Michael Bielický
Perpetuum Mobile
Artist
Michael Bielický
(1954, Praha), Czech
Original Title
Perpetuum Mobile
Date1986-2019
Mediummultimedia installation
Classificationsinstallations
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
Image Copyright
© Michael Bielický
DescriptionMichael Bielický’s practice is inseparably linked to video art and new media art. In his early work, he experimented with combinations of video art, experimental film, and expanded cinema. He is also the author of several video sculptures incorporating television screens and signals. His “sculptural” conception of video art is influenced by his professor and pioneer of video art Nam June Paik. His unbounded approach to different mediums is also inspired by Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement. Bielický often works with Jewish history, mythology, and symbolism. He is interested in spatial illusions and connecting the physical and virtual worlds, while also advocating a critical view of technology and its impact on our perception and behavior. A common theme of his later work is the boundary between humans and computers; he also addresses topics such as immersion, tele-presentation, and network communication. He was one of the first artists of the 1990s to explore internet performances based on the broadcasting of data through navigation systems and telecommunication technology. Since 2005, he has been collaborating with Kamila B. Richter—together, they create works aligned with the tendencies of internet art. Their three-dimensional artworks are based on a dynamic pictographic language and an integration of real-time data from Twitter and Google News. The works explore the impact of news media on the individual and the opaque power structures of digital space.
Perpetuum Mobile (2019) was one of the first pieces Bielický created after moving to Düsseldorf, and he would later rework it for his homonymous 2019 retrospective at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. The video installation comprises sixteen suspended tablets which all play identical video imagery but with different timing—the continuous repetition evokes an infinite image without a beginning or an end. The work is based on digitally combining different videos, with their content edited, distorted, and rearranged into a single video in which images flow vertically and horizontally, resulting in incoherent content and visuality expression. Bielický thus thematizes the principle of perpetuum mobile from the perspective of metaphysical eternity and the universal laws of our existence. Perpetual motion becomes a metaphor for the common condition of existence, a meta-principle manifested in different images.
Michael Bielický (*1954, Prague) is a Czech artist living in Germany since 1969. Between 1980 and 1992, he lived in New York, mainly exploring the medium of photography during this time. From 1984 to 1991, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldrof, initially focusing on photography under Bernd Becher before switching to the video studio led by Num June Paik, where he also shortly worked as an assistant. In 1991, he cofounded the Studio of New Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he taught until 2006. He is currently a professor and head of the Department of New Media Art at the HfG Karlsruhe. In the past quarter-century, he has taken part in many international exhibitions, festivals, and symposiums, often making use of communication, navigation, video, and virtual reality technologies. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the MoMA (New York), and the Kunsthaus Zurich. In 2019, he had an extensive retrospective exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. In 2000, he received an honorable mention at the Prix Ars Electronica.
Perpetuum Mobile (2019) was one of the first pieces Bielický created after moving to Düsseldorf, and he would later rework it for his homonymous 2019 retrospective at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. The video installation comprises sixteen suspended tablets which all play identical video imagery but with different timing—the continuous repetition evokes an infinite image without a beginning or an end. The work is based on digitally combining different videos, with their content edited, distorted, and rearranged into a single video in which images flow vertically and horizontally, resulting in incoherent content and visuality expression. Bielický thus thematizes the principle of perpetuum mobile from the perspective of metaphysical eternity and the universal laws of our existence. Perpetual motion becomes a metaphor for the common condition of existence, a meta-principle manifested in different images.
Michael Bielický (*1954, Prague) is a Czech artist living in Germany since 1969. Between 1980 and 1992, he lived in New York, mainly exploring the medium of photography during this time. From 1984 to 1991, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldrof, initially focusing on photography under Bernd Becher before switching to the video studio led by Num June Paik, where he also shortly worked as an assistant. In 1991, he cofounded the Studio of New Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he taught until 2006. He is currently a professor and head of the Department of New Media Art at the HfG Karlsruhe. In the past quarter-century, he has taken part in many international exhibitions, festivals, and symposiums, often making use of communication, navigation, video, and virtual reality technologies. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the MoMA (New York), and the Kunsthaus Zurich. In 2019, he had an extensive retrospective exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. In 2000, he received an honorable mention at the Prix Ars Electronica.
