Clouds

How did our ancestors influence our own lives?
What have they told us and what have they kept secret?
What happened in their lives and fates that repeats itself in ours?

In this new piece the Handa Gote group continues to work with the `little histories`, this time turning to one of its own members`s personal archives. Veronika Švábová sifts through the history of her family seeking both the fateful moments and seeming trivialities that have survived in family member`s memories to this day, that are the fabric of family community. Clouds is a subjective study of one`s own family, a series of scenes without causal association, not unlike those fragments of past events that make up our own memories.

What mistakes do we make again and again without learning from them, just like they did? Which aspects of our personalities are inherited from them? What information from the past do we carry in the body? And just what will this body look like in twenty years, if it is still here at all? What results of what actions or events do we carry on into our lives? What do we really remember and what is just our imagination? What does family actually mean today? And who still knows how to bake “mraky” (clouds)?
Sound, dance, photographs, video, clouds.

“Meanwhile a sizable projection screen spews out images of old diary entries, press cuttings and dogeared photographs. In the most beautiful moments of Mraky, Švábová takes center stage and breaks out into ballet or “air swimming”. Captured by a camera fixed at the front of the stage, Švábová’s figure is blown up and blurred to form a ghostly apparition of herself – perhaps a reflection of her own evanescence?”
Will Noble, Prague Post, October 23, 2011

“Presented as a vibrant patchwork of memories, impressions and stories from the past, the many pieces of the performance are given significant weight by the subjectivity attached to them. Veronika Švábová uses her family’s history, compiled from photos, diaries, videos and a recipe, to engage the audience in a lively and informative way that is mostly compelling, thanks to her ingenious use of technology.”
André Cours, The Prague Post, 15/2/2012

“Handa Gote’s show, Clouds, is a terrific lo-fi aesthetic in which the performer, Veronika Švábová, simply tell us about her grandparents. They, variously, founded the Czech communist party, were imprisoned in concentration camps, became high-ups in the secret police and were shot as traitors, which makes for a more exciting family album than most, and yet it’s lightly worn and beautifully executed.”
Andrew Haydon, The Guardian, June 27, 2014