Nobody’s Land: Arrival

Their land is far from all people. Or is that distance just a dream, living right next to you, outside your skylight, behind your apartment wall? It’s a territory that can only be found with precise coordinates. They live their whole lives in these far off places and few people know about it. Every day, emissaries of our society go to them for a few hours to lend them their hands and feet for a fee, and then leave them to their rummaging again. For thinking is the only free act. They need no one to do it. In appearance they resemble men, but in characteristics they sometimes differ. They need two bodies to exist freely. They control light with their voice, open doors from a distance. Is such a life possible? Is it really possible to live when all the activities are performed by alien hands? And what if there’s no other body in range?

A new art project produced by Vzlet, curated by Marta Ljubková, Petr Prokop and Jiří Havelka.

In preparing this long-term project, we started from the notion of “blind spots” used by sociologist Daniel Prokop in his book of the same name. He meant those places in society that we do not know about – we overlook them because they are not visible at first glance. It is from these places that sadness and frustration most often arise. We have taken this connection and used it loosely – looking for what uncharted communities are around us.

For this project, we approached students and recent graduates of the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre at DAMU, where we teach, and offered them to approach it in a completely creative way.We are not about creating more and more productions, but rather a kind of research through the arts – a stage form can be created, but a film, installation, video or performative walk can also be created.