Whaling Station

In 1964, after graduating from the Film Faculty at the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, Bohuslav “Woody” Vašulka (1937–2019) was given a 35mm camera and black and white film by the school to make documentaries. That same year Woody traveled to Iceland with Steina Briem Bjarnadóttir (1940), an Icelandic concert violinist whom he met in Czechoslovakia in 1962 and later married. While in Iceland, Woody worked on two films with Steina as producer and Miroslav Filip (a Czech photographer, dates unknown) as cameraman. The first film was Herring Season Seyðisfjörður, and the second was Whaling Station.

Woody and his compatriot Miroslav “were naturally interested in the fishing industry, coming from a land-locked country,” recalls Steina, who accompanied the filmmakers on location throughout Iceland. They were intrigued by the process of flensing whale carcasses that they witnessed in Hvalfjörður. “Czechs have a particular aversion to killing,” according to Steina. “Carving the animal was shocking to them.” Interestingly, the film is made without an editorial position on flensing. This was intentional. Coming from a country under Soviet rule, Woody aimed to make films that did not use cinematic methods of propaganda. Rather, he wanted the images to speak for themselves. The original score for the film, composed by Josef Ceremuga (Czech, 1930-2005), underscores the artist’s approach not to sentimentalize the subject. Through the straightforward, unemotional presentation, viewers are left to form their own opinion about the realities of the whaling industry.

The artist, filmmaker, and editor Woody Vasulka is renowned as an important pioneer in the emerging medium of video art. Born Bohuslav Vašulka in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, Vasulka studied metallurgy and mechanics at the School of Industrial Engineering in Brno and film at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Together with his life partner Steina (b. 1940), he worked to explore the nature of electronic image and sound, new technologies, and digital manipulation, and tested new devices such as the Digital Image Articulator, which Woody invented with Jeffrey Schier in 1976. The machine was able to process digital imagery by converting it into a form of code. They were also cofounders, in 1971, of The Kitchen, in New York.

The National Gallery of Iceland is home to the Vasulka Chamber, a research center within the museum, dedicated to the study, collection, and display of video, digital, audio, and multimedia art in Iceland. In cooperation with the Vasulka Kitchen Brno and the Vasulka Foundation Vasulka.org, the Vasulka Chamber collects and maintains research materials relating to the life and work of Steina and Woody, including the archive, works of art in the collection, and a reference library.