Tom Mccarthy - Men in Space

The company are, in order of appearance on the CD jacket: Tomáš Stein (bass, lyrics), Kristina Limová (vocals), Jiří Vacek (guitar) and Jakub (“Kuba”) Masák (drums). When the reel they’re now watching was shot, Roger’s friend Nick was two or three days old, but none of these people had been born. Not one of them had yet been conceived — not quite. After the joint has passed him for the third time, Roger starts wondering if their parents were still virgins when the landing module made its tentative descent on the moon’s surface. A serendipitous apprehension of synchronicity starts forming in his mind: if, as is entirely possible, their parents-to-be were meeting for the first time at that very moment, exchanging their first shy words, or for the second time, going out on a proper date, or even — and this too is possible — indulging in their first moments of prenuptial sexual congress at that very moment , then these acts are theoretically in shot right now, contained within the sphere of the earth which is just coming up on screen, the camera having abandoned the aunt’s cleavage to swing back towards the television set. Providing that Europe happens to be facing up towards the moon, of course, and not America, Australia or China. He can’t quite discern a land mass. If Europe’s in view, though, then that makes their watching these events right now, here in the practice room … which makes this afternoon’s experience — hang on … no, pop! it’s gone, sequences of logic uncoiling with the smoke in the light’s column, losing shape, their verbal bridges replaced by the song’s lyrics:

She’s not afraid to die

People all call her Alaska

Between worlds so the people ask her

It’s all in her eyes …

On the Baltham family’s television screen, Armstrong or Aldrin stands on the moon’s surface with the US flag. Kuba points, red-eyed:

“Look! It’s an American flag!”

“What did you expect it to be?” Jiří turns his head towards him, red-eyed too. Oh boy. “A Czech one?”

“I always thought the flag said MTV .”

The company all hoot and throw cushions at Kuba. He uses these to build himself a backrest, then, reclining into this, picks up a drum machine that’s lying on the floor beside him, rests it across his knees and switches it on. A syncopated high-hat beat comes from it. As the astronaut launches off once more into long, floating strides, Kuba turns a knob to slow the beat right down; each time he lands, Kuba speeds the beat up again, which makes the company laugh still more. The song’s chorus comes round and they all join in, surprisingly out of tune for musicians, it seems to Roger, wailing:

It’s so cold in Alaska

It’s so cold in Alaska …

It’s not hot in Prague. Two hours ago he was out filming rows of cars around Palmovka, then an old shipyard he’d noticed earlier beside the bridge: might want to use it in some montage … His fingers couldn’t grasp the camera properly after a while. Get gloves tomorrow. And new film, soon. He’ll wait till he goes back to Poland for that: great stock there, really cheap. He must have shot all around Central Europe now: Warsaw, Tallinn, Budapest … showed a cut-and-paste film at a festival in Vilnius … in a Romanian village he got peasants to act out Beverly Hills 90210 : an entire episode, reading the dialogue which he’d transcribed from video before leaving San Francisco, then paid a professor at the Bucharest Film School to translate, tractors and pig troughs standing in for sports cars and swimming pools … Ostploitation: a new genre, one that he’s invented. Baltham: Ostploitation. Balthamesque … Coming out here’s been good for Roger: helped him grow creatively, expand … In January there’s Berlin’s festival of avant-garde film — must try to get on the bill there … Tonight, a Factory-style party at this French guy’s. He’ll show the spliced found-footage Fifties-housewife-with-lions film, this moon one, plus maybe an old porno flick as well — a sure-fire crowd pleaser … In any case, the band will be playing in front of the screen (what’ll they use for a screen? Perhaps this Jean-Luc has a big white wall) and everybody will be drunk …

The moon reel finishes and the loose end of the film starts flapping against the edge of the projector. Kuba adjusts the drum machine’s rhythm to coincide with its clicks. Roger switches the projector off, unloads the film, selects another reel to show. He’s dug a can out from the pile when brisk footsteps on the staircase announce the arrival of Honza Pokorný, manager of The Martyrdom of St Sebastian and owner of one behemoth of a blue truck in which the band and their equipment are to be transported to Hradčany.

“What the fuck?” says Honza, switching the light on and waving away the smoke in front of him. “I told this painter guy we’d be there half an hour ago. Where’s the stuff?”

“Later, Honza, later,” several voices call out soothingly.

“No,” he snaps. “We have to do it now. I’m parked two streets away and I’m going to drive over here right now. By the time I get here I want to see every amp and guitar and whatever on the street outside and ready to be loaded. OK?”

“Fine,” they tell him. Honza turns and leaves the practice room. They wait until his footsteps die away, then start giggling. Kuba switches the light off. Roger switches the projector back on and threads the new reel through its spools.

* * * * *

Joost van Straten

c/o Martin Blažek

Galleria MXM

Nebovidská 7

Praha 1

16th December 1992

My Dear Han ,

I have an awful hangover. People in Prague drink non-stop, perhaps obeying some deep-rooted need to compensate for their country’s landlocked status. Bars open at five in the morning so the lumpenproletariat can get properly pissed up before they start operating cranes or whatever it is they do. The art crowd start later and drink wine, not beer, and vodka, not this diabolical drink called slivovice you see builders knocking back at kiosks — but the end result’s the same. All roads to Rome .

The art crowd are running the country. When Havel came to power he filled parliament with his friends. I went to a gig the other night, with Martin, at the invitation of the Minister of Culture — not the opera, you understand, but some club in a former nuclear shelter which the Minister, I found out later, runs. I’d met him earlier the same day, at the Castle. You go in past all these soldiers wearing brightly coloured uniforms and marching around ceremonially, like they do chez nous in Holland — only it turns out that these uniforms and marching patterns are the consequence of Havel deciding that the old outfits and routines were boring and commissioning a choreographer chum to devise new ones. After two thousand years, Plato’s philosopher king becomes a reality — and the first thing he does is get some fag to spruce up his goons and make them march around more aesthetically. Sometimes I despair of our profession .

I certainly despaired of it in Budapest. The painters there are stuck in socialist realism mode. Here in Prague it’s the other way round: they worship postmodernism without really understanding it. Most of Martin’s stable at MXM slavishly copy Andy Warhol circa nineteen sixty-eight. Martin wants me to include half of them in the Eastern European show: I have to feign excitement as I flip through portfolio after portfolio of tawdry plastic haut-kitsch. I’ll take none of his artists — though I’ll have to wait until I’m not staying at his place before I tell him this. I’ll take Brázda, who’s represented by his half-American niece, and another artist I’d never come across before named Ivan Maňásek .