ROBERT ROTH – READING FROM THE BOOK CLUBOVKA
36 names, 36 reflections on architecture, on design, but also on the joys and sorrows of the present day. What do these people have in common? Why is this collection of reflections and drawings composed precisely of their contributions? It is obvious from the very first glance that we are entering a creative realm fueled by a massive flow of extraordinary ideas. Their authors are designers, artists and architects from various parts of the world, convincingly developing culture of the purest quality through their works. There is, however, yet another detail that links them together in this book: all of them had visited Slovakia in the past thirteen years, as the chief guests of the event Clubovka. They came to present their largest and/or the lates achievements, to clarify their visions, draw on their principles and methods of creating works that will not disappear under the dust of social apathy. Their presence in Slovakia, however, was merely a lighting-flash, necessarily fading in the minds of the public under layers of new experiences. The book entitled Clubovka, with its subtitle I Am Thinking, does not reflect on the Slovak visit of these artists through retrospection alone. It employs the present tense, the process actually under way, and by extension the philosophy of awareness of the present moment. All of the guests of Clubovka were asked a single question: What are you thinking about at the moment? And since these people are used to expressing themselves in a visual form, their written thoughts are accompanied by drawings. The result is a diverse collection of texts and sketches which go beyond the strictly professional insight. It brings us a very human and often surprising dimension of personalities we are more familiar with in different contexts than revealed in this book. In their contributions, we can find the key to their thinking, an emotional depth, a sensitive vision of the world, a vigilance against information overload, but also a sparkling honesty. And thanks to these personal revelations, the book penetrates the Zeitgeist we live in, thus becoming a kind of a postcard of the future at the same time.
Elena Alexy
Statements of the author: "Clubovka has always been great – and it still is! There are a lot of reasons and arguments for this. Surely, everyone can name them. So I don't need to repeat it again, suffice it to say that Clubovka is great... Bořek Šípek"
