Extended scope

EXTENDED SCOPE
COLLECTIVE FOR THE COMPLETION OF A NARROW SPECIALISATION

Exhibition: 21 March - 2 May 2024

Where did KPUUS come from? The collective emerged around 2018 on the ruins of another collective POLE, which was active from 2009 to 2015, and KPUS in many ways picked up on its "centrifugal" tendencies. POLE was a collective that emerged out of friendship, but also out of the frustration of its membership with the disconnection of the then Czech art scene from politics and society. In POLE, however, we also wanted to define ourselves in relation to the existing politically and socially engaged art of the decade of the noughties, which was present but, in our opinion, aestheticized politics rather than daring to politicize aesthetics or to enter into political processes other than through its "provocativeness" and ostentatious revolt. We saw it as problematic how the representatives of "engaged art" at the time were afraid of what we considered real engagement-any direct connection with real political actors, lest they get too "dirty." When political and social issues were present, it was usually from a position of artistic autonomy. Identifying with the left was more problematic than today, but it was precisely the service of actors defining themselves against the right-wing government of "budgetary responsibility" after the 2010 parliamentary elections that we were after. One of the first major exhibitions POLE (Possibilities of Student Life II) was part of the student protests against the introduction of tuition fees. We were part of initiatives such as ProAlt, participated in the big trade union strike of 2012, where we created protest allegorical vans directly at the union headquarters, and helped evacuate the Museum of the Workers' Movement. The breakup of POLE had to do with the cooling of some friendships, partnerships or author tandems within the group, the founding of families, as well as different views on how appropriate it is to participate in art, gallery, academic or activist work at all, and if so, how. We also cleaved politically. Since the breakup of POLE, the former membership has been part of many groups and initiatives on the left spectrum, from liberal to conservative, from post-autonomy to systemic.

However, the experience of collective politically and socially engaged artistic production has been formative for many of us, and although we continue along different trajectories, it has fed back into our activities. One of POLE's many heirs is KPUUS.

The Narrow Specialization Termination Collective was established in 2018 and is inherently amoebic. Not only is its membership changing in principle, but also the environment in which it operates and the topics it addresses. The only observable link is the motivation of the membership to overcome their own narrow specialisation and create public awareness of the risks associated with specialisation. KPUU gravitates around the concepts of: labour, class experience and alienation.

The collective's only public performance to date has been the operation of a flotation tank open to the public at the Transit.sk gallery in 2018. In the sensory deprivation chamber, the public was able to go through a deeply relaxing and psychedelic experience, and then relate this experience to issues related to feelings of alienation in their professions and social roles through structured conversation.

In the collective's performance in the Olga space called Extended Scope, we transform the space into a multisensory room (used in the Snoezelen method, Sensory Integration, etc.) which is a parallel to what is called installation in the context of art. Together with arte util theorist Stephen Wright, we believe that it is possible to create works with a dual ontology-they can "be" artworks and, in parallel, "be" in other ways as well. The multi-sensory room/installation will host several sessions/happenings that, with elements of the snozelen method and others, will focus specifically on overcoming the narrow specialization of the participants. As audio they were then also available to other users and visitors of Olga.

[player]https://bubahof.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/rozsirena-pusobnost_mahufin_audio.mp3[/player] LISTEN TO THE AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH MAGDALENA OPLETALOVÁ