Markéta Magidová

The work of Markéta Magidová operates within the tension between domains, like the media she uses. To begin with she worked mainly with photographic images that she combined with drawings and watercolours. Later she began to use text and video installations more and more. These days video linked to live performance or theatre and an interest in the physical activities of dancers and actors predominates in her work.

The artist herself appears in her first videos that to a large extent display an attempt to relate to personal events and experiences and mediate them by means of her own body or words (Untitled – video performance, 2012; Sóstrast (Condolences), together with Daniela Baráčková and Šárka Telecka, 2012). However, during the last two years, with the aid of an often static camera, Magidová has been shooting actors (or non-actors, but always other people) and dancers. She gives free rein to the movements of the dancers, which sometimes takes on a narrative tone (Překlapy a přehmaty / Typing Errors and Mistakes, 2015) and elsewhere she draws on the visual appeal of dance (the film from her residency in Belgium made with the dancer Terezie Indráková, 2015). An important feature of her work is the linking up of image and text, sometimes in the form of a live poetry reading (Neklidné čtení / Restless Reading, 2014) or with accompanying poetic text (Odeslané / Sent, 2014; Tůje, 2014).

The project Typing Errors and Mistakes, created in the Prague INI Gallery, combines the artist’s interest in textual recordings and her work with live performance. In the resulting video that preceded the performance in the premises of the former Electrical Enterprises, the movement of the dancer, who depicts three candidates for work in an international corporation, is accompanied by the voice of the company director. He is reading out an email correspondence full of typing errors relating to the selection procedure and the cover letters of women who are lost and teetering around the deserted corridors and offices. Tereza Indráková’s performance culminates in an absurd grotesquerie in which individual characters remain solitary towards institutional mechanisms. The work is a subtle parody of the structures and rules that we subject our behaviour and communication to. Something similar is taking place in the video from Magidová’s residence in the BUDA art centre in Belgium (Drž mi palce / Cross Your Fingers for Me, 2015), in which to begin with the artist isolates the gestures and steps of a dancer by framing it with the camera that she later gives full rein to in an energetically choreographed dance. An interesting aspect of this work is that the gestures used in the dance sequence are inspired by our everyday mimicry and non-verbal communication that the artist captured in the first minutes of the film. On the theatre stage where the dancer ends up at the end of the video, these ordinary non-verbal signs are placed in contrast to the institution of the theatre performance predetermined by a structured script.

At present theatre and live performance are the means of expression drawn on most frequently by Magidová. Along with Jan Pfeiffer she prepared a narrative theatre play for the Bohunice Psychiatric Hospital in which, using two actors (again playing several characters) and one recorded voice, she examined interpersonal communication and the conflict between the subjective and institutional world. She worked with a similar content though in a completely different form in the video Sent (made at a literary residence in Bratislava in 2014), in which the presentation of the text by the Polish poet and performer Roman Boryczko is confronted with the possibilities of the digital recording and the transcription linked with it. The question of interpersonal relationships and communication against the backdrop of virtual reality is one of the layers of this video.

An important aspect of Magidová’s work is the artist’s publications, in which she works with language as a grid that structures our thinking. Sometimes this concept takes a personal form (Domácí slovník / Domestic Dictionary, 2013), and sometimes she allows it to emerge through a comparison with the language of science, ideology and other semantic systems (Překlad / Translation, 2013). As in the latest videos the question of institutionalism arises in her use of language or form. However, this is not about the medium of video or theatre but more an attempt to expose and interrogate ordinary means of communication with the aid of the image.

Magidová is involved with conceptual literature on both a theoretical level, as part of the preparation of a Central European collective monograph, and in her creative work, where it takes many different forms. Although the very term “conceptual literature” might seem ambiguous, in Czech art it is possible to chart an interest in the utilisation of text in galleries in the work of Jiří Valoch and Ján Mančuška. As in the work of several of Mančuška’s textual installations, Magidová examines the movement of a gallery visitor, as for instance in the exhibition Nevrácený plan / Non-returned Plan (2013) at the Kostka Gallery in Meetfactory, Prague, where she has the viewer walk along the ground plan of a small apartment in which they read a story about its occupant. The transformation of reader into participant was also clear in the installations Lehl si a snažil se na nic nemyslet / He Lay Down and Tried to Think of Nothing (2012) and Měření / Measurement) (2012), exhibited as part of the festival 4 + 4 Days in Motion.

