Lenka Morávková

Sound Documentary· Audiovisual Performance · Socially Engaged Art

2016

PROJECT INFORMATION

Glass Spilled Out of the Broken Bathtub is a socio-critical audiovisual work examining the decline of the glassmaking industry in Northern Bohemia — the region where Morávková was born and raised.

For more than a century, glassmaking has formed a core part of the region’s economic and cultural identity.Growing up there, Morávková was surrounded by people whose lives were directly connected to the industry — from members of her own family to friends, neighbours and the wider community.

When local glassworks, manufacturers and design businesses began closing and skilled workers were losing their livelihoods, Morávková witnessed the consequences unfolding around her. The project emerged from a desire to respond to this transformation and bring greater public and media attention to a crisis affecting the community she came from.

Combining an ethnographic approach with experimental sound composition, Morávková conducted in-depth interviews across the region’s glassmaking ecosystem — with glassworkers, manufacturers and factory owners, historians, industry representatives, glass-school students, and members of her own family, including her father. Field recordings and images gathered inside factories and small workshops documented not only the voices of the people affected, but also the distinctive sonic environment of glass production itself.

The resulting work approaches the crisis through labour, personal testimony and the sounds of glass production itself, positioning a deeply local transformation within broader questions of globalization, economic change and cultural identity.

THE WORK

At the core of the project is a 30-minute experimental sound documentary composed from interviews and authentic field recordings made in glass factories and workshops across Northern Bohemia.

For its live iteration, the documentary material was transformed into an audiovisual performance combining industrial field recordings with live improvisation on glass objects and instruments. Morávková performed inside a semi-transparent cube used as a projection surface, accompanied by a sculptural glass installation activated through projected light and imagery.

The work was subsequently presented as a touring performance. Each presentation was followed by a public roundtable discussion, bringing together invited voices connected to the subject — from glassmaking and cultural practice to the wider social and economic context. The discussions extended the work beyond the performance itself, opening a public conversation around the central question of the project: how can a deeply rooted local tradition survive and evolve within a globalized economy?

For the project’s presentation at the International Glass Symposium in Nový Bor in 2012, the first Cristal Baschet instrument in the Czech Republic was constructed for Morávková’s performance. This encounter became a pivotal moment in her artistic practice and eventually developed into her long-term work with the Bohemian Cristal Instrument.

The project continued to evolve across formats, including a radio documentary commissioned by Czech Radio, sound performances, and conference presentations in the United States and Canada. Moving between ethnographic research, experimental documentary, sound composition, audiovisual performance and public dialogue, the work used artistic practice not only to document a regional crisis, but to bring it into a wider public conversation.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

2016 — Music and Labor Conference, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2016 — Locations and Dislocations Conference, Rider University, USA
2012 — International Glass Symposium IGS, Nový Bor, Czech Republic
2012 — Czech Radio Vltava — commissioned radio documentary & interview
2011 — New Stage of the National Theatre, Prague, Czech Republic
2010 — United Islands Festival / MeetFactory, Prague, Czech Republic
2010 — Fléda, Brno, Czech Republic
2010 — Klub Na Rampě, Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic
2010 — Moving Station, Plzeň, Czech Republic

CREDITS

Concept, Research, Sound Composition & Performance — Lenka Morávková
Creative Producer — Lenka Morávková
Video Projection — Tereza Rullerová / The Rodina
Stage Design — Linda Čihařová