Every thirty years or so,
there is a recurring incident,
that is not particularly exciting,
nonetheless, it still causes an unfortunate
suspicion, that has no satisfactory justification:

Cobblestone walks on its own 〄
Elena Pecenová and Vojtěch Novák

The exhibition Cobblestone walks on its own attempts to capture the idea before it becomes materialized. Therefore, follows a notion of the novel by the Czech-German author Gustav Meyer, known under the pseudonym Gustav Meyrink, and is in places directly inspired by the novel’s visual accompaniment created by the Czech-German author Hugo Steiner-Prag.

When I’m walking down the street,
I sometimes choose a spot to linger over,
pretending to see something there,
and yet, after a while, I start to perceive
something – I undergo a random passerby,
without noticing my previous actions,
looks at the same spot.

The theme of a collective idea that becomes more and more apparent with every new consciousness seemed to be suitable for Bielefeld, as there is a conspiracy theory about the city’s inexistence. To shuffle the cards, we brought two cornerstone copies into the gallery, whose originals appear in the streets of Prague’s old town as phantom stones.
The cornerstone on the corner of Lily and Golden Street wasn’t supposed to resemble a kind of face staring at us as we walk down the street – its eyes, or rather hollows, are the result of an iron-wrought ring being ripped apart. The fact that we interpret it in this way is due to a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia, in which perceived vague or indistinct stimuli are shaped into meaningful images with the help of one’s imagination. Recognition of faces, animals, and other objects in the shape of clouds or wood textures is a typical example.

For how long I am able to hold
an imprint of a face on the matter,
before my image of it disintegrates?
I imagine a point at which matter
comes to life and expands.

Where is the line between form and formless matter? What animates the inanimate?
In an old Prague myth, which is indirectly referred to in Gustav Meyrink’s book, clay is revived by an object called a shem, which is depicted in Czech folklore as a ball.
However, this is a misleading depiction, since, the shem is not a ball, but a NAME, a WORD. That is why in the drawings the imps, as bearers of secrets, play with the illusion of the shem as a marble.

Feel the letters, but don’t read them
with your eyes – hire a translator,
within yourself who will be wordless,
translating into consciousness the movement of matter.

Who is the one who awakens in us in the moment of falling asleep, when we balance over the abyss of sleep and wakefulness? It is the one who makes us gain the ability to anticipate falling face-first onto the pavement.

— Elena Pecenová