Submission
May 18, 2024

Clueless Agency: The Stair Case -Nah …Nobody Home (Ding-Dong Lullaby)

Group show curated by PGS Collective @Laichter House, Prague
April 20, 2024

Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance

Proto Gallery Systems functions as a nomadic tool that, through practice, explores new approaches to collective creation and curation; it gives space to experiment with the implementation of complex artistic outputs and their subsequent presentations. The most recent series, titled Clueless Agency, nonlinearly develops a story inspired by the genre of detective novels, in an attempt to articulate the relationship to chaos and its influence on the socio-cultural perception of reality.

The following documentation captures a one-day, off-site show and a performance that took place at a former publishing house in Prague, Czech Republic. This performative event served as a symbolic point of closure for a string of shows that developed over time as a part of the Clueless Agency series. However, it was an ending that did not simply look back but also rushed forward: Entering the house, visitors were invited up the squeaking stairs to join a young/old lady in her curious cartomancy. Forced to pass through the raging buzz of a ghostly drone darting around the stairwell, they sat down at her table as she offered them a cup of tea, apparently sweetened by the squirming contents of an antique porcelain sugar bowl. Photographs scattered across the table in front of her presented them with a spatial and temporal confusion: altered, twisted, and technologically fictionalized glimpses of past shows threatened to distort and fracture any definite reminiscence, much like the troubled and fragmented memory of a deranged detective – a figure who lurked in the background of all Clueless Agency productions. Like the recollections held in his confused mind, these photographs extrapolated and twisted the previous exhibition documentations, which were fed into a neural network model and spat out back into the world as weird clones of the project’s past, instantly becoming a no-less real part of the story – the full extent of which will be published in a forthcoming book in which all “cases,” including the “stair-case,” come together. 

Matyáš Maláč - Trap, 100x100 cm, oil on canvas, 2022
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Robuche, Carlagio, 75x50 cm, mixed media printed on Acrylic and Aluminium, 2022
Vojtěch Novák, "A" is for Alibi, 125x80 cm, oil on glass, 2023
Vojtěch Novák, Master of the Moor, 60x40 cm, oil on glass, 2023
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Clueless Agency (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), Nobody Home, participative performance
Paul Barsch, Dead Hand, hand-turned birch wood, painted cardboard, 2019
Paul Barsch, Feelings, condom packs, needles, various insects, 2021
Paul Barsch, Feelings, condom packs, needles, various insects, 2021
Nela Britaňáková, object from The Intertwined Zone series, ceramics and hair, 2023
Adrian Altman, Untitled, wood, metal, oil, varnish, petroleum jelly, 2022
Jakub Hájek and František Hanousek, Carnival of the rabble: dissolved destinies, various dimensions, mixed media, 2022
Jan Olt, Bertička, Service Unit, various dimensions, mixed media, 2022
Anne De Vries, In Control- Resist Drama Of Life, UV print on vinyl, 2023
Installation view
Olbram Pavlíček, Powerlocked@@@.softy€&254cheese, combinated technique, 2023
Matyáš Maláč, Never Look Back (Testing), 65x55cm, oil on canvas, 2023
Adam Žufníček, Rethinking Magic, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 2023
Installation view
Ludwig Wandinger, Installation view
Ludwig Wandinger, Borroughs´ Last Breath, digital artwork, 2023
Ludwig Wandinger, Installation View
Performative reading, Seven-channel sound installation, 45 minutes.
Clueless Agency, Nobody Home, drone, fabrics and wood, 2023
Clueless Agency, Nobody Home, drone, fabrics and wood, 2023
Laichter House
Elena Pecenová and Vojtěch Novák, "G" Is for Gumshoe, digital photography, 2023
Elena Pecenová and Vojtěch Novák, "G" Is for Gumshoe, digital photography, 2023
Curatorial text by Noemi Purkrábková
Curatorial text by Noemi Purkrábková

Clueless Agency: The Stair Case -Nah …Nobody Home (Ding-Dong Lullaby)

Laichter House, Prague
April 20, 2024

Artists: Adam Žufníček, Adrian Altman, Anne de Vries, Elena Pecenová, Jakub Hájek & František Hanousek, Jan Olt, Ludwig Wandinger, Matyáš Maláč, Nela Britaňáková, Olbram Pavlíček, Paul Barsch, Robuche, Vojtěch Novák.

Curation: PGS Collective

Performer: Marie-Luisa Purkrábková

Soundtrack: Ludwig Wandinger

Performative reading: Elena Pecenová, František Fekete, Jan Jindřich Karásek, Jan Škrob, Laura Zvěřina, Libor Staněk II., Ondřej Buddeus.

Text: Noemi Purkrábková

Photography: Vojtěch Novák/ All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and the gallery.

Since 2021, the Clueless Agency exhibition series has taken place in a burnt-out hut in the Iron Mountains, in FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art (Karlin Studios), in the Prison Museum Uničov during UFF 11, at Montez press radio and No Moon in New York, on the board of a half-submerged ocean liner MS Mediterranean Sky in Athens, and at a fusion reactor facility of Tokamak Golem in Prague – with the upcoming shows to take place at the Královice stables.

 

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