1. National Collection of Bad Habits
The Collection of Bad Habits is the primary phase of the entire project, and its goal is to collect the widest possible range of bad habits throughout the Czech Republic. The collection will take place both online (www.sbirkazlozvyků.cz) and directly in the field – we’ll be collecting them at 200 locations in Bohemia and Moravia. We’ll address individuals in towns and villages, and audiences at cultural and sporting events. We’ll visit schools, homes for the elderly, associations, clubs, leisure groups, and various businesses. In the collection process, it will always be essential to inspire individuals to reflect on themselves and on society in general. We’re not looking for notorious things (nail biting) or addictions (smoking, alcohol), but original patterns of behaviour that irk us about someone/something, or that are passed down in a family from generation to generation. We’re looking for all sorts of bad habits: both our own and those of other people, our families and the country as a whole. We’re looking for bad habits we had no idea existed until now, bad habits that will enable us to perceive the world around us in new ways.
2. Mendel’s Table of Bad Habits
The goal of the second phase of the project will be to process the data obtained in the preceding six months and create something unique, a first worldwide: Mendel’s Table of Bad Habits. It will be an important tool not only for putting together a book, but also for directly contacting and involving participants in the final phase of the project. At the same time, it will be the first important output of the project – a website dealing with bad habits on a scale without parallel in the world.
3. Encyclopedia of Bad Habits
The second of the project’s outputs will be an ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF BAD HABITS, an attempt to put the bad habits into book form. The book will be an alphabetically arranged dictionary of bad habits, clearly arranged under category headings. The form of the book will be based on Mendel’s Table of Bad Habits, but at the same time it will be significantly enriched by a more detailed treatment of selected bad habits. The book will also have an important visual component (photographs, illustrations, graphs, maps, tables), whose aim is to examine and popularize not only human behaviour, but also heredity and thus the legacy of Gregor Johann Mendel.
4. Collection of National Bad Habits
The highlight of the IT’S JUST LIKE HIM project is the NATIONAL COLLECTION OF BAD HABITS FESTIVAL, which will take place on the occasion of the 2023 Mendel Festival in the centre of Brno and will be the culmination of the yearlong celebration of the founder of genetics, Gregor Johann Mendel. Participants in project from all over the Czech Republic will have a unique opportunity to find their „distant relatives“ in Brno – that’s what we call individuals who are proud of some of the bad habits that we ourselves have. Through a large-scale participatory event, we will try to rouse the public to action and, by means of their own (prompted) activities, to awaken a permanent change in the ways they conduct themselves.
The exact format of the event will be inspired not only by the broad collection of bad habits organized into categories, but by the extensive experience of the artist, who has been engaging in social architecture projects for over twenty years and has successfully brought dozens of them to fruition around the world.