The 9th chapter of the Moving Image Department at National Gallery Prague is a “conversation piece” between Damir Očko and Roman Štětina, two artists who explore the landscape of the language: its performativity and the limits of articulation. 

Titled Desire in Language (24 October 2018 – 3 February 2019), the exhibition features Očko’s cinematic diptych DICTA, in which the performative self, conditioned by the language and the act of speech, takes center stage.

Both artists “embark on a search for a new vocabulary to reflect the politics and its gestural economy as well as to decode the structures of desire through the means of poetry and its revolutionary power”, as the museum explains.

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Installation view: Desire in Language, National Gallery Prague, 2018-2019, photo: Jakub Precechtel. Artworks: Damir Očko, DICTA I, 2017, and DICTA II, 2018, video stills