Clueless Agency: Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep & Clueless Agency: Cold Case at Karlin Studios

Artists: Ondřej Doskočil & Klára Švandová, Miloš Kurovský, Vojtěch Novák, Matyáš Maláč, Marek Delong & Anna Slama, Monika Kováčová, Jakub Choma, Maria Bingo

Exhibition title: Clueless Agency: Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep & Clueless Agency: Cold Case at Karlin Studios

Curated by: PGS Collective

Venue: Karlin Studios, Prague, The Czech Republic

Date: May 20 – July 3, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Karlin Studios, Prague

An art exhibition is a crime scene in the sense that in a gallery, we spy with our little eye and try to discern texture from an object, divine the artist’s criminal motive, understand the setting and its dimensions in its complexity, to necessarily realise that there are clues that our crude senses simply don’t register. In this instance, we are invited to a routine inspection alongside the Clueless Agency and meet a private eye, who by his very nature exists only as a grey smudge with a coat for a contour. More than a human being, it seems, he is a tool to be used. PGS Collective – his literary author – understands this archetypal detective persona as a vessel – as fluid but also filled with fluid. As the story progresses, different amalgamations and venues will spawn different enemies and traces, as they repeatedly fill in the vessel with prompts and cultural concepts, so that we eventually collect their sediment and retroactively divine its history.

The advent of the detective genre in the late 19th century coincided with the questioning of social reality in which paranoia emerged as a psychiatric term. I think it provided a way to come to terms with the multiplicity and schizophrenia of urban life, its frenetic quest for elusive gratification, its smell of decay and grandeur, but mostly of armpit. The collective is renowned for hatching out off-site art events in such sites of decay, corners charged with mysterious energy, whether those may be inside burnt cabins, parks, or miniature mines. When enclosed for the first time in a white cube, of course, what follows is that they invade it, too, and build their environment from scratch (and successfully manage to spill over). And so we have a slab of architecture in front of us, with its boarded-up windows, a door leading up to another door, lamps that slowly melt and become one with vomit on the street – a campy Edwardian-era alley dropping acid. If the objects had a taste, it would be bitterly acidic, the kind that stays on your palate and, truth be told, is more of a lol than a haha.

I whiff stale fries, bones that belonged to a deep fried chicken, and shame. Saturday Night Live autoplaying in the background, and Beauty and the Beast’s Miss Potts – the quirky teapot – has become – excuse my French – a cumdump. An infamous Polish director shot a softcore porn version of the fairy tale in 1975 and I can’t be bothered to watch but wonder if the objects were animated as in having an anima therefore watching them do it. Either way can’t help thinking of Belle and the Beast making out, you know, on a bed that’s alive.

leeds > northwest suburbs > personals > missed connections

U gave birth at Nando’s – m4w

Ur amniotic fluids burned my retina

As i helped with the forceps

U told me it was just pee, but i knew it was ur fluids and i loved it.

Get at me soon

Which is when I spit out my Ribena and close the tab. A spray of purple covers my footrest, i.e., my fetish slave as he absorbs the reverberation of my limbs. He’s mostly into being a puppy but likewise will let you rest your feet on him if he’s been a good boy. Got treats? When I get bored at home, watching telly, being paid 50 quid an hour for letting that poor soul be my tabouret, sometimes he confides in me in whispers what he’s researching at the moment in his History class. Apparently there were women – anchoresses – who chose to be walled into a cell to spend the rest of their life in prayer. I imagine every wall now has enough space to fit a person.

Wallet keys phone

Wallet keys phone. is what I imagine myself as an anchoress contemplating on.

I was attempting to distill my own alcohol so I bought a kit online but apparently the concentration of the acidic powder that I’m using was wrong, so once the container filled up slowly, the sediment burnt a hole in the bottom.

In other news: An immunodeficient snake is slowly dying of its poison. It has a GoFundMe page now.

– Lukas Hofmann

PGS, The Sole Row House Illuminated by the Street of Broken Lamps, 2021

Clueless Agency: Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep & Clueless Agency: Cold Case at Karlin Studios, 2021, exhibition view, Karlin Studios, Prague