CV

JAKUB JANSA

Jakub Jansa (b. 1989, liuves in Prague, CZ) is an artist who freely combines various media (video, performance, installation). The project Club of Opportunities was launched in Prague, and the next chapters were presented, for example, at the Athens Biennale, Greece (2018), at CEAAC in Strasbourg, France (2018), at Pioneer Works in New York, USA (2018) and at HEK, Basel, Swiss (2019). For the past two years he has been the head of the Studio of Temporary Arts at the Film Department of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He curated a series of exhibitions for the CC in New York and co-initiated a collective project at Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel.

Jakub Jansa has collaborated on Club with cinematographers Kryštof Hlůže and Kryštof Melka, philosopher Kamil Nábělek, performers Jan Kostiha, Patrik Petr and Ester Geislerová. The second episode “April showers bring May flowers” created together with artist and fashion designer Karolína Juříková.

Contactsjakubjansa@icloud.com +420 777343653

Complete portfoliojakubjansa.com

Description of current artistic practice After several projects dealing with the topics of instant social relations, manipulation and self-development (ex. Spiritual Fitness, 2016-), my current ongoing project Club of Opportunities reflects on the strategies of dark-side influencers, and poses questions of hierarchical relationships and authority. The Club (Ongoing, 6 episodes) takes the form of a real-time epic by capturing the voices of engaging storytellers. It features the perspective of generally unassuming entities, such as a celery root, by giving them personality and voice.

This complex story, developed through videos and multimedia installations, creates the universe of The Club. It draws from everyday culture in today‘s globalized world. Philosopher Kamil Nabelek acts as both commentator and performer. Thanks to Nabelek‘s philosophical interpretation of celery, this root vegetable adopts a metaphorical meaning, which is the central point of the story. The celery is no longer just a vegetable; it becomes alive. It is transformed into the main hero of The Club, a rebellious celery root named Red Herring.

As a whole, the narrative grows organically and is reminiscent of a typical TV series. Each episode (i.e. exhibition) introduces new characters and plot twists. Each exhibition creates an environment with hidden inner dramaturgy, bringing the viewer into a playful field, full of straightforward emotions, absurd connections, subversive moves, and with the end running into the gentle mist. Unlike in films, I do not rely only on the one-dimensionality of screens. Instead, the narrative is gradually revealed through video, various objects, and ongoing live action.

Residencies 2017: CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR2015: Five Eleven, New York, US2013: Watch Out, Engstligenalp, Basel, CH

Selected Solo shows 2019, Ten Years Night, Fotopub Project Space (Mihelic‘s Gas), Ljubljana, SLO2018, Club of Opportunities at PAF, Pioneers Works, New York, US2018, Britannica Bootcamp, CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR2018, Keeping in Line NoD, Prague, CZ2018, Spiritual Fitness, Hot Dock Gallery, Bratislava, SK2018, My name is Red Herring, Fotograf Gallery, Prague, CZ2018, April showers bring May flowers, feat. K. Juříková GAMU, Prague, CZ2017, Club of Opportunities: Bowling Bar, Hunt Kastner, Prague, CZ2017, Look at this fern, Berlinskej Model, Prague, CZ2016, Spiritual Fitness, PAF, Olomouc, CZ2016, Spiritual Fitness, AM180, Prague, CZ2014, Engstligenalp, StartUp, City gallery of Prague, Prague, CZ

Selected Group shows 2019, Avatars, Doppelgangers, HEK, Basel, CH2019, Stumbling Through the Uncanny Valley, CCA, Tel-Aviv, IL 2019, Healing 2.0, Meet Factory Gallery, Prague, CZ2018, Club of Opportunities at 6th Athens Biennale, Athens, GR2018, Healing, Czech Center Berlin, D2017, In a Landscape, Brno House of Arts, Brno,CZ2016, Better Ideas for Life 2, Karlin Studios, Prague, CZ2016, Better Ideas for Life 1, A. Klingental, Basel, CH2016, Name of the project is project itself, CC, NY, US2014, Coriander Tunnel, City gallery of Prague, Prague, CZ2013, The shot shrapnel will calm the observer, CCC., Beijing, China2013, Watch Out, Engstligenalp, Bern, CH

