At first glance it is easy to see that Ian Svankmajer has been an influence on Jiri Barta visually, and to an extent, thematically. However, after watching Barta's films it's just as easy to appreciate how he mixes the aesthetic traditions of such artists as Gaudi, Kafka, Poe, Fritz Lang, The Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer: Barta's films are wondrous creations that go far beyond mere children’s tales.
In the 1980s Czechoslovakia switched from a socialist nation to a consumer capitalist one, and most of Barta's work deals with that exchange.
The Club of the Laid Off is split into two movements. Laid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. They repetitively go about their business day after day after day like automatons.
New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it's not easy at all, and then fight them, and then become a part of their lives as well.
It's a sort of a editorial on the plight of the modern worker in a society that is becoming less and less human, or merely a hallucinatory look into the secret life of plastic replicas of people.
You can buy Jiri Barta: Labyrinth of Darkness
.
In the 1980s Czechoslovakia switched from a socialist nation to a consumer capitalist one, and most of Barta's work deals with that exchange.
The Club of the Laid Off is split into two movements. Laid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. They repetitively go about their business day after day after day like automatons.
New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it's not easy at all, and then fight them, and then become a part of their lives as well.
It's a sort of a editorial on the plight of the modern worker in a society that is becoming less and less human, or merely a hallucinatory look into the secret life of plastic replicas of people.
You can buy Jiri Barta: Labyrinth of Darkness
.
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