Tereza Stehlikova: Artistic research into sensory perception & embodiment
Poetry in Truth - Truth in Poetry A short excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's highly inspired Eureka. The sense of the symmetrical is an instinct which may be depended on with an almost blindfolded reliance. It is the poetical essence of the universe – of the universe which, in the supremeness of its symmetry, is... Continue Reading →
An excerpt from the Handbook for the Apprentice Palaveer - by one of my favourite Czech writers, Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) (No translation can ever quite capture the freshness, sheer poetic force and subtle nuances of Hrabal's language but nevertheless...) I water flowers when it rains, in sultry July I pull my December sled behind me,... Continue Reading →
Jan Švankmajer's description of his own creative process, 1985 What is your own personal definition of poetry? For me the concept of poetry coincides with imagination. And the potency of imagination for me is also an evaluative criterion for poetry, whatever its medium of expression is: i.e. a pen, a brush or touch. It is... Continue Reading →
Astronomical dinner The table is made of a sheet of crystal placed on shining aluminium legs. The dining room is completely dark. Sources of variable light on the underside of the table, moving through layer of crystal from bottom to top, and in from two sides toward the centre, illuminate the crystal surface in a... Continue Reading →
Summer Luncheon For Painters and Sculptors After a long period of rest, a painter or sculptor who wants to take up his creative activities again at three o’clock on a summer afternoon may vainly try to excite his artistic inspiration with a succulent – traditional meal. Weighed down, he would then have to walk to... Continue Reading →
A Poem by Jan Švankmajer The novice is isolated in a dark room He has to leave his hands submerged in a black ointment Meanwhile bandages from finely chopped stinging nettles and goose fat are alternatively applied to his back. The sole of his left foot is touching the surface of hot water The sole... Continue Reading →
From the Wedding Banquet: Some sauteed mushroom are served next, pompously praised by the usual maniacal huntsman: "I gathered them all by myself, between bagging a partridge and a hare in the Pistoia woods, drenched with rain. There's every kind of mushroom , except the poisonous one...unless my myopia has played an ugly trick on me.... Continue Reading →
"In a hunter's cabin secluded in a green-blue-gilded forest, two couples sit down at a rough table made from trunks of oak. The brief blood-red twilight lies in agony beneath the enormous bellies of darkness as if under rain-soaked and seemingly liquid whales. As they wait for the peasant woman to cook, the only food... Continue Reading →
Cinesthetic feasts 