Frontiers of Solitude

The topics of the conference reflect the links between economic, biopolitical, cultural, and ethical problems and their influence on regional development in an encounter with issues of international scope. We welcome entries from all scientific fields dealing with environmental topics, as well as those in contemporary art, artistic reflection and curatorial approaches.

Paul Chaney (born U.K. 1974) is a self-taught artist researching through a mix of participatory and durational art practices both local and global in scale. He lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic and in UK. Recent solo shows and projects include: Lizard Exit Plan, The Sun is Black, Museum of Art and Design (Benesov, 2012), and Divus (Prague, 2011); The Lonely Now, Goldfish (Penzance, 2008). Selected Group Shows: TURBOREALISM – Breaking Ground, IZOLYATSIA Center for Cultural Initiatives (Ukraine 2013); FIELDCLUB and Friends – Late at Tate St Ives (2011); In Abundance, Kestle Barton (Cornwall, 2011); Garden Marathon, Serpentine Gallery (London, 2011), Art and War in the Last Resort, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, 2011), and PEER (London). Curatorial work includes delivering a programme of art events and residencies in Falmouth and London for Urbanomic 2009-2010 and in 2012, the establishment of the London HQ of DIVUS – Czech art publishing house.

Dům umění Ústí nad Labem
September – October 2016

http://duul.ujep.cz/

An exhibition and symposium created within the framework of the international transdisciplinary project Frontiers of Solitude.

Saturday beginning at 2 PM

The Regional Gallery of Vysočina in Jihlava presents an program to accompany the exhibition Frontiers of Solitude, which continues until 29 May 2016.

An Excursion Beneath Jihlava

5:00 PM, Komenského 10

The Regional Gallery of Vysočina in Jihlava presents an program to accompany the exhibition Frontiers of Solitude, which continues until 29 May 2016.

A talk on the Uranium Mines of Vysočina

vernissage: Thursday March 31

opening performance by Martin Zet

USA / Canada, 2015, 89 min.
director: Avi Lewis
script: Naomi Klein

The short film program Beyond Horizons focuses on works by artists who question the governance of natural resources in Northern Norway and the High North.

Introduction: Governance of natural resources and the rights to the land and the sea.

Starring: John Perkins, Erla Stefánsdóttir, Ómar Ragnarsson, Jakob Björnsson
Directed by: Þorfinnur Guðnason and Andri Snær Magnason

For more than ten years, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) has been bringing together artists and activists in order to co-create new forms of resistance and disobedience.

The international symposium Frontiers of Solitude, organized as part of the eponymous art project site will offer a comparison of the opinions, experiences, and points of view of artists, curators, and invited guests on the theme of transitions in the landscape in which we currrently live and of which we are a part.

Opening: February 4th, 2016. The exhibition FoS Phase II will take place in Prague. It will present the outcome of artistic research by project participants from Iceland, Norway and Czech Republic. All artworks have been commissioned and will be created within the framework of the FoS project. The exhibition will take place at Školská 28 Gallery and Galerie Fotograf.

Školská 28 Praha 1

This documentary essay, containing certain elements of a road movie, traces the journey of several individuals during their trek through the foothills of the Ore Mountains. Its aim is to capture an image of the unstable terrain of the area, which is the result of decades of mining and the subsequent (un)successful reclamation activities. The title may be considered as the literal designation of their river adventure as well as a reference to the changeable nature of the landscape. This film, balancing on a fine line between documentary and fiction, appeals to the viewer’s imagination and lets the landscape itself tell the story of this devastated and later revitalised area of the Northern Bohemia Region.

Workshop for Základní uměleckou školu v Duchcově is inspired by the history of building of The Baroque Chappel of the Valdštejn Hospital in the garden of the Duchov castle. Lecturer: Radoslava Schmelzová, asisstance: Dagmar Šubrtová, teacher: Petra Wolfová.

Ivo Přikryl is a hydrobiologist working at ENKI o.p.s. Třeboň. His research focuses on zooplankton in lakes, dams and ponds mostly in Central Europe. He is currently studying the possibilities for the protection of wetlands , marshes, the management of dams and the recultivation of the landscape after periods of open cast mining, especially in the Ore Mountains.

We would like to express our thanks to all who have supported and contributed to the expeditions in Northern Bohemia and Iceland. To mark the end of traveling around the open pits we are organizing an informal meeting in the Osek Monastery on September 25 (starting at 5pm). It would be a pleasure if you could join us. The event will look back at the three-week-long Czech expedition program, including a presentation of the Icelandic expedition by means of photographs by its participants.

Workshop will be focused on the relationships between people and landscape in the post-industrial time. We will talk about how people shape landscape and pointing to the fact, that even seemingly destroyed landscape can quickly recover.  Radek Mikuláš

Together with the archaeologist Petr Meduna, art historian Radoslava Schmelzová and biologist Jiří Sádlo we will visit several locations around the village of Libkovice (Liquitz), today merely a small fragment of a brutally exploited urbanized territory. Libkovice was the last coherent urban settlement destroyed because of a planned expansion of a coal mine in 1992. However, the mining there has never begun--and maybe never will. What remains is a devastated landscape, people's lives and historical memory.

