PARALLELS OF PLACES
BOSKOVICE, U Císařské street
Installation / Site-specific, mirror, oriented strand boards, wooden inner construction, 2022
Photo: Kateřina Trnková and author’s archive
The public space installation called “Parallels of Places” emerged within the multi-genre “Boskovice for the Jewish Town” festival. The composition of bent mirrors reflects the horizons of Boskovice roofs as well as the town’s architectural vertical. It rotates the masses of the buildings offering new spatial associations: it connects the viewpoints of the old Jewish quarter and the contemporary town of Boskovice.
The work responds to the local collective memory trauma of the once divided town whose Jewish citizens were forcibly and abruptly uprooted in 1942. They were sent to concentration camps, from which almost none of them ever returned.
The large mirror surface of the installation reflects the tower of a Christian church, the safe world that remained untouched. By contrast, the apex of the installation is broken, symbolizing the interruption of the life in the Jewish quarter and, simultaneously, referring to Ukraine. (The festival took place at the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the building was just providing shelter for war refugees). The link between the present and past tragedy is evident. Due to changing weather, course of time and daylight conditions, the installation is permanently in flow: once it is mirroring the blue sky, piece of which is imaginary drawn into the interiors of the house, while another time the entire work completely disappears from the viewer’s eyes. The installation is interactive – with passers-by walking and their viewpoints altering, it appears to be in constant motion. By the unique impact of bent mirror edges, the reflection (image) of the town deforms, collapses, spills around, thus everything blending together.
Matters disappear in time, genius loci remains.
