revolution, a stupid porno film, and the students had to make drawings from it,

to draw figures in motion.

A: We deal with it in an academic context…

A: No.

A: In reality, no. I don’t know if that’s their way of defending themselves. They are very good, and don’t go looking for such things. Still, they know that I have drawers and drawers full of such stuff. If they were interested, they wouldn’t even have to look into their dad’s belongings. I guess that has the opposite effect on them.

I was pleased by Milan Salák and Tereza Veliková’s exhibition in Louny entitled Extremely Lovable Sex. Milan remembered something that had come up in Ženin: the way the eye moves across the pages of Leo. They are very light black-and-white prints of Leo pages with recorded traces of eye movement across them. I was able to get into the lab and record two respondents. It’s a technology used by ad agencies. I printed it out and realized that it worked.

A: That sample of respondents was not representative. Besides the porn magazines, I also had copies of the Birch magazine, and I had them look at that as well. One of the assistants suddenly ran off, and when one of the psychologists brought her back, it turned out that she didn’t like the Birches. She really didn’t want to speak to me, or even shake my hand, because she thought that it was a real magazine for perverts who get turned on by trees.

A: I will either always keep saying that something will come out of Ženin, or I will actually do something. There was a period when I felt like it was passé, but then there was a wave of interest in feminist pornography, and the media started questioning me for polls. I don’t remember the names, but it was probably inspired by the Femme Production of Candida Royalle.

A: That shows the result of delimiting yourself. An aversion to feminism, or to calling art “feminist” can come from the fact that you read the art as activist, and therefore as referring directly to some political organization. For example, I don’t want to use the term “body art”, because it is connected to specific past events. Like with “modern”, which no longer means “modern”.

A: The answer to that is that feminism is a lot of things; it is the re-structuring of everything, which is why it is such a great source of inspiration.