Offsite

Office of Interrogation Meet Factory
Prague, December 1, 2017, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.

Jindrich Chalupecky Society in collaboration with Meet Factory presented a new performance by Triple Candie.

The event, which consisted of several dozen interviews, took place on a set that vaguely evoked a decrepit 20th-century government office. On the back wall, covered in pages from the London Financial Times, hung two romantic landscape paintings, Christ on the cross, and two small flags that combine elements of the U.S. and Czech flags. On a nearby cabinet was a small bust of a Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, chief founder and first president of Czechoslovakia.

Triple Candie, sitting behind a large wooden desk, summoned artists in the room to step forward and sit in a chair. They then asked each artist, in stern English, a series of questions. The intent was to determine whether or not the artists were contributing in meaningful ways to the country's almost 30-year-old capitalist economy. Artists not from Czechia were immediately dismissed. Those who were not represented by commercial galleries and had no interested in making money from their practices were reprimanded and dismissed. If an artist claimed to aspire to support her/him/themselves with their practice, Triple Candie ink-stamped a piece of paper, signed it, and sent the artist to room 234 down the hall, where an exhibition of the Meet Factory's artists-in-residence was taking place. Very few artists received stamped approval.

Many of the interrogated artists were confused. Even in 2017, few Czech artists aspire to commercial gallery representation or participation in the art market. Several voiced nostalgia for the state arts union under Communist rule. The expeirence upset a few, who complained to the Meet Factory's administration.