2022, Czech Republic, 17' 16'', b&w

Camera & Stop Motion: Hera Büyüktaşcıyan

Editing: Gizem Bayıksel  

Sound Design: Gizem Bayıksel, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Şirag Şeşteyan                

Text: Jan Amos Comenius & Hera Büyüktaşcıyan

 

In her film, The Labyrinth of the World, Paradise of the Heart , Büyüktaşcıyan anchors the underground and the above through the water architecture of Prague, featuring Bubeneč wastewater treatment plant and the public baths of the city. Within the stop-motion sequences, tile-like glass beads meander between the cavities of these aquatic spaces covered with glazed Rako tiles, like vocalized contours, reverberating distilled traces of cultural appropriation throughout a historical continuum.

 

Produced in Rakovník and found across Prague, through surveying fragments of these Orientalist tiles, the artist resurfaces the underlying tensions between body and surface, ornament and power, scale and representation through constructed environments shaped around the notions of purity and cultural contamination, characteristic of Prague’s colonial past and turbulent history as a
threshold of multiple temporalities and communal imaginaries.