Inauguration of the sculpture The Birth and Simultaneously Damnation of the Sphere

Happening by the opening of the 8th station of the three-state sculptural pilgrims’ way Kristek Thaya Glyptotheque.
Lubo Kristek’s happenings are not based on an Aristotelian concept of theatre. They generally do not have a clear plot, solution or narrative line. They constitute a peculiar semiotic system, a system of signs, meanings or values.
Kristek’s scenic metaphors offer many different explanations. But he gives no explanation. He doesn’t want the spectator to understand what the artist wanted to say. For him, the important that the spectator perceives and experiences, and then processes this experience completely in his own way.
In the 8th happening at Jan’s Castle the spectators arrived in a night landscape of bizarre figures who moved in a space of green shadows. From the trees hung massive wooden sculptures representing the human senses. It addition to the pleasing tones of a cello, one could hear unclearly articulated human noises. Light appeared, and the society began to develop. The figures included, for example, a painter, a policeman with his truncheon, a priest, a transvestite, a girl with a doll and a king with a crown made of leaves. Humanity jointly created a breathing whole that bloomed.
All of a sudden, the king established order with his clear audible commands, and the society moved on. It had wholly succumbed to material addictions – gluttony, Mammon, the immediate satisfaction of desire – organisation increased, the policeman threatened everybody and assigned each character a personal identification number and a telephone. The society was so structured that it stopped being fruitful and capable of communication. People held on desperately to their earpieces, but the connection didn’t work. They had reached the edge of the abyss. Society ceased to function as a whole and was falling apart; the king falled and was imprisoned in a straightjacket; the work of art as the symbol of culture burned, and the high flames swallowed everything they touched, apart from the senses high in the trees.
The only one of the characters to survive was the water element – the personification of the river Thaya, who brought the cross to mankind’s grave as a memento and strewed flowers around. However, the fire had uncovered a new dimension behind the picture which had been concealed before. A black and white bird flew about, and behind ruins they discovered a hidden chapel, which they revealed. Inside was the ceramic work Birth and Simultaneously Damnation of the Sphere, referencing the indestructibility of absolute energy, the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The unveiling was accompanied by a light that illuminated the entire landscape. The black and white bird flew off together; the symbolic unity was re-established.