Václav Cílek presented his thoughts on the relationship between the past and the current situation of the Ore Mountains landscape. His field lecture included a walk to an ancient sanctuary--today an archaeological site located the hills near the Jezeří Chateau.

Open call for guests and students to participate in the symposium Into the Abyss of Lignite Clouds. This open call is designed for those who are interested in the concept of the symposium, high school students, universities, journalists, specialists and others.

An improvised workshop with Miloš Šejn, inspired by the environment of the castle Jezeří, especially its former arboretum--a vast park located between the castle and the former village of Albrechtice. The workshop is intended as an inquiry into the hill of Jezeří and will comprise of improvised actions in several locations.

A two-day workshop focused on the sound environments around the brown coal industry in Most Basin (North Bohemia). We used both listening and making field recordings. We also used photography and writing to compare the differences between the sound, visual and language perspectives on the area.

The subject of the lecture is the landscape of northwest Bohemia and its transformation, related to the industrial, demographic, and political changes in the course of the 20th century. The impacts of mining, energy and hydro- industry or the influence of social changes which caused frequent disappearance of settlements across the entire Ústí region. Several examples will be given of towns and villages which lost the "battle for better future". The lecture will also include a short presentation of an older museum exposition dedicated to the "Vanished Settlements of the Most Area", delivered by its curator Eva Hladká.

Hydrobiologist Ivo Přikryl will explain the history and current situation of the water environment of the open cast brown coal mining around Most. He is employed at ENKI o.p.s. in Třeboň. His research focuses on zooplankton in lakes, reservoirs and ponds, mostly in Central Europe. He is currently studying the possibilities of protecting wetlands and marshes, the management of reservoirs, and the recultivation of the landscape after open cast mining, especially in the Ore Mountains.

A tour of Duchcov with the historian of the town’s Municipal Museum, Jiří Wolf, who will provide an introduction to the town’s history, including its Baroque spaces, the city fortifications, sacred locations, and locations of dread.

The focus of the expedition and workshops in the landscape around the Most Basin is on current changes in the heavily industrialized landscape, especially with regard to the loss of historical continuity, the transfers of geological layers and social structures, and current discussions about the abolition of territorial limits, as well as the potential for further degradation and exploitation of the landscape by extensive open cast mining.

Directed & Edited by: Dominik Žižka
D.P. & Sound: Dominik Žižka, Michal Kindernay

The FOS Manifesto was created as part of the international project Frontiers of Solitude (2015 – 16) which focused on the relationship between ecology and contemporary art. In the following text we have attempted to briefly summarize at least some of the main themes underpinning FOS.

Jiří Zemánek PhDr is art historian, ethnographer, curator and journalist. His interests include the overlaps between artistic creation, ecology and spirituality, issues of paradigm shift and the emergence of a new integral culture.

Koudelka's photographs in Black Trinagle series "show a devastated countryside, a war zone of blasted trees and vegetation, a landscape as atrophied and as wrecked as anything in a Paul Nash painting of the Somme.

The audiovisual Installation Orka expresses motion, a motion that runs counter to the laws of physics and the “frame-bound image”. The overriding formal orchestration of image events and their relatedness resembles the composition of a visual symphony.

By occasion of the Frontiers of Solitude in Ustí nad Labem JSD and SGS will reveal a section of The Research Hydrobiological Laboratory, operating in the Universal Psychiatric Temple 316a (UPSYCH) institution.

Ibra Ibrahimovič (born, working and living in Most) is an award-winning Czech documentary photographer. He shoots landscapes of areas destroyed by industry and takes portraits of the people whose lives are simultaneously being ruined.

Photographer: Dagmar Šubrtová

Jihlava, 31 March 2016 to 29 May 2016
Vysočina Regional Gallery

Pavel Sterec was born in 1985 in Prague, where he still lives and works. He studied in Brno, Prague, and Vienna, and graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) in Prague, where he studied under Vladimír Skrepl, Jiří Kovanda, Zbigniew Libera and Pawel Althamer.

Prague, 5 February to 4 March, 2016
French Institute Prague

Photographer: Tomáš Hrůza

Prague, 5 February to 4 March, 2016
Galerie Školská 28
Fotograf Gallery
Galerie Ex Post

Program and abstracts
Location: French Institut Prague, Štěpánská 35 Praha 1

The interdisciplinary project Frontiers of Solitude focuses on contemporary transformations of the landscape and the close connections between our civilization and nature.

The topology of the Baroque space of the city Duchcov and the Cistercian Monastery in Osek according the archive materials.

...more at: http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/jiri-wolf-a-tour-through-barogue-duchcov

A remediation of environmental (and social) disturbances caused by extensive open cast brown coal mining in northwest Bohemia is a priority for the Czech environmental policy.

