Barbora Kleinhamplová
(CZ)

Sickness Report, 2018
installation, short film (Full HD,17' 05'')

In her film and installation Barbora Kleinhamplová addresses the sickness of neoliberalism through a metaphorical voyage both far ashore and into the mechanisms of building luxurious yachts and the fabrication of medications. An anthropological report of a middle-class dream turned into nightmare attempts to capture the findings of a dizzy exploration, inviting viewers to consider their potential nausea as a part of something bigger: It’s not just them or us who are sick. The whole ship trembles in nausea and discomfort. Stillness can hardly be distinguished from vertigo and acceleration boosts motion sickness of both the crew and the very deck carrying the tortured bodies and minds. For those in pain, it doesn’t sound like a solution to just wait for the boat to fall apart and then start building a better one from scratch. It might take too much time. It might never even happen. Time might bring irreversible damages. The ocean might not be very accommodating. Still, they are the ones on board, while others are drowning. More and more prescriptions of diverse medications clearly aren’t capable of bringing structural change. The symptoms are reoccurring, copy-pasted, spread out on most of the ships sailing turbulent seas. Drowsiness, dizziness, discomfort, restiveness, repetitive yawning, malaise, nausea, pallor, sweating, headaches, fatigue, chest pains or tightness, palpitations, insomnia, apathy. Reducing symptoms has proven easier than searching for causes. Everybody participates. Even the doctors are sick. The workers in the drug factories are sick. The differences are mostly economical. Few can afford mechanisms that will excerpt their watercraft from the widespread misery. Some can afford not to be well. Some can afford the doctors and pills. And yet, they don't really get better. The majority is working for and paying for the ship not to fall apart. In the evening, they sit down and watch it speed up, recess, stagnate. They are taught to think that sickness is their personal problem and therefore has to be treated individually. They don’t know who or what else to blame it on.

Project production: Jindřich Chalupecký Society. Curation for Jindřich Chalupecký Society and Savvy Contemporary: Karina Kottová)

Barbora Kleinhamplová (b. 1984, Czech Republic) is an artist living and working in Prague. Barbora's work is rooted in the relationship of human existence and contemporary political and economic institutions. She comments on different layers of society, using associations and metaphors. For some time, it has been her overarching aim to pose questions like what a society is, how it works, what its constitutive elements are, what its illnesses are, its emotions, its future, or the fate of an individual in its midst. In her work she borrows concepts and methods from different sciences such as anthropology or biology, not in a strict sense, but rather, as a common element of artistic practice. Recently she has adopted a strategy we might call constructed or staged situation. The script often derives from an existing format of group interaction. The performative dimension of some of her projects attempts to accentuate the symbolic role of body politics in economic and power systems. Her work has been widely exhibited in the Czech Republic as well as internationally – including at the Gwangju Biennale, New Museum, Jakarta Biennale, SAVVY Contemporary. Barbora is a co-founder of Institute of Anxiety.

https://artviewer.org/barbora-kleinhamplova-at-savvy-contemporary/