VERA RYKLOVA
©2021 Work-in-progress
the only real thing to do #1
the only real thing to do is an intended series of recorded performances. My idea is to produce seven video pieces that are centred around one same theme, the experience of pain. Each piece will be performed at different location (an Irish farms/rural place).
In a broader sense this project questions the role of faith. Challenged by my own, I mean to display the human struggle to achieve a state where need and desire are united. Through placing the female body within an environment that is typically associated with the male labour the work creates dynamics between two opposite powers - receiving and inducing (the pain).
The number seven is an archetypal number with which I refer to the Book of Genesis and the theory of human-life patterns. My approach to the subject of faith treats two different outlooks. One is concerned with religion and its practice - the faith is God. The other with psychology of human development - the faith is a process of one’s way of learning and making sense of life, finding its purpose. The work also looks at the place women have occupied in patriarchal societies (set out by the biblical relationship of Adam and Eve) while playing with the different contexts of the word ‘faith’ used in language. One which refers to a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion. The other expresses a complete trust and confidence in that any aspiration can be materialised if one sustains the required effort and maintains a dedicated pursuit.
Through the choice of locations, I want to deeper my sense of Irishness while using acquired knowledge of the history and my intimate experience of the place prior and during my performance.
For the first piece in the series, titled the real thing to do #1, I performed in the back yard of a vacant farm cottage in the countryside near Thomastown (Co. Kilkenny). After executing the performance, I worked on the sound composition where the voice over was inspired by a Buddhist meditation.
In this work the experience of the physical pain represents the painful course of maintaining a complete trust, a strong belief in attaining what has been longed for or promised. It is a metaphor for an emotional pain. The action depicts the process of striving, while the body is where the psychological drama takes place. The only real thing one can do is to accept the pain and bear that experience. The more one tries to avoid it the further away one is from its ending. This piece could be even regarded as a meditation on pain. It also carries a variety of other implications (open to viewer's own interpretation) one of which contemplates the history of the relationship of the Catholic Church to the female body and the role of a woman within the concept of religion.