EMA HAS MEAT (EMA MÁ MASO)
4/2014 Plasy Monastery (festival Na hraně), Plasy, CZ
Collaboration with Fortuna Hernández (MEX) within the framework of the NOT FOR___ artistic group.
The key inspirational source for this work was the concept of crowds (“masa” in Czech, similar to the Czech word “maso” that means “meat”) as introduced by the British-Austrian sociologist Elias Canetti in his seminal book Crowds and Power (1960). Other important material for the performance provided textbooks for the youngest school pupils that contain texts such as “Ema má mísu. Máma má maso. Ola má mámu. Ela má laso.” (“Ema has a bowl. Mum has meat. Ola has a mum. Ela has a lasso.”) As much as they are being a source of ridicule they are also notoriously known – whole generations remember these nonsensical sentences. They represent one of the most straightforward examples of ideological conditioning.
NOT FOR___ (2013-2015) was an artistic group consisting mainly of the Mexican scenographer and performer Fortuna Hernández and me. It worked in the medium of site-specific art and focused on the questions of identity, migration, power, communication, or performativity.
