Lucie Rosenfeldová’s On The Management of Doubt (2014, part of the GMU collection of Moving Images) – the first of two videos in this exhibition – reflects a time when technology was seen as a model for self-management and self-improvement. Computers were predictable, and so could lay a stable grid over an increasingly unpredictable world. Coaching and therapy offered a rational, mechanistic approach to our personal and professional relationships and asked us to take responsibility for the things we put into the world and the results that came out. Ten years later the second video – a new collaboration between Lucie Rosenfeldová and Matěj Pavlík – tries to establish what has changed about the relationship between ourselves and the world we construct through technology. Our lives have become less predictable, while the systems we have for managing uncertainty – climate models, career plans or economic projections – are less effective. Chaos Therapy suggests that the management of doubt today no longer aims to eliminate uncertainty but instead, like the automatic drawings referenced in Pavlík’s new photographic prints, embraces the irrationality that was always part of culture and technology, overflowing the grid of predictability and embracing the things we can’t control.
LUCIE ROSENFELDOVÁ (b. 1986) is an artist and teacher based in Prague. In her practice, she primarily focuses on creating experimental documentaries rooted in artistic research. Through her films, she engages with questions surrounding the evolving dynamics between representation and the human body. Currently, she is conducting research on embodied memory and is exploring the potential for its scientific and artistic representation. Her work has been presented to both international and domestic audiences as part of a number of film screenings and exhibition projects. She received the main prize at Other Visions – PAF Olomouc in 2016. Rosenfeldová studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague, initially in the painting studio of Jiří Černický and later in the sculpture studio of Dominik Lang and Edith Jeřábková. Throughout her studies, she was a member of the Studio without a Master art group. In collaboration with Žil Vostalová, she currently co-leads the Art and Technology studio at UMPRUM.
MATĚJ PAVLÍK (b. 1991) is an artist and teacher. He studied photography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague, first under Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt, later under Martin Kohout. Since graduating in 2017, he has worked primarily with the media of photography and the moving image. In his artistic practice, Pavlík has worked with several art collectives and initiatives (Studio without a Master, Extrasensory-Aesthetics Research Working Group) that have engaged in a critical assessment of the tertiary education system and have attempted to come up with suitable alternative frameworks to prevailing artistic practices. Pavlík’s own artistic practice has included a number of original and interdisciplinary collaborations, among other things with Lucie Rosenfeldová at the Jelení Gallery, curatorial work for Prague’s etc. gallery, and participation in several editions of the Fotograf Festival. He has held solo exhibitions at the A.M.180 gallery and at Galerie mladých. Pavlík is a founding member of the Extrasensory-Aesthetics Research Working Group, which was among the winners of the 2020 Jindřich Chalupecký Award. He is currently in the fourth year of a doctoral studies programme at Brno’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Hradec Králové.
