Patricia Lambertus’s exhibition draws on one of the most well-known slogans associated with the Baťa company: “The day has 86,000 seconds.” This seemingly neutral constant, expressing a universal framework of time shared by everyone, becomes in the context of modernity a tool for organizing, measuring, and disciplining everyday life. Time is no longer merely a medium of experience and possible self-development; it becomes a structure that shapes both individual actions and the collective rhythm of society. 

Built by the Baťa company, Zlín represents one of the unique examples of a factory town conceived not merely as a place of production, but as a comprehensive environment in which work, housing, and leisure time were all subordinated to a unified order, where any deviation carried consequences. In this sense, Zlín can be understood as a parallel to modernist urban visions formulated by figures such as Le Corbusier, whose concepts of the rationally organized city sought to optimize living conditions through the standardization of space. The modernist utopia here rests on the belief that a properly designed environment can lead to a harmonious and efficient social order. 

This faith in a planned—and optimistic—future is evident, for example, in company publications. In 1934, the magazine Zlín: Communications for Baťa Employees posed a question looking forty years ahead: what would life and work in Zlín be like in 1974? Such projections of the future reflect a broader phenomenon of modernity, in which the future becomes an object of planning and is understood as an open yet shapeable space. 

With hindsight, however, this optimism appears ambivalent. Modernist projects intended to ensure a better life simultaneously contained mechanisms of control and organization—of production, of individuals, of their time, and of their bodies. 

It is precisely within this tension between utopia and control that Patricia Lambertus’s site-specific project unfolds. Her installation does not present a linear narrative; instead, it functions as a spatial essay in which layers of historical and futurological visions, visual fragments, and contemporary images overlap and interact. Within this layering, the image itself plays a crucial role—a window into the organism of a factory that continues to pulse with life. Lambertus works with digital collage, combining fragments of old newspapers, texts, and images with contemporary footage. The original, unambiguous meanings dissolve, and interpretation remains in constant flux. 

The almost postmodern character of these images manifests not only in their fragmentary nature but also in their ambivalent tone, oscillating between irony and unease, between playfulness and latent destruction. The image of the city thus appears not as a stable whole, but as a shifting configuration of signs whose meanings are constantly being redefined. Time also plays a fundamental role here—not as a linear axis, but as a layer. Fragments of the past, present, and imagined future coexist side by side without any clear hierarchy. 

In this context, the original Baťa slogan takes on a different meaning. “The day has 86,000 seconds” no longer functions as a motivational call to use time efficiently, but rather as a reminder of its structuring pressure. Every second becomes a unit that can be filled, but also controlled, optimized, and exhausted. What was presented as a universal opportunity reveals itself instead as an unevenly distributed experience.