Anton Čierny: (Apex Guilt) Spots of the Salamander

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Where:

• Gallery of Mining Museum in Rožňava

  • Námestie baníkov 25, Rožňava

When:

• Opening: 21.11.2024, 16:00

• Duration: 21.11.2024 - 30.11.2024

 

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Curator:

• Jana Babušiaková

Annotation:

Walking through the forest with a rifle, searching, a shot fired, and held breath—the hunter and the hunted. The shot does not wound but misses, maintaining the status quo, yet change remains in play. The search for the black swan, the harbinger of unexpected, almost unimaginable change, thus continues.

At the exhibition Apex Guilt - Spots of the Salamander in the Mining Museum in Rožňava, intermedia artist Anton Čierny presents a video installation that, structured in three acts and crafted with scenographic symbolism, resembles a fictional story or fable rooted in the bleak reality of the Slovak youth re-education system. In two parallel video channels, a narrative unfolds about guilt, victims, the search for personal freedom, and the responsibility for a societal failure that allowed the issues within re-education centers to remain long overlooked and invisible. The metaphor of the hunter with a rifle contrasted with a vulnerable group of young people subtly implies violence, threat, but also a desire for protection. Anton Čierny draws on game theory, crafting a hunted prey that is paradoxically the hope for change itself.

The film language is starkly interrupted by statements from the General Prosecutor's Office, grounding us in reality. Apex guilt, the peak guilt we feel as a species at the height of our development, is metaphorically transferred here from concerns about our ecosystem to our society. As the forces behind the state, we are part of both the problem and the solution, the basis of which lies in our solidarity.

 

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• supported by the Slovak Arts Council through public funding.