Mr. This Is Fine 2023 Biennale di Venezia

 

Mr. This Is Fine at Venice Biennale- It is good for your portfolio

DoP_ Vojtěch Polák
Costume designer and assistant_ Mars Industries

Videoperformance for the Czech pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023
The Office for a Non-Precarious Future

Curators_ Eliška Havla Pomyjová, David Neuhäusl, Jan Netušil

 

Melting Face emoji expresses bitter approval of the life situation in which he finds himself. He is the superhero of hypocrisy, the mascot of sarcasm. It refers to the meltdown, where planet Earth is literally melting, but our collective health, cultural values and solidarity have also melted over the last few years. The planet belongs to a handful of sociopaths and we’re pretending to be the dog in the famous „Everything is fine“ meme. Business as ussual!

In the first episode, Mr. This Is Fine is invited to represent his country at the Venice Biennale. He has studied at three colleges and has been an active artist for 15 years. He loves his work and hopes to be of good use to the public as well. He is a performer, producer, driver, filmmaker, ditributor, accountant, cleaner, photographer, secretary… But enthusiasm doesn’t pay the rent! In the creative industries, most of the players get exploited for a „good cause“. Architects and artists shape our cultural landscape and yet only a handful of them receive decent wages. This moment is illustrated by a performance that symbolically took place at the Venice Biennale. Where else do artists‘ and architects‘ dreams take shape than at well-known art shows that are good for their portfolios? They compete, they network, they send out portfolios, they endlessly submit opencalls and wait for someone to notice them and pull them into the spotlight. The sarcastic pokerface Mr. This Is Fine refers to precarization, unsustainability, climate change, exploitation, and the elite world they must penetrate to become recognized and dignified.

 

Trailer

 

 

My statement on my participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023

The whole process of dealing with the National Gallery was a show of arrogance, exploitation, disrespect for the work of the participants, who are paid less than a token salary. The process was accompanied by a non-transparent change in the curatorial team. The seemingly opencall on residents who were meant to do interventions on site. The National Gallery acted at incredibly long intervals, so that it was not possible to carry out the implementation in time. The NG provided no facilities, transport or accommodation for the participants. Several of the participants left the project when they read the contract with its long confidentiality clause. It is absurd that the theme of the Czech pavilion, precarization, was pursued so intensely by the NG that I suspected it was their entire performance.

Lesson learned:I don’t go to such elitist art shows and I don’t want to be part of their world. I naively thought that given the topic of precarization, there would be a critical discussion with the ability for insight from the institution. This proved me wrong and reinforced that there is no point in working with the National Gallery’s moloch or any other institution with the word „national“ in its name.

 

 

Stills from the movie