TARAN
audiovisual performance

by
Rous/Šmitmajer/Týmal

year: 2017
running time: 35min
format: film slides 6×6
sound: live music

The team of three authors: Rouš, Šmitmajer, Týmal has been exploring limits of human
visual and hearing apparatus for thirteen years. Their live performances combine film
projection altogether with analogue synthesis and sound restructuring. Taran is their third
common work after Swan Desert and Boghor Hunting.

The historically first aerial taran – a combat maneuver in which the pilot deliberately guides
his airplane into an enemy apparatus for destruction, took place on September 8, 1914, in
the sky above the Ukrainian Zovkva. Petr Nestěrov – russian pioneer of aeronautical
acrobatics, swept away from the sky an Austrian airplane piloted by František Malina at the
cost of his own life.

TARAN, using experimental live animation techniques, reconstructs this incident, and at the
same time displays the transformation of aviatics into a weapon that has changed the form
of warfare.