Installation at ISODRIFT, Obejvak Project Space, Lihovarska 12, 10 Sept. 2020
Photographs of the thirty statues posted along the balustrades of Charles Bridge (two under restoration at the time, and to be replaced by copies, are represented by photographs of the photographs posted in their place) are here lined up in the order encountered when walking along the bridge, oppositely facing pairs now back-to-back. The sculptures were taken up close with an up-shifted lens so that the whole sculpture would appear in frame, with the effect of making the upper figures seem more remote. (Walter Benjamin in Berlin Childhood around 1900 observes, from another perspective, that the pedestals of statues, being closer to the eye, held greater interest to him as a child than the figures mounted on them.) The photographs are accompanied by two texts from Franz Kafka’s letters: a poem from 1903 to read while walking along the bridge looking up at the sculptures on northward side, and an extract from a letter of 1916 on the return walk looking up at those on the southward side.
