The never boulder

director: Lumír Hladík

original title: Už nikdy tenhle balvan

year: 1978

running time: 2 min.

synopsis

In the second half of the 1970s, Lumír Hladík realised several action art events within the Central Bohemian Region where he grew up. However, in retrospect, he says that choosing the landscape was merely just a tool, like using a piece of paper to draw on. In these filmed recordings of Hladík’s action art, the landscape remains somewhat anonymous and only the performer's trajectories paint a theme onto it. In this case, Hladík attempted to "end" the boulder that had "provoked" him since childhood.

biography

Since 1981, Lumír Hladík has lived in Canada where he creates works on the border between conceptual art, action art, drawing, and video. However, the beginnings of his work date back to the 1970s when action art was created on the margins of the Czech art scene. Lumír Hladík was an active member in the body art circle alongside Petr Štembera, Jan Mlčoch and Karel Miler, but he bonded more with his friend Jiří Kovanda through the civility of his own action art. Hladík was among the few who actually documented his action art through film, with many of the events taking form as temporary interventions within the landscape. These recordings, which were originally shot on 8 mm colour film, were recently digitised in the National Film Archive and accompanied with the artist’s own explanations.