Analysis of Anarchist Anthropology

Analysis of Anarchist Anthropology
2/2015, Berlinskej model, Prague, CZ

This piece was inspired by my unsuccessful attempt to create an artwork with residents of Cibulka squatt in Prague-Košíře. In the Analysis audience was invited to non-existing „Propagandhi Gallery“ for whose location I choosed a non-stop bar. Signs on the pavement lead people from the pub to the actual site of the performance: Berlinskej model Gallery. By that I paid an homage to underground tekno parties whose location is often unknown and has to be discovered. There is a significant connection between those parties and a squatting scene.

Inside of the real gallery a title „Analysis of Anarchistic Anthropology“ was to be found written on the blackboard but strikethroughed and replaced by a new title: „Wood Cutting“. Techno music was played, bar served alcohol and other beverages and I was cutting the wood by an axe on a white triangular piedestal.

The piece was beforehand announced as a complicated theoretical lecture on anarchism. But already the invitation was full of errors and inaccuracies and what at first sight might have looked like a meaningful text based on a David Graeber’s study „Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology“ was in fact just a bunch of coincidental quotations from different sections of the book and other sources. In the end there was no lecture at all just me smashing the wood, DJ B4NAN playing music and three other guests – Jana Orlová, Ivan van Chrasten and Jan Kubíček – performing and reading poetry.

The whole situation was a critical commentary on a sad gap between the theory and praxis of anarchism/squatting with an aim of creating a nice cultural evening which would gather people of different backrounds. The act of cutting the wood referred to one of the main reasons why my art project in the squatt failed: more than to create an art piece squatters were in the beginning of the winter interested by supplying themselves with firewood…

Other participating artists: DJ B4NAN, Jana Orlová, Ivan van Chrasten, Jan Kubíček

Thanks: Heidi Hornáčková, Kateřina Zemene