Camp Game

Voices emerge one after another creating polyphony.

I was actually born in a camp.

Voices: Glenn Gould, Tereza Fišerová, Ludwig van Beethoven, Tintoretto, Paris Bordone, Irrsigler, Johann Sebastian Bach, Kryštof Dientzenhofer, Jan Kratochvil, Thomas Bernhardt, Reger, Dan Graham, Man with white beard and others.

…while he kept talking of Mozart rather than Bach, I had to pick a place in the so-called Sebastian Hall; I had to, although it was completely against my liking to assume a place before Tizian, so that I could watch Reger, sitting in front of Tintoretto’s Man with white bird, standing, which was no disadvantage as I prefer standing to sitting, especially when observing other people, I have always had better observation skills when standing rather than sitting, and since I did manage to, looking from the Sebastian Hall to the Bordone Hall, caught a glimpse of the whole Reger, not even obstructed by a seat backrest, who…

In fact, there is no camp in this photograph. Although I was actually born in a camp. When my aunt divorced, she lived alone only with my cousins for some time and then she met a gentleman who became my new uncle. He lived in a large house in the countryside with a wide garden full of fruit trees and very meticulously mown lawn. It was a space of adults where children suddenly happened to appear, everything had special rules of its own and in the beginning my cousins and I found it difficult to try to come to terms with it. We wished very much to camp in the garden and we eventually were allowed to, but we always had to put up our tent at a different place so that the grass below would not fade away.

When Tereza was a child she hated letscho, a traditional meal made of stewed tomatoes and peppers parents or instructors used to trouble the children of her generation in summer times with. This was the case especially in camps, and in one of them Tereza was born. Overcooked vegetable lacking any shape or taste that would arouse at least some interest of children’s tasting buds was served on one afternoon as forced lunch once again. After Tereza ate it with utmost self-denial and necessary dose of accompanying encouragements, they all went to play the camp game called „Remembering“. Running with due vigour Tereza easily beat the rest of contestants, probably driven by the culinary injustice she had had to swallow. After her performance was highly praised by all the participants, she decided for an ostentatious gesture, as Tereza said: “I won Remembering and threw the letscho up the ditch.”

Where are the borders between polyphony and uncontrolled babble?

Fuga (Italian for escape, break-away) is a contrapuntal, polyphonic, imitative, two to six-tone musical composition of one sentence. It is a peak form of counterpoint which rigorously observes the equality of all voices. Its typical features include: …

This is no fuga.
Curated by Jan Kratochvíl