References Artforum 02/2019, review → LinkArt Viewer, Keeping in Line → LinkArt Viewer, Britanica Bootcamp → Linke-flux, 6th Athens Biennale → LinkTzvetnik, My name is Red Herring → LinkTzvetnik, April Showers → LinkO Fluxo, Britanica Bootcamp → LinkArtlist, Personal Profile → LinkTzvetnik, Bowling Bar → LinkAQNB, Club of Opportunities → LinkAQNB, Spiritual Fitness → LinkArtmix, Personal Profile → Link

Video linksCLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.2: April showers bring May flowersCLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.3: My name is Red HerringCLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.4: Britannica BootcampCLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.5: Keeping in LineCLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.6: Ten Years Night

https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201902/jakub-jansa-78477http://artviewer.org/jakub-jansa-at-nod-gallery/http://artviewer.org/?s=britanica+bootcamphttp://artviewer.org/jakub-jansa-at-ceaac/http://artviewer.org/jakub-jansa-at-ceaac/https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/214800/6th-athens-biennaleanti/http://tzvetnik.online/portfolio_page/jansa-jakub-at-fotograf-galery/http://tzvetnik.online/portfolio_page/jansa-jakub-karolina-jurikova-at-gallery-amu/https://www.ofluxo.net/britanica-bootcamp-by-jakub-jansa-at-ceaac/https://www.artlist.cz/en/jakub-jansa-108671/http://tzvetnik.online/portfolio_page/club-of-opportunities/http://tzvetnik.online/portfolio_page/club-of-opportunities/https://www.aqnb.com/2017/08/30/jakub-jansas-club-of-opportunities-welcomes-you-to-a-temporary-new-world-in-the-middle-of-your-brain-a-bowling-club/https://www.aqnb.com/2017/08/30/jakub-jansas-club-of-opportunities-welcomes-you-to-a-temporary-new-world-in-the-middle-of-your-brain-a-bowling-club/https://www.aqnb.com/2017/02/21/manipulation-and-familiar-techniques-in-jakub-jansas-spiritual-fitness-at-paf-olomouc/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUs3DjwGmgohttps://youtu.be/XxsAXKd-hJghttps://youtu.be/7MU6QbR__qghttps://youtu.be/pL6G-eVBOC4https://youtu.be/Ech6dFTvr2shttps://youtu.be/IVd-4ZWo_BI

The science-fiction writer Aldous Huxley once wrote in a Brave New World, “great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”

In Jakub Jansa’s ongoing series “Club of Opportunities”, currently on view at the Fotopub Project Space in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the young Czech artist presents the sixth iteration of an immersive multi-channel art project that explores polyphonic ideas about the nature of reality in the 21st century, albeit with a silent twist.

Instead of bombarding viewers with overly didactic wall labels and long convoluted texts, the video installation is composed of narrators who debate the nature of reality from the perspective of a celery root, their voices overlapping and bleeding into the exhibition space like an echo-chamber of white noise.

Several videos of the seminal Czech philosopher Kamil Nabelek are juxtaposed to sounds and videos of shoes tapping. The result being an amorphous blob and complete sensory overlap. If you’re looking for any sense of objective truth here, you won’t find it. Instead, all that is left is an apt metaphor for the current state of social and political debate today, or perhaps, the lack thereof.

The project takes partial inspiration from the genre of the epic. Yet, while Homer’s Odyssey compiled oral histories into an antiquated form of early human, social and political history, Jansa’s project accelerates through nonlinear arrangements of space and time like a creeping rootstock that rhizomatically shoots and spreads.

Above all, Jansa’s project invokes an emancipatory biosphere set against overlapping voices, angst ridden, near-future and uncertain scenarios. All of which seem to gesture towards an ever more plausible extinction event, one that threatens the entirety of human, plant and animal life, and, crucially, whether or not the ontology of a celery root would be able to survive such disastrous calamity.

