Turnstile

Since the beginning of the 1990‘s, art magazines have regularly featured reports on action art festivals in the country. Perhaps the first one of them was Malamut in 1997, followed by Permanent Performance in Cheb and the A.K.T. festival in Brno’s House of Arts. The most recent one, Action Prague, took place at the end of Summer 1998 at the Roxy Club.
While Ostrava will host its sixth Malamut action festival this Autumn, this year was the second time the city witnessed Turniket, a festival organized by students at the studio of Petr Lysáček, one of Malamut’s main organizers. This year’s second annual was conceived as confrontation of students from all over the country with a program full of events in the Rokle rock club and on the streets.
Some of the most interesting performances were carried out by three female students from Ostrava. Petra Čiklová, one of the festival’s organizers, showed a vicious circle of anorexia in her performance, a metaphor of her own experience. Wearing an elastic overalls, she stuffed appropriate parts of her body with lard. She formed her belly, thighs, breasts and buttocks with patience, turning herself into a shapeless fat figure, literally overflowing with lard. Looking at her mirror reflection, she made holes in the overalls so that she could squeeze the lard out easily.
Lady Chaburláková presented her minimal yet physically very demanding body-art piece. With laser lights on the sides of her arms and legs, she was laying on two chairs positioned as far as possible so that the light glowing in darkness form a line.
Martina Kubinová, the third exceptional woman, was dressed in an elegant, blue suit wearing a several meters long hose around her neck which she used to clean local tram stops. She would suck cigarette butts into the hose using her own breath and then spit them out into trash cans. Her performance attracted a lot of attention of passers-by. She completed her absurd yet noble activity by getting onto a tram and taking off.
Sitting in front of local supermarket was Petr Pavlán. In his performance entitled B52, he spread a map of Yugoslavia in front of himself while preparing the famous short cocktail B52 which is meant to be set on fire and then immediately consumed. In the process of drinking, he was marking places of NATO bombarding in Yugoslavia. Having gulped down six B52‘s, he burnt the map and left completely drunk.
Some of the other performances were carried out in the form of little etudes - such as visually stunning performance by Jakub Valášek who painted symbols on an empty building with fire at night - while others were sophisticated performances aimed at public space and others were spontaneous events. Despite the fact that Turniket is a student festival, its second annual was excellent in its quality. Compared to often routine “professional“ festivals, Turniket radiated lively and wild atmosphere. Young artists often repeat certain themes and modes of expression which each generation needs to try out again and again, yet the quickly respond to contemporary situation and issues. The upcoming generation is burdened neither with formerly ubiquitous protest against official establishment nor with the frivolity of performance at the beginning of the 1990‘s which lost its enemy. Today’s young performers look for their opponent within themselves and careless masses whom they try to intrigue, provoke and use.

01.04.1999