HUMAN IDENTITY
BODY LANDSCAPE
ARCHIVES OF PERCEPTION
INTERACTION WITH LANDSCAPE
Miloš Šejn | Českých Bratří 312 | CZ-50601 Jičín | T +420 723 701 658 | milos [at-sign] sejn.cz
AllForWeb | © 2008 sejn
BODY LANDSCAPE
Chtonic and media body
The development of art in the 1990s is interesting in two moments. It is the relationship of the human body and new technological media and the discovery of a new animistic or ecological relationship of man to the landscape and the Earth as a living being ... . At that time, his first photographically recorded events took the form of a wandering or expressively body-art furnace, such as Conscious Dreaming (1967), which depicts the body of a recumbent artist merging with the foliage landscape. These bodily positions evoked analogously the inner states of merging with nature. This event is interesting not only because it foreshadows similar events of Karel Miler almost 10 years, but also by continuity with the tradition of Czech art, where we encounter archetypal relation to landscape and country as a living body. The actual action characteristics of Šejns work gradually evolved from the process and ritual concept of drawing with natural pigments and elements (fire) at specific localities in the open landscape. From this point of view, the performance and body-art character of his photographically recorded flame drawings in the Palaeolithic Cave Mažarná in Slovakia (1982) or the torches with a torch on the top of Zebín, thematizing the relationship between the human body and the starry sky. Body-drawing gestures in space, Šejn became increasingly aware of the nature of dancing. In recent years he has expanded the range of means of expression to include new media. In the installation-performance Video Sonic Body Light in 1994 at the Plasy Monastery he transformed his own body movement into electronically monitored sound and digital images. In this performance, his body was both transparent in the structure of architecture and a living musical instrument of the environment.
Excerpt from text by Jiří Zemánek and Miloš Vojtěchovský, L/art au corps v MAC, Marseille, 1996
Fungus / Videosonic Body Lightning, 1994
Body of the Night, 2001
A Yellow Body, 2009
Ladislav Kesner: Being Landscape, ARBOR VITAE 2010
The development of art in the 1990s is interesting in two moments. It is the relationship of the human body and new technological media and the discovery of a new animistic or ecological relationship of man to the landscape and the Earth as a living being ... . At that time, his first photographically recorded events took the form of a wandering or expressively body-art furnace, such as Conscious Dreaming (1967), which depicts the body of a recumbent artist merging with the foliage landscape. These bodily positions evoked analogously the inner states of merging with nature. This event is interesting not only because it foreshadows similar events of Karel Miler almost 10 years, but also by continuity with the tradition of Czech art, where we encounter archetypal relation to landscape and country as a living body. The actual action characteristics of Šejns work gradually evolved from the process and ritual concept of drawing with natural pigments and elements (fire) at specific localities in the open landscape. From this point of view, the performance and body-art character of his photographically recorded flame drawings in the Palaeolithic Cave Mažarná in Slovakia (1982) or the torches with a torch on the top of Zebín, thematizing the relationship between the human body and the starry sky. Body-drawing gestures in space, Šejn became increasingly aware of the nature of dancing. In recent years he has expanded the range of means of expression to include new media. In the installation-performance Video Sonic Body Light in 1994 at the Plasy Monastery he transformed his own body movement into electronically monitored sound and digital images. In this performance, his body was both transparent in the structure of architecture and a living musical instrument of the environment.
Excerpt from text by Jiří Zemánek and Miloš Vojtěchovský, L/art au corps v MAC, Marseille, 1996
Fungus / Videosonic Body Lightning, 1994Body of the Night, 2001A Yellow Body, 2009Ladislav Kesner: Being Landscape, ARBOR VITAE 2010
