Anonymous remained anonymous

director: Lumír Hladík

original title: Neznámý zůstal neznámý

year: 1977

running time: 1 min.

synopsis

Whether Lumír Hladík was engaged with action art events in totalitarian Czechoslovakia or in Canada, he often placed his art in a forest environment. The character of a cultural landscape or, in contrast, the Canadian wilderness, influenced the topics that Hladík explores. In the action event Anonymous remained anonymous, he made a futile attempt to deanonymize a tree.

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.