July 6, 2009
On a recent visit to the Kafka museum in Prague we were intrigued by this statue outside. After a bit of investigating we discover that their hips swivel to write messages in the water, including a quote from Kafka: ‘Prague is beautiful but it has claws.’ There is a computer underneath, to which you can send text messages for the men to pee out. The statues are the work of Czech artist David Cerny who explains them thus: “There’s a Czech idiom about ‘peeing over somebody,’ which I guess translated into English would be to ‘get one over on somebody.’ That’s what the peeing men mean. It’s the way our country behaves.”

On a recent visit to the Kafka museum in Prague we were intrigued by this statue outside.

After a bit of investigating we discover that their hips swivel to write messages in the water, including a quote from Kafka: ‘Prague is beautiful but it has claws.’ There is a computer underneath, to which you can send text messages for the men to pee out.

The statues are the work of Czech artist David Cerny who explains them thus: “There’s a Czech idiom about ‘peeing over somebody,’ which I guess translated into English would be to ‘get one over on somebody.’ That’s what the peeing men mean. It’s the way our country behaves.”

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