Sráč Sam
129 Days Without Accident

Sráč Sam (b. 1969) is a visual artist and curator who works and lives in Česká Bříza, where she has built an independent cultural space creating conditions for the application of the principles of ecological and economic sustainability and responsibility, cooperation and care. Her artistic and socially engaged practice focuses on critiquing institutional and social power structures, to which she creates her own parallel models of existence. With her approach, which is close to the principles of anarchy, she anticipated the contemporary feminist and queer wave and the ethical turn in art.

The exhibition presents the artistic work of Sráč Sam as part of the discursive background from which the artist has long drawn. It is the record and result of a process of settling and negotiation from the first incentive to its opening, involving changing conditions, work and collaboration.  It consists of a collection of objects and works based on the motif of the nearby factory, which represents a parallel to the network of relationships in the artistic operation. The main protagonists of the situation presented in the House of the Lords of Kunštát are the engineering forms bearing witness to production processes and physical human labour, which are also the basis for the works of Sucker Sam and the invited artists. 

129 Days Without Injury is the illuminated welcome panel behind the factory entrance. A digital board with positive motivation is an alienating counter to the focus and vulnerability of exploited bodies. Machine shops, like other heavy industries, exemplify a system of political economy that has changed power and production relations in society and become a tool of biopolitics. The work and lives of individuals of many generations have become dependent and controlled by the links of economic rationalization under harsh working conditions, regardless of the impact of these changes on the needs and lives of individuals. The actions of institutions sometimes create unequal relationships that are usually forgotten. By integrating dialogue into the preparation process, their positions can be gradually equalised. The creation of discursive relational templates/forms can lead to the gradual liberation of the disadvantaged at all levels.

Participating artists: Eva Brodská, František Fekete, Kristina Láníková, Václav Sika, Ludmila Smejkalová

galerie sam83
Sráč Sam

photo: Barbora Trnková