START POINT PRIZE – Prize for emerging artists

Camilla Skibrek

For five days, from Monday through Friday, Camilla Skibrek spent four hours regularly licking a wooden stick. Her aim was to create a horizontal opening, a hole through the stick, just using her tongue and saliva. She developed her own technique: first, salivating intensively, she would erode the surface of the wood, then she would like the soaked layer with her tongue. She repeated the process over and over again. The consistent regularity transformed the absurd experiment into a personal ritual. In the background one can sense there is an illustrative metaphor, when artistic work becomes the work of an artist – the definition of “work” as an activity whose meaning cannot be understood, but suffices as long as it is performed at a precisely defined time on a regular basis. (Ondřej Chrobák)