“I dig, you dig, the worm digs too.”

No updates in a week; that probably says enough about the past days. I feel like haven’t really done anything significant enough to post about.
My biological clock was running it own course this week. I’m afraid I only have myself to blame for this: last weekend, the weather was bad and I decided to be wise, stay at home, work and don’t spend any money. The staying at home-part went good, but in stead of only working, I spend a big part of my weekend watching the whole first season of ‘Lost’ online. When it was on TV in Holland, I only captured a few chunks here and there; and once I started watching it again, I was completely hooked. I watched three nights in a row, falling asleep at 6 a.m. in the morning.

Tuesday, George ‘Dubya’ Bush was visiting Prague, promoting his plans for Cold War – The Sequel. For those of you who do not know: the US wants to build a missile shield in Central Europe, to protect us (but mainly themselves) from possible attacks from the Axis of Evil. One part of the shield would be located in Trokavec, a Czech hamlet (97 inhabitants!) not far from Prague. The other part will be located in Poland. There were two days of demonstrations in Prague, although things didn’t really get out of hand. I didn’t attend any of them; I didn’t feel like it (or maybe I’m just lame). But I did walk up to the park not far from the Prague Castle that Bush was visiting that day, to see what security measurements the Czech government had taken. What I saw were rows and rows of small fences, low enough to jump over it. Where the fences closed off streets, groups of bored policemen were gathered; talking, eating and leaning. But the park around the Castle was largely deserted. The fences just stood there, with no policemen in sights, ready to be jumped over by whomever felt like it. I think the Czech have a thing or two to learn about Homeland Security…..

One of the highlights of my week was stumbling upon a beautiful woodcut by a Czech artist from North Moravia called Ferdiš Duša (1888-1958). It shows a young deer looking up, in quite a weird posture. When I showed it to my roommates their first question was "Why is its neck broken?". Whatever. I love it.
The picture is not very clear, unfortunately. It doesn't show how beautiful the cut is: smooth and delicate lines on the body, it's like you can almost feel the fur. The outline is thick. The woodcut is from 1941. I haven't found any information on the internet about it, although there is some info to be found on Duša, but mainly in Czech.

Wednesday, in the afternoon, I went to some sort of panel discussion in the Municipal Library. It was the last day of the 17th Prague Writers Festival, and since this year’s theme was ‘Dadaïsm’, I was curious about the program, which was built around the question "Where has Czech Dada gone, if it ever existed?" Since I have been to lectures and panel discussions like these numerous times, I knew that I would not leave the building with anything that would even remotely seem like an answer to that question.
I sat in a hall with around 50 people scattered, some of them old enough to have known Tristan Tzara (the Romanian poet who founded Dadaïsm) in person. On the stage were a bunch of equally old men, writers and literature professors, and one surprisingly young guy who turned out to be a curator from Zurich. The discussion was in Czech, but headphones were handed out, which allowed you to hear a very British woman’s desperate attempts to translate the mumbling going on onstage. It made me feel like I was at a UN convention.
After twenty minutes, the man next to me fell asleep, and on my other side a couple was making out, so I had no real chance of escaping. I tried to stay focused and actually learn something. After nearly an hour, one of the old guys (Ludvik Kundera, cousin of the famous Czech author Milan Kundera) decided to recite some poems of a poet who may or may not have been on of the few Czech dadaïsts. This spontaneous act of him was of course very ‘dada’, but since the translators were not prepared, they apologized through the headphones and I was forced to listen to nearly fifteen minutes of Dadaïst poetry in a language that barely makes sense to me in writing, let alone in speech.

During all this, I was wondering how it is possible that I have spent the past six years studying art and its history and theories, and although I’m always interested in stuff like this, it doesn’t seem to really capture me nowadays. I always like to give it a try, but while I’m at it, it hardly ever grabs me by the throat anymore.
I’ll be the last person to say “It’s just art”, because I truly believe that art plays a crucial, albeit often underexposed, role in society. Personally, I’m most interested in art that reflects (or has reflected) social structures; I’m attracted to art that springs from conflict, from war, from life changing events. And I'm particularly interested in the avant garde movements dating from the beginning of the 20th century: Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaïsm, Surrealism. These movements came into existence in a time when Western society was undergoing very drastic changes, and that is clearly reflected in almost everything. Besides that, these movements changed the course of art and the way art was looked upon permanently. All the more reason to be curious about what a group of so-called 'experts' had to say about the influence of Dadaïsm on Czech art and society...
But that afternoon, I was just plain bored. And I looked around wondering if anyone really gave a shit. In fifteen minutes, it would all be over, everyone would be outside again, in the sun, and 90% of the things said in that hall would be totally forgotten.

The motto of the festival was 'I dig, you dig, the worm digs too', taken from the poem Es war Erde in ihnen ('There was earth inside them') by Paul Celan, who spend some time in Romania writing surrealist poetry. Hermeneutics isn't my specialty, so I'll spare you my interpretations of it.