18 Questions With...
Jakub Choma

I do my work best when I'm not actively working, but instead engaged in activities that seemingly have little to do with making art or thinking about art, such as practicing focused breathing.

My left hand.

The first thing I do when I step into the studio, or rather what I notice carefully, is how positive the fact that we have a glass roof, direct daylight falls on a person's head throughout the whole working day, especially in the summer, carries a kind of feeling of being part of the temple, when the only moment of confronting oneself with the reality of what is happening behind the walls in the outside world becomes a look upwards towards the sky. I think that in this way I am better able to concentrate on the work without perceiving the outer world from which I came and thus to concentrate more deeply on the inner world that I am building around me and within myself, constructing. But sometimes this moment is disturbed, especially in the summer time, by the fact that a bird flies into the studio from the roof and confronts one with the reality of the larger cosmos of which we are a part. Dreaming and building the inner world is thus from time to time confronted with the living reality.

In my studio, I most often listen to podcasts that hybridly move between philosophy and art. One of them is my favorite, called Weird Studies, which partially compensates for a certain lack of dialogue when I am alone in my studio, which is not unusual for an artist. In addition to their knowledge and academic brilliance, which allows them to explain even the most difficult topics, they are very easy to listen to, making you feel like you are part of the dialogue, where the symbiosis of two friends talking becomes a peaceful place of contemplation.

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/IMP7332460748?selected=IMP4520524347

Currently, I am inspired by the development of smart technologies focused on the production of customized products, such as UV printers for home use or laser engraving and cutting technologies, and the fact that anyone can start a small niche business that they control from their own bedroom.

I myself try to use these technologies to sign objects that subsequently become part of larger or smaller assemblages of separate works or to create larger wholes, worlds.

It is interesting to use forums to engage in dialogue with this group of hobbyists and observe what they are inclined towards, what they are working on, and how they think. I take this as part of my research practice, a psychological probe into their thinking.

Not necessarily everyone, but a refreshing little book is FAILED IT! by Erik Kessels, which presents examples of how mistakes, sometimes fatal ones, become or are transformed into brilliant and subsequently applied ideas.

There are many, but to name just a few, I still have very intense feelings about the opportunity to exhibit at PLATO Ostrava, in what was then an exhibition space that used the open space and skeleton of a former shopping center called Bauhaus, a center specializing in the sale of items ranging from fertilizers and lawn mowers to dog supplies. lawnmowers, and dog supplies.

It was a miraculous exhibition space that is rarely seen in Europe or elsewhere, and it conveyed to the audience a wide range of possibilities for what art can become beyond its expected role.

The good news is that during its demise, thoughts were already being given to how to replace it, and so a new branch of the same name was established a few meters from the original, albeit in a different spirit, offering an international program.

It was when I left the comfort of my studio in Prague one summer and went to eastern Slovakia, specifically to the village where my father comes from. During that hot but productive summer, I had the opportunity to spend quality time with my father after a long time and get to know his daily routines, which I see as very positive for our current relationship. At the same time, it was during that summer that I produced, without much equipment, the performative video project Beta Ground Delirium Obstacle, whose main actors were my performative body and the refuge of a barn that still stands on my father's land. That barn became a pulsating sculpture, and my body and palms became instruments of endurance in the final result of the project, which I perceive as one of my strongest and one that deviated from the beaten path. I learned a lot that summer about myself, my work, the inner essence of my thinking, but also my roots.

I dont know if the best compliment, but it's the one that comes to mind right now, concise and short, and it was that my work is doomed and it's hard to find peace in it.

For me, it's a compliment precisely because the work itself activated what it wants to be, and at that moment, it probably managed to affect the viewer with an intensity that is as saturated as a dirty sponge from unwashed dishes. I was happy for this compliment, not as the creator of the work, but rather for the work itself as a separate entity.

It may sound very workaholic, but I relax best by working, but not necessarily creating art, rather sorting or packaging it. I like to light sandalwood while doing it, and it's one of those moments or processes where you don't necessarily have to think creatively or come up with anything. But those are precisely the moments that often spark new ideas and thoughts.

If I had to pick just one thing that offers a funny parallel to the material I still work with today, it would be the fact that I have flat feet. So flat that I spent much of my childhood wearing orthopedic shoes, which are known, among other things, for using cork as the main hard/soft insert to help shape the correct arch of the foot. Cork thus becomes a material of slow transformation, of bodily modification.

A cook, and hopefully a very good one. I enjoy cooking from time to time; the kitchen is quite similar to a studio where one conducts research and uses their senses. I also see other parallels between gastronomy and artistic practice, from logistics, through preparation, testing, thinking about the audience/consumer, and so on. I would definitely open a small bistro that would combine the preparation of simple but conceptually grounded food paired with a curated selection of good drinks. This space would also occasionally be transformed into a space for open discussions with artists or a space for screening art videos. Something like Bar Laika by e-flux in New York, whose concept I really like.

I wandered around a lot, and if I had to recall the memories that are still engraved in my mind today, on the land in the village where my father still lives, I discovered various secrets that this space offered. A certain form of curiosity from discovering and creating a fictional exploration of the surroundings was an exciting activity for me. The barn itself, which still stands on the land today, also played a big role, becoming an active backdrop for various fictional stories. I also liked knives and marking things in nature, leaving a kind of hand-made trace.

The very fact that we still have the opportunity to devote ourselves, as far as possible, to what we love, namely the visual arts, the world is in turmoil today as never before, and this moment of freedom could very easily soon change for us, people who are currently living without threat to our lives.

eufyMake E1: the First Personal 3D-Texture UV Printer.

It's still on Kickstarter, and I think it's a great tool that would make various things in my practice easier. Hopefully, they'll reach their financial goal.

Before I moved to Prague, I didn't like beer at all, but now it's completely different, and on a long, hot summer day, I enjoy Radegast, as they say in their ad—life is bitter, thank God.

There are many projects that may seem like dreams, but I am starting to try to selectively sort out what is good for me, my practice, and the context of the moment, what is necessary to realize and what is not. In this decision-making and sorting of ideas, it has helped me a lot to see how the artist Ryan Gander, whom I mentioned earlier, approaches this. He categorizes ideas according to the urgency of their origin, from those that are acute to those that may never be realized due to their financial demands, technical impossibility, or unnecessary nature.

However, if I had to mention one project that I want to realize in the long term, it would be a project using dark cork, which people can perceive as one of the building materials of my work, and getting it to a position where its fragile property of shattering would be confronted with a mechanical element for its gradual but seductive destruction. The cork would thus be transformed from a solid body into dust, its own dust, the body becoming dust, where, in the context of my practice, I see a parallel to the human body and its transformation into ashes. Ashes scattered in nature as the matter of the end, but for a new beginning.