Journey to the sources of contemporary political imagination
2024
4K video, 12 minutes
6 black and white inkjet prints on cotton paper, 128 x 85 cm


Using black and white analogue film, between 2022 and 2024 I used my free time to document the second episode of the first season of the cult American television series X-Files. In my view it was an important cultural phenomenon that made it possible during the 1990s to reintroduce conspiracy theories into the political space of Central and Eastern Europe. Orientated vertically, the compositions of the photographs include a TV set, a cabinet and a white wall in the background.

The material was scanned and adjusted in post-production, resulting in two art projects.

The first is a ten-minute 4K resolution video consisting of a slideshow composed of more than one hundred randomly selected reproductions taken from this episode. The frames are mutually superimposed and merge into one other. This results in unexpected interpretational shortcuts referencing themes such state surveillance, personal freedom, belief in scientific knowledge as well as the rejection of its historical limits. The video includes a musical component, imbuing it with a strong emotional quality.

The second work is a series of 6 large-format prints. These refer to several scenes from the same episode of the already mentioned TV series in which the main protagonists – their heads tilted slightly back and eyes fixed upwards – gaze somewhere outside of the frame of the TV screen. These photographs play around both with themes of expectation and the phenomenon of alienation. They balance on the edge between gravitas and irony.

photo: Tomáš Souček, Tomáš Knoflíček and author’s archive