film, 18 min 53 sec, site-specific installation

Kateřina Konvalinová presents a short film inspired by reality show and stand-up comedy genres. The work explores the limits of psychological care, which is rooted in the cultivation of individual needs and pursuit of individual fulfillment. Konvalinová opposes it with rave culture, presented as a collective experience of togetherness and resistance. Dance becomes a tool for restoring physical power and joy of life. For NARRACJE, the artist creates a site-specific setting for the film, connecting party atmosphere with meditative DIY water-fountains and other symbols of rejuvenation, healing and purification. The need for therapy and healing becomes widespread in contemporary society, challenged by the pandemic as well as multi-layered economical, humanitarian and ecological crises that are only predicted to deepen. The goal can now hardly be to pursue progress based on excessive consumerism, exploitation and inequality: in order to survive on (and with) this planet, we ought to look for more sustainable forms of togetherness, where individual happiness goes hand in hand with solidarity with other human and non-human beings. Through her work, Kateřina Konvalinová explores the notion of collective rituals as powerful tools of restoring wellbeing and of transformation, based on the principles of care, love and sympathy.

Director of Photography: Michal Blecha, Jiří Žák
Music: Jana Chm
Sound: Jan Vacek
Director/Editor: Kateřina Konvalinová
Featuring: Anna Šmídová (therapist), Jana Baierová, Vanda Michalská, Velkej Táda, Erika Velická, Oskar Velický, Karolína Vojáčková, Franta Štindl, Kateřina Švejdová

Kateřina Konvalinová (born 1991) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studio of Intermedia Creation with Tomáš Vaňek, Jiří Skála and Jiří Kovanda in 2020. She completed a semester at the Prague DAMU, Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, and a six-month internship at the Yogyakarta Institute of Art in Indonesia. Her work can be characterized as autobiographical fiction, based on personal experience and amateurish research of interpersonal / interspecies processes and relationships, seeing the personal as political. She focuses on the so-called small life revolutions (life changing experiences such as falling in love, first LSD experience or a bad trip, etc.), as well as on the physical and mental symptoms of our times (pain, anxiety, fatigue, depression) and on psychological-therapeutic tools such as cracks, which can be used to reassess the current situation and deconstruct the status quo. Video and performance are the yin and yang of her artistic practice.