Artists: Eva Rybářová & Marie Tučková
Exhibition title: Cloudy Babies: EP
Curated by: Klára Vavříková
Venue: Nevan Contempo, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: January 26 – March 1, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Nevan Contempo, Prague
Cloudy Babies are not local. They were born within a remote περιφέρεια, in a place to be found in the thinking of every human individual, somewhere inside the heads sitting on the shoulders of all past generations.
The poetic songs of Cloudy Babies are emotional experiences from the newly discovered Planet Earth and one of its species, the human, remoulded into a language that is intimately familiar to the inhabitants of these regions. Cloudy Babies are the reaching out of the fluid finger of an ET establishing its first contact with the human race.
“detect a nice place”
“try to learn about humankind”
Two wandering alien beings are the identities formed by the intermedia artists Eva Rybářová and Marie Tučková. They are a reaction to the endless and expanding space of social media where we create our better selves, our avatars, but also completely new identities whose real existence is at the very least unclear.
“watch the others from the side”
“we could research we cloud spy”
Cloudy Babies came into the world with the aid of an Instagram profile on 23 November 2017 and self-profiled as celestial beings creating music. However, for a long time the band remained on a fictitious level and was a reaction to the world of multi-upgraded celebrities, whose scope ranges from the creation and production of music albums via their own clothing and perfumes, film acting and modelling, to designs of the latest trainers for the world’s leading shoemaker.
“find what is right”
“we could wander”
“we could hide”
However, the absence of any genuine product did not seem to be a barrier to many people becoming convinced, with the aid of photographs, that this was a band with a future. On the basis of their IG account, Cloudy Babies were offered spots in concerts and performances without anyone ever having heard a single recording. In the virtual space of web 2.0 there is no limit to the possible reach of any product whatsoever and every identity can become a sought after brand.
“what a dreamy world around”
“see the treasure we just found”
The exhibition Cloudy Babies EP contains at least two levels of interpretation. We can immerse ourselves in the story and encounter two beings of nonhuman origin, in which case the installation and everything contained within it were created exclusively by these beings, which found themselves stranded on Planet Earth some time ago.
However, Eva and Marie, the real participants in this story, form a parallel level. In reality it is they who control the fictional figures and decide how their feelings will be communicated in the texts of songs, interests and forms, and how the public will think about them in the light of the carefully chosen form of presentation. Cloudy Babies are in part both marketing product and an attempt to create an alter ego in a world of Instagram stars and the planetary system.
“feel pierced by the stars”
“ate the air no joke”
Cloudy Babies represents a fluid instrument in the hands of Eva and Marie, who can take on the form of a band and create through it a testimony of the impossibility of understanding the world, the infinity of the cloud, their own anxiety caused by interpersonal relationships and the impossibility of grasping natural phenomena that exceed our comprehension by far. They will dissolve at the instant our carefully constructed ideas about them dissipate.
Eva and Marie place Cloudy Babies in the backdrop in order to bring us to the time zone in which they actually exist. A small analogue photo of standing figures, like forensic evidence of their arrival on Earth. A rocket and drapes featuring a space print form the artificially created stage completing their identity. These are the attributes without which Cloudy Babies would lose their extraterrestrial character and remain “simply” human beings.
The extraterrestrial identity of the band allows Eva and Marie to evaluate the world through music and text with eyes observing from afar, a world where, by empathising with the absence of their knowledge of the world and humanity, a melancholic and lyrical art is born.
Cloudy Babies are a glorified cult, a horizon it is impossible to reach. They are stars, comets, madonnas. They are an unattainable, carefully generated form saddened by the absence of their own heart.
“dreamy world”
“let me come true”
Text: Klára Vavříková
