Milan Kohout: The Philosophical Slaughterhouse under the Bridge, 1985

1985, Plzen, Czechoslovakia, Performance recorded on Super 8mm film, 18.minutes
Camera Jiri Dvorsky, Music Vladimir Grulich

Podmostni filosoficka jatka (The Philosophical Slaughterhouse under the Bridge)

The performance, accompanied by a long poem, dealt with religious questions and a search for the sense of the life of people in totalitarian Czechoslovakia. At that time, only materialistic philosophies were proliferated by the government. The blinded and uniformly clothed performer investigated abandoned places (like dirty corners under the railroad bridge, scrap-yard depository sewers in the largest industrialized city in the country) while the film cutaways represented his inner life. Because of its subject, the film won no prizes and barely escaped confiscation by the police. It went into underground culture, however, was copied to video, and was distributed by Vokno, the samizdat video magazine.