Pash*

To write about Pash* is to write about a generation, born in the mid-80s, that has only recently begun to change the shape in the Czech Republic of what this magazine calls visual culture. Pash* was born in Prague in 1984, and studies photography at the FAMU (Film and Television Academy of Prague). He rarely works in film, preferring instead to create street art, his series of colorful posters depicting tombstones being of particular interest: he pasted them to mark the spaces where he had previously glued stickers until someone took them down or destroyed them. He says that it was when he stopped doing street art that he started becoming successful- he has been invited to various workshops, and Claudia Wald included his stickers in the Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art book, published by Thames & Hudson this year. His pictures and animations do still bear the influence of street art, but Pash* wants to try other disciplines now. He freely jumps around, moving from posters to painted pictures and animations; performances in exhibition spaces and on the web, and VJing mixed with technically complex interactive installations. His style is a free arrangement of pastel colored pictograms and figurative fragments. Pash*’s strengths actually lie more in collaboration and public activities. Last year, he co-created the interactive environment Ombea (www.ombea.net), a room in which the lighting reacts to the movement and positions of visitors, and exercises on memory of their previous actions. The project was honored at the Lab.Art festival in Augsburg. Today, Pash* is a member of a collective that makes Kazalky: body suits designed to develop physical communication between two people at a distance from one another. Another collaborative effort comes from his attempts to obtain a clearer transfer of information: a year ago, he created the web portal Jelibojelito (www.jlbjlt.net), to this day the best controlled information channel about the activities of the independent cultural scene in this country. Since last year, he has been chief editor of the music section in the semimonthly Nový prostor. For Lemuria, the internet radio station, he broadcast a set where he only played tracks found at Myspace.com. Pash*’s journey aims to unite distant regions and to destroy barriers and divisions. Sooner or later he will limit his interests, but he excels in the search for connectivity and cooperation. His talent is linked to a non-rigid approach to authorship; multi-media hyperactivity and detachment which he has shown across a broad range of activities make Pash* an important center for cultural events. www.lostpostservice.net

01.02.2007