/Game Over /Performance Festival – Seed of Goodness /Ferdinand Baumann Gallery inPrague

(foto by Daniel Vlček)

Dear folk!!

I have only a few things to speak of…

Firstly, I would like to thank all you for your presence. It is not a time when participation in public events is easily done thing, particularly when your private time may be spent in so many other ways. It is a time when we are living from one day to the next, and assessing the activities we partake in from the point of view of maximum possible return for the investment of our time.

There is no more time that we can take from our personal business. The future of our social-political system is not clear yet, but we all know, what the values that we were serving in the past were. Maybe we don’t know everything, but with a bit of luck, we might know more in the near future.

These values are not the values we have chosen, but these values were given to us under the disguise of forced necessity. It is the results of such necessities that we may realize today, and now is the time to uncover these hidden truths. Today is the time to look back and see the fruits of our past actions. Have we been in full control of our lives, or was it someone or something else? Who is deciding what? How far can we understand and identify the consequences of our actions?

Why have we been introduced into other realities, which have forced us to believe and participate in things that we have no respect for?

We have lived through different beliefs and environments of different norms, prospects, values and futures.
I thank this country for fulfilling my basic human rights.
I thank it for giving me the free education as long as I wanted to study and the free access to health services whenever I needed it.

But it is exactly these pleasant social gifts which are in question now. There is no trust in free public services any more, and they are distributed more unequally today than ever before. There exist citizens of our society who are more equal than we are. They demand that we have enough passion and for us to be ready for any service that will keep the current “status quo” functioning – it has become our duty to serve. We are unknowing servicemen chained to perform at any time and carry out any duty.

But now we want to bring an end to all of this, to say ‘stop!’. We have realized that we didn’t act with the full knowledge of what we were serving for! We have realized the hidden truth, which before was masked and invisible to us.

So take back the honor of our acts of false duties! I can’t take the time back, but I can return these devalued pieces of metal!

There were different forms of duty in different times, for different social systems. All of these values are set to become only memory one day and they are easily replaced. So there is no special individual necessity to remember, but what we cannot forget is that it was not through our own free will that we have been living! We have hurt others in the name of cold, impersonal Powers!

So take it back again!

I have been in the service of values that people no longer believe also, and I am giving these memories back to the anonymous space. This space may be free one day and will be accessible to everyone. But these little pieces of forgotten value never need be evaluated again. These are formed from the same materials as coins – money that we receive to do our jobs – an entity that we didn’t understand properly and that made us slave to tasks that we never wished to do.

These jobs were done with our belief that we serve a just cause. But what has happenned? Finally we can see that the promises made to us were different from reality as it stands today. We have been given the chance to see where we really stand and what it is that we really do.

We will have no more of such values that are hidden from our comprehension. No more values that will be replaced soon after. No more misunderstanding and no more cheap coins that defy our honor.

No more values that will keep our eyes closed and our ears deaf.

I do not accept the service that changes its logic over time, and that hides its purpose from public sight. I champion transparency!

Here I want to finish and let you to decide on your own if there is any future for common peoples’ reasoning or if there are just distinct individual wants and needs and Powers to listen to.

I want you to decide if there is any future possible for us when it looks as though there is no future for that benefits everyone; only a future that benefits the few.

Thank you for your listening!

(Lexa Peroutka)