Installation at ISODRIFT, Obejvák Project Space, Lihovarská 1060/12 Praha, 10 Sept. 2020. Practical circumstances prevented the flight taking the planned course; see below for the determined course in three segments.
Their flight is knowledge, space is their alienation.
― Saint-John Perse, Oiseaux (Birds), translated by Robert Fitzgerald
― Saint-John Perse, Oiseaux (Birds), translated by Robert Fitzgerald
These arrows, laid down on a network of paths in the planted woodland of Košíře-Motol natural park, evidently marked some trail to be followed, and I duly obliged by following their labyrinthine thread. Some hand had poured three strokes of limestone powder for each arrow (the images here are negatives, so the arrows, originally white, are black) and the consequent variations in the arrows caught my eye, along with the visual correspondence of arrows on the ground with shorthand depictions of birds in the air (I imagine swallows or swifts). Ever methodical, I paced out the gaps between arrows, making a note of the distance between them (over two thousand paces in all). Nine years later the arrows have taken flight from the ground and have invaded the interior space of Obejvák studio.
Successive arrows along the trail are placed here on the wall at a horizontal distance apart to scale, ¾cm for each pace in reality; when this distance is less than the length of the A4 paper on which the arrow is printed, the arrow is placed above the one it succeeds. The arrow is tilted at an angle according to the number of paces separating it from the last arrow, taken modulo 4 (downwards a little if the number of paces was 3, 7, 11, etc., horizontal if the number of paces was 4, 8, 12, etc., upwards a little if the number of paces was 5, 9, 13, etc., and more upwards if the number of paces was 6, 10, 14, etc.). An arrow is raised a little higher than its predecessor if this predecessor has no arrow placed above it. In this way the swoop of swallows (or drift of swifts) collectively map out the pacing I made nine years ago.
First segment
Second segment
Third segment
