Marie Štindlová has been working with the text in the installation for several years, and quite consciously develops sensual descriptions in it. In the current installation, for example, we can enjoy these descriptions: “Sometimes a branch with leaves dampened by a short rain brushes against my bare shoulder... I put my palm on the top of the dark, stained table. The spot was still a little heated from the sunlight... My knees hurt unbearably after a long bus ride; I’ve had it since puberty.” These are small intimate experiences that, as the author herself writes, seem like set pieces or details. We can also find here a parallel to situationist drifting, or the commonplace museum tourist audio guides. The viewer can also just stay to watch and not be attacked by the story or the text, and just enjoy the installation and the space itself in relative silence.
In fact, the architectural layout of Galerie mladých provides hidden acoustic features. In some places, one can even hear one’s voice in the reflections, which creates an almost illusory sound hallucination. The architectural design of the Somewhere exhibition installation by Maria Štindlová partly builds on these acoustic features, but at the same time disrupts them and creates a system of intimate corners in which the viewer is free to get lost. The audio is handled through a limited number of wireless headphones, which both increase the comfort of movement and allow a more subjective experience of the space. The sound labyrinth is based on a meandering authorial text, which carries a content line based on some ephemeral memories from vacation.
The alternation of overly animated passages with less animated ones creates a slightly dramatic ripple of emotions and impressions, which then resonate more or less fundamentally in the memory of the listeners. Instead of a video projection, which was originally intended to be part of the installation, the artist preferred an independent self-projection. The viewer thus finds themselves in a situation where they are seemingly free to wander around the gallery, listening to the story and projecting the individual audio passages themselves. Marie Štindlová (*1990 in Prague) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. In her work, she considers the possibilities of text in visual art, often applied in combination with architecture. She creates atmospheric installations that as a whole could be described as poems. She is also a member of the TMA group and is currently working with Dana Balážová and Markéta Filipová on frescoes.
