Untitled

director: Radim Labuda

original title: Bez názvu

year: 2003

running time: 2 min.

synopsis

This video, in which two men—one of them in a suit, the other naked—engage in their daily morning routine in a shared bathroom, was made by Radim Labuda as his first video performance. Labuda’s early work is characterized by an interest in the dynamics of partner relations as well as broader social relations, in the representation of the power relations of domination and subordination but also subversion. Representations of physicality, including nudity, can imply self-acceptance, sincerity, and decisiveness or at other times inadequacy and insecurity, depending on the context.

biography

Radim Labuda graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at STU in Bratislava, and then, after a year in Daniel Fischer’s Studio of Free Creation at VŠVU, he was accepted to Miloš Šejn’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, subsequently transferring to Michael Bielický’s New Media Studio. Labuda’s work focuses primarily on the medium of installation and video art, with sexuality, identity issues, and more complex frameworks of social interaction being frequent themes in his conceptually based works.