A two-day workshop focused on the sound environments around the brown coal industry in Most Basin (North Bohemia). We useed both listening and making field recordings.

Václav Cílek presented his thoughts on the relationship between the past and the current situation of the Ore Mountains landscape. His field lecture included a walk to an ancient sanctuary-today an archaeological site, located in the hills above the Jezeří Chateau.

Počátky kritiky socialistického produktivismu na příkladu severních Čech šedesátých let 20. století. V šedesátých letech byla československá veřejnost svědkem obnovení veřejné debaty a tudíž i různých forem kritiky.

Dustin Breitling is an M.A. Student at Charles University studying geopolitics. He organizes the Diffractions lecture series. He will speak on Cognitive Mapping.

Petr Gibas is interested in the landscape and urban anthropology with an emphasis on the home with regard to its emotional dimensions, homelessness, hybrid landscapes such as the industrial landscape of post-industrial Czech Republic, urban decay, and garden colonies in contemporary (Central) European cities.

Tereza Stöckelová is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, assistant professor at the Department of General Anthropology, Charles University, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review. Her work is situated in-between sociology, social anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and draws upon actor network theory and related material semiotic methodologies.

Vít Bohal is a member of the Diffractions collective, focused on accelerationism, posthumanism, Prometheanism, and strands of critical theory. He publishes and translates texts on various topics, most usually those of culture and philosophy. His articles have appeared in VLAK, VICE, Creator's Project, A2, and Word Addict. He studied music at Charles University and majored in Critical and Cultural Theory.

Martin Říha is a Czech architect, urbanist, active in Czech environmental policy. After graduating from the Architecture Faculty of the Czech Technical University, he worked for the City of Děčín, and later in Ústí nad Labem at the Department of Regional Planning. There, he lobbied against the so-called “large-scale mining” proposed by the Soviet advisors for the North Bohemian coal region.

Challenging anthropocentric conventions that seek to harness the river for economic, cultural and political purposes, the River School project (2013-2015) led my Maja and Reuben Fowkes, placed the complex ecological materiality of the Danube at the centre of artistic and scholarly attention.

Guy van Belle (a.k.a. Gívan Belá) is a media artist and curator living in the Czech Republic. On occasion he would introduce himself as a media data author, on another as a wind time inventor and clockmaker, then at another as a slide and cigar box guitar musician in a skiffle/spasm band. After studying literature and linguistics, philosophy and sculpting, made the switch to computer music at the end of the 1980s.

Martin Škabrahais a Czech philosopher and journalist. He graduated in history and philosophy from the Philosophical Faculty of the Palacký University in Olomouc. Currently, he teaches in the departement of philosophy at the philosophy department of Ostrava University, focusing mainy on contemporary political thinking. His work has been influenced by Jan Patočka, Václav Bělohradský, Jacques Derrida, and theorists of the Frankfurt school. His essays bring together postmodern critique and statements of social engagement, adressing issues such as ecology, the New Left and feminism.

Stanislav Komárek is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences at the Faculty of Science, Charles University Prague. He is also a writer and essayist. He also holds a degree in biology from the Faculty of Biological Sciences of Charles University. He was briefly employed at the Institute of Parasitology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice, after which he opted for exile in Austria.

Professor Václav Bělohradský is a contemporary Czech philosopher and sociologist. A graduate in philosophy and Czech language from Charles University, Prague, he has lived in Italy since 1970, where he is currently Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trieste. Cited as one of Václav Havel’s intellectual influences in the mid-1980s, he was one of the first Central European thinkers to examine the consequences of the "post-modern turn" for the region.

Jiří Šlajsna, Mgr., is a historian, author of articles on the history of Chomutov and Most, and an archeologist who works in the Most Regional Museum. His main areas of interest are the history of the regions Most, Chomutov, and Kadaň, the military, political and cultural history of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the year 1742 and 1813 in northwestern Bohemia, the marksman societies of northwest Bohemia since the late 18th century, and field fortifications in Bohemia from the 17th to 19th centuries.

Radek Mikuláš, RNDr., DSc., is a geologist and author specializing in the biogenic formation of rocks, paleobiology, and geomorphology. In addition to the rocks of Greenland, Patagonia and Siberia, he has also studied archaeological artifacts of ancient Egypt. Mikuláš systematically examines not only stones and rocks, but also natural ice, urban plants, old factories, as well as visual arts in the landscape.

Dominik Lukács Zizka documents the expedition to the Most basin in the Czech Republic. He lives and works in Prague. Dominik graduated with a master degree from the Interactive Media Departement at the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústi nad Labem. He also studied in Belgium at the Experimental Studio Volta specializing in installation, performance, video and sound.

Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin

Jiří Sádlo, RNDr., CSc., is a biologist with a keen interest in botanical sociology, the dynamics of the post-rustic landscape, non-natural biotopes and caenogenesis. Sádlo is the author of numerous essays and, among others, the book Empty Earth.

