Mirrors of Zlín 

The first out of the three installations works with the distinctive perspective of writer Pavel Kosatík on the evolution of the city and its surroundings, which we subsequently complemented and summarised with illustrations. This resulted in an intergenerational dialogue between text and image, which are sometimes in harmony and sometimes in contrast. In addition to this narrative part, there are another two installations in the chateau park.

One is an immersive film, an audiovisual experience that allows visitors to inhabit past moments of Zlín in various eras, seasons, lights, in rural times, during a fire, when the railway arrived, during the Bata boom, and also present moments. It is a frame-by-frame painted animation that treats each frame of the film as a painting.

The last permanent installation is the mirrors of Zlín – a lyrical constellation of fluid shapes, poetically placed among the most beautiful trees of Zlín‘s park, whose treetops, flowing sky, and curious passing visitors they reflect. The soul of this part of the installation is a sound composition that is a celebration of the cycle of time, the turning of the seasons, the lengthening and shortening of the days, the moments of equinox and solstice, which functions as an unpredictable, surprising solar calendar or astrological clock. The basis for the music composition that sounds through the park in various phases of the year was a careful mapping and study of the sounds of bells in the belfries of the Zlín Region. Thus the park rings with the vibrations of bell bronze, which creates a scaled-down geographical imprint of the Zlín Region. The individual multi-channel musical compositions and their exact position in time and the year correspond to a study of the movement of the sun and stars.

The sound level is supported with a moving light, which not only provides a visual accompaniment to the mirrors and music but also a poetic and playful alternative to the park‘s night-time lighting. This results in a harmony between the natural and artificial light, between the sound of the park, the musical composition and the passage of time. The Mirrors of Zlín thus becomes an artwork that can exist only in this place, at this time.