Untitled, 2006
spoons with tiny holes, filled with vodka
Xxx November 18, 1976 "waiting for someone to call me...", 1976
photograph 29 x 21cm
Jiří Kovanda first appeared on the art scene along with the second generation of Czech “actionism” in the late 1970s. He has recently been discovered in the West through his minimalist actions and “action-interventions,” which might be referred to as protocols of a general record. They differ significantly from older Czech Fluxus activities, which had pedagogical and utopian aims, and from those of his contemporaries, whose performances often explored physical and existential frontiers. Kovanda’s minimalist actions and interventions of the 1970s, were often so subtle they were almost imperceptible. They could not attack immediately, but they did have an effect in the long run. There is a certain romanticism in his artistic gestures that may have been stimulating in the depressing 1970s, when it served as a contrast to so many traumatic and politically-laden performances. Simple actions like gazing fixedly into the eyes of people encountered on an escalator, for example, or intentionally-unintentionally touching chance passers-by on the street can be understood as attempts to make contact.