Text by Dorian Batycka

https://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-club-of-opportunities-ep-1-br-bowling-bar/03-s1.e1-club-of-opportunities-pilot.pdfhttps://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-april-showers-bring-may-flowers-poster-by-martin-groch/04-s1.e2-april-showers-bring-may-flowers.pdfhttps://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-my-name-is-red-herring/05-s1.e3-my-name-is-red-herring.pdf

Prague has always been a city of the most absurd stories, from the tale of the golem - an animated anthropomorphic creature made of clay by Rabbi Loew in the sixteenth century - to Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorpbosis (1915), in which a human being turns into an insect. Storytelling and transformation are also key elements in “Club of Opportunities,” a series of performance environments the young Czech artist Jakub Jansa has been producing since 2017. To date, there have been five episodes, which have been presented in Prague, in Athens during last year’s Biennale, at Pioneer Works in New York and most recently again in Prague, at the gallery NoD, where Jansa’s exhibition bore the subtitle “Ep. 5: Keeping in Line.

One of the recurrent storytellers in these performances is a human being named Red Herring, who gradually transforms into a gnarly celeriac root. A few similar roots have previously sprouted on his fore-head. He utters mainly nonsense, but now and then there are flashes of insight, for example in episode three (My name is Red Herring, 2018) when he lists the ten rules for arguing with leftists without getting talked into a corner. In Keeping in Line, the topic under consideration is what advantages turning into an avocado instead of a celeriac root might have. He ponders the alternatives in a riveting dialogue with his alter ego, an individual who looks a bit like him.

But Red Herring appears only on-screen during these performances never live. The same applies to his alter ego, who appears on a separat screen of his own. Jansa puts a great deal of thought into the environment in which these screens are placed. For the show at NoD, the two screen faced one another in a long, narrow space along with a white-lacquere table or shelf that looked heavily designed but had no discernible function On one of the walls hung an intricately shaped mirror cutout reflectin the screen on which Herring’s interlocutor held forth. Futuristic barstool invited visitors to take a seat. Everything looked uncluttered, stylish and almost antiseptically clean, evoking consummate modern design. The main storyteller during all these performances is Kami Nábělek, a fairly eccentric Prague philosopher who makes live appearances at Jansa’s openings and then on occasion during the run of the shows. He delivers speeches full of scientific and pseudoscientific concepts concerning “the ontology and genealogy of celeriac.” Impressive nonsense keeps audiences spellbound thanks to the compelling suggestiveness of his words. While speaking, he holds up cleriac roots, lectures about the characteristics of the plant, and finally offers his listeners a glass of its freshly pressed juice. And they drink. That’s what’s so astonishing: Even though the performance is stunningly absurd, the audience is drawn in. And that’s the point: Jansa, with Nábělek’s help, is demonstrating the power of suggestion exerted on us by stories, which have lost none of their ability to hypnotize in the digital age-as demonstrated by the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media. After all, the story is an art form that’s been keeping listeners under its spell since long before The Thousand and One Nights.

Text by Noemi Smolik

https://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-club-of-opportunities-ep-5-br-keeping-in-line/07-keeping-in-line.pdfhttps://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-club-of-opportunities-ep-4-br-britanica-bootcamp/06-britanica-bootcamp.pdfhttps://jakubjansa.com/content/2-documents/0-club-of-opportunities-ep-6/jansa_ten-years-night.pdf

2019, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 6„Ten Years Night“, at Mihelic‘s Gas, Ljubljana

2019, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 6„Ten Years Night“, at Mihelic‘s Gas, Ljubljana

2019, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 6„Ten Years Night“, at Mihelic‘s Gas, Ljubljana

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 1-5at PAF, Pioneer Works, NY

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 1-5at PAF, Pioneer Works, NY

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 1-5at PAF, Pioneer Works, NY

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 5„Keeping in Line“, at Nod Gallery, Prague

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 1-5at Athens Biennale

2018, CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep. 4„Britannica Bootcamp“ at CEAAC, Strasbourg

2019