PAF 2014. Olomouc 2014 Don´t Even Dream. IV. Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. Moskva 2014 Close, Closer. Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Beatrice Galilee  (ed.), Lisabon 2013 For John Cage / Na houby, Martin klimeš (ed.), Dům umění, Opava 2012 Outdoor gallery 2012, Nina Šošková (ed.), Nitra 2012 ABCDEF, Diplomanti Fakulty výtvarných umění, Jiří Ptáček (ed.), Brno 2011 Bunker, Omar Mirza (ed.), Nitrianska Galeria, Nitra 2010 Welten am Fluss, Jochen  Stemplewski, Jörg Winde (eds.), Bönen 2008 Diagnosa, FAMU, Praha 2008 Blatenský fotofestival dokumentární fotografie/2.ročník 2007. Blatná 2007 Devátá sklizeň, Ateliér reklamní fotografie FMK UTB ve Zlíně, Praha 2006  

Recenze: Eva Krátká, Domácí slovník, A2, č. 26, 2013, s. 31. Rastislav Búgel, Zaujímavá výstava v galérii: ukáže hranice medzi podradenosťou a nadradenosťou, 16. 11. 2013, Nitra 24: nitra.dnes24.sk/zaujimava-vystava-v-galerii-ukaze-hranice-medzi-podradenostou-a-nadradenostou-165142 Jana Čermáková, Taniere z Palestíny, trón s vejárom aj vypchatý netopier, SME, 4.12.2013 Josef Ledvina: Text ke čtení, text ke koukání, Ateliér roč. 24, č. 2, 2011, s. 4. Viktor Čech: Až na vrchol povrchnosti, až na dno mělkosti, Ateliér č. 7, 2011, s. 5 Anna Remešová, Imaginativní světy Kubačákové a Magida, 16. 3. 2011, Artalk: www.artalk.cz/2011/03/16/imaginativni-svety-kubacakove-a-magida/ Johana Lomová, U dUbU tU bUdU vytváří průřež možnostmi vizuální práce s textem, 17. 12. 2010, Deník Referendum: denikreferendum.cz/clanek/7963-u-dubu-tu-budu-vytvari-prurez-moznostmi-vizualni-prace-s-textemRozhovory: Markéta Kubačáková. Na nic nemyslet se mi podařilo tak deset, patnáct minut, Psí víno č. 61, 2012, s. 27–38. Linda Petáková: Ale to přece nemůžeš – Fakt musím – to nechápu. Máme přeci vernisáž., 25. 1. 2012, Český rozhlas: http://www.rozhlas.cz/mozaika/vytvarne/_zprava/marketa-kubacakova-ale-to-prece-nemuzes-fakt-musim-to-nechapu-mame-prece-vernisaz--1008808 Karel Oujezdský, Projekt Markéty Kubačákové "White Paper" v Galerii Entrance, 11. 3. 2010, Český rozhlas: http://www.rozhlas.cz/mozaika/vytvarne/_zprava/705738 Marie Poláková, Přírodní rezervace., 25. 1. 2010, Český rozhlas:  www.rozhlas.cz/mozaika/vytvarne/_zprava/686017 Karolína Demelová, Tematizovaná nedokončenost v (A)VOID Gallery, 21. 8. 2009, Radio Wave:   http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiowave/waveculture/_zprava/623053 Silvia Struhárová, Svetová premiéra výstavy o dôležitosti vzťahovej komunikácie, Moja Nitra: http://www.mojanitra.sk/?action=clanky&id_clanku=10724 TV spoty: Artyčok.tv: Who Is the Director? / Festival 4+4 dny v pohybu v paláci U Stýblů / 28. 2. 2015-07-13 Dostupné z: artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/27272/director Artyčok.tv: Would You Like To Play Another Game? / Festival 4+4 dny v pohybu v bývalém kasinu Pařížská 25 / 20. 11. 2012 Dostupné z: artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/16547/44-days-in-motion-would-you-like-to-play-another-game Artyčok.tv: Moving Images / Fotograf Gallery Praha / 5. 12. 2011 Dostupné z: artycok.tv/lang/en-us/9135/moving-images Artyčok.tv: Jelení / Galerie Jelení Praha / 3. 5. 2011 Dostupné z:http://artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/7386/jeleni Artyčok.tv: Loket pobělohorský, čtyři prsty, pět zrn a čárka / Fenester Praha / 3. 3. 2011 Dostupné z: artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/7199/loket-pobelohorsky-ctyri-prsty-pet-zrn-a-carka

Autorské knihy: 2015 – Překlapy a přehmaty, Praha: PositiF
2013 – Překlad, Praha: PositiF
2013 – Domácí slovník, Praha: PositiF
2011 – Tvarochodi, Hranice: DOST