PAUL CHANEY
The Sun is Black
2011
Gallerie DIVUS, Bubenska 1, Prague, Czech Republic
Diagrammatic installation housed in the former headquarters of the Czechoslovak Republic Central Electricity and Transport Division in downtown Prague. The result of a six week residency courtesy of DIVUS.
Centering around the massive extraction of brown coal (lignite) near the northern city of Most, the diagram charts the recent release of this fossilized solar hegemony. As the ancient material works its way through industrially charged communism and the later machinations of globalised capital, the research attempts to identify nodal points in a 360,000,000 year old story that ends with the human unwittingly becoming the hand maiden of the Sun - supporting its universal drive towards pyromanical mega-death.
The destruction of Most during 1969 - 1975 (one of Bohemia's finest gothic cities) to make way for the extraction of coal, and the subsequent rebuild of the city as an impotent Modernist dream park, is a tale with many unexpected twists and turns; the physical movement of the largest stone structure ever transported in one piece - the 10,000 tonne church of old Most, a Cold War incident as American film crews making WWII films during the demolition of the city get caught red handed by Soviet Forces invading Czechoslovakia in 1968, evidences of an ancient alchemical brotherhood, a pact with the malefic inner black Sun, and a 500 hundred year old curse that ripped through communities.
The work uncovered the convoluted narratives embedded in coal, positioning it as a virile component of Georges Bataille's 'Solar Economy' - not as a problematic inherently evil material, but as a gallant vegetative resistance against the thermonuclear holocaust at the center of our solar system - the Sun.
The work is presented as a giant hand painted wall diagram and time-line - each centimeter representing 10 years, interspersed with objet trouve and a separate wall projection.
Included in the show:
The Solar Fuck Club - an explicit Kama Sutra guide to solar resistance (see editions).
Screenings of vintage Bolshevik propaganda films documenting and justifying the destruction of Most.
A series of 'Coal Fun Workshops' where local children were invited to reinvest lumps of coal with the colours of their original solar excess.
Download accompanying project text here
Link to: Prager Kabarett Website
Link to: Divus Website


