Jakub Jansa

CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES

"Each episode of The Club (i.e. exhibition) introduces new characters and plot twists. Each exhibition creates a situations which hover between reality and fiction, where the narrative is gradually revealed through video, various objects, and ongoing live action. Through mixed genres, from drama to absurdity, The Club thematise archetypal social topics and gradually uncovers the anatomy of mythology and storytelling. The main hero is the overlooked vegetable - Celeriac.

Club of Opportunities reflects upon strategies of dark-side influencers, posing questions of hierarchical relationships and authority. In the context of vegetable hierarchy Celeriac finds itself on very low position. In the supermarkets we can find Celeriac roots situated on the bottom shelves, Avocados are always highlighted in the center. Over the course of the past six episodes, low forms elevate in status into the high ones and vice versa. Somewhere during that transformation, new opportunities were created.

The main storyteller is Kami Nábělek, a fairly eccentric philosopher who makes live appearances at The Club’s openings and then on occasion during the run of the shows. He delivers speeches full of scientific and pseudoscientific concepts and reveals key moments in the current story."

Season 1:
PAF Pioneer Works

Episode 6:
Ten Years Night

Episode 5:
Keeping in Line

Episode 4:
Britannica Bootcamp

Episode 3:
My name is Red Herring

Episode 2:
April showers bring May flowers

Episode 1:
Bowling Bar

#Episode 1 #Episode 2 #Episode 3 #Episode 4 #Episode 5 #Episode 6 #Season 1

CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES

Episode 2:
April showers bring May flowers

"The character of SEER (Oracle), who has no vision of the future anymore and feels anxious. She looks for a way to be more active in forming the surrounding world and herself. She is trying to realize her own ambitions and desires for hope. We witness the SEER touching every individual celery root and getting them tattoo with positive functions."

#Episode 2

CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES EP. 2: April showers bring May flowers
(Exhibition creates an environments, where the narrative is gradually revealed through video, various objects, and ongoing live action)

Venue: AMU Gallery, Prague
March 14 - April 4, 2018
Curator: Lumír Nykl
Artists: Jakub Jansa & Karolína Juříková

If we wanna put it simply - It’s the story in which the character of SEER (Oracle) feels anxious in this world. She looks for a way to be more active in forming the surrounding world and herself. We witness the SEER touching every individual celery root and getting them tattoo with positive predictions - or functions. She is trying to realize her own ambitiotios and desires for hope.
   The collaborative exhibition of Jakub Jansa and Karolína Juříková is the second part of a series whose pilot version originated as an invitation to Jansa’s own Club of Opportunities. The bowling bar became the setting for a seminar devoted to the ontology of celery for all the senses.
   In this new, narrative episode featuring Karolína Juříková, our intrepid heroes relocate beneath the arched ceilings of GAMU for an initiatory séance of young stalks, their hag watching from backstage, where bodies flagrantly transform with the promise of a new beginning. An old sage rambles from her ritually refurbished throne, her avuncular visage showing signs of new hope. Through the rejuvenated language of folk verbiage, we call for a new spring of shared imagination.
   → Complete text by Lumír Nykl in PDF

creature: Ester Geislerová
camera: Kryštof Melka, Kryštof Hlůže
sound: Juraś Karaka
graphic: Martin Groch,
Jan Slabihoudek
production: Lenka Střeláková

Thanks to: Lenka Střeláková,
Jakub Chrenčík, Anežka Bartlová,
Eliška Žáková