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Ján Mančuška
Killer Without a Cause, 2006

Installation view: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Sculptural Discourses, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2006-2007
Photo: Michael Strasser, 2006| © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2017

Ján Mančuška

Collection

35 mm film installation, two Meopton IV-X film projectors, black curtains, b/w, sound
5 min 53 sec (film)
Overall dimensions ca 200 x 460 x 85 cm

The works of Ján Mančuška substantiate perception and language, addressing significant questions about fundamental comprehension in a mostly laconical way. Mančuška's aim is not so much to allocate meaning but to play with space and a sculptural, modelled vocabulary, in order to make immaterial cognitive processes seizable. In Killer Without A Cause, Mančuška subordinates the dominant regime of the image to the presence of the filmic apparatus - in the form of two 35 mm projectors. The artist prioritizes the element of language as narrative medium and foregrounds the projector and the sound loop – which traditionally are assigned to the background of any projective situation.

Below please find the text of Killer without a Cause:

It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. The flat has one room with an adjoining kitchen. A large window on the left upon entering dominates the space. Tree branches partially obstruct the window’s view. V… sits at the table and is looking at something on the floor. If someone were sitting across from him at the table, and was looking in his direction, V…’s body would form a silhouette against the window, but the person would not be see what V… is looking at on the floor. No one else is sitting at the table anyway. From a slightly elevated viewpoint the direction V… is looking in is apparent and the space in front of him can be seen. The light, falling on the floor and part of the furniture creates a figure in the shape of the window. This shape moving across the space determines the time and the tempo of the action in the flat. You can tell the time just by the shape’s position on the floor. At least V… can, since he spends most of the day staring at the three slowly moving rectangles.
At ten o’clock in the morning, if V… is already up, the window’s image has a three-dimensional shape. On the left side from V….‘s perspective the shape illuminates the edge of a couch covered by a blanket. It continues to the centre of the window, then slides endways down along the side, breaks and continues along the parquet floor. It ends at the fourth parquet to the right of the couch. At eleven o’clock nearly the same shape of the window is shown on the floor, except that the left edge is bent somewhat and continues to illuminate the edge of the couch. Time stands still at night. It’s night and then day again. A street lamp depicts the still window. In the morning it’s once again possible to tell the time. Or rather an everyday activity that corresponds to a position. The fifth parquet means it’s time to brush your teeth. The right leg of the chair – time for lunch. The necessity to determine the precise time would normally be linked to an event occurring outside the flat, but nothing V… does has anything to do with what happens outside. No one has visited V... for a long time. And he doesn’t want to go see anyone. Save for a few words when shopping, he doesn’t say much during the day.
The next morning. V… counts the parquets to see whether it’s time to brush his teeth. He counts out loud … perhaps out loud: there’s no one around to confirm this. The sun’s rays penetrate through the window. The room is stuffy. If his mother were still alive she’d regularly check up on V… She used to begin each visit by opening the window. V… hates to have the window open.
Another one of V…’s activities is to form various shapes from the different medicines on the table. He’s set quite a few aside over the past few years. They differ in shape, colour, illness that they treat, taste, chemical ingredients, shape of box, shape of bottle and length of time that has elapsed from the date by which they should have been consumed. All these sub-categories play a role in how V… positions them on the table. At first, positioning was derived from more apparent, aesthetic properties. The first were colours, then shape. When he had used up most of the combinations, he began to take into consideration the arrangement of the pills on the table. On the table with regard to the room and so forth. And then the positioning of the parquets began to play a role. It’s late afternoon and V… masturbates. The pills are spread out on the table in a 45-degree angle to the slant of the parquets. From left to right to the window the pills are arranged according to a blue-purple-red-orange-yellow-white sequence. The pills create on the table a rectangular shape parallel to the table’s edges. Thirty minutes later V… collects from the rectangles the medicines of the anti-allergic group. Now the pills form a grid-like shape. He fidgets with the pills for a while in his palm. Purple is the predominant colour. He begins to take one pill after another. When his palm is empty he drinks them down and reaches for the pills on the left side of the window – the blue ones.
The next day. Five people stand around a table on which a man lies in a sleeping position. The elderly woman, the mother of the lying man, stands by the window and looks out. Three rectangles of light illuminate her legs. They begin on the left side from the view toward the window on the 23rd parquet. A young man takes a sweater off the seat saying that he forgot it there the day before. Another man stands by the table. “I don’t get it. We were together almost every day. He never said a thing.”

*1972 in Bratislava, Slovakia I † 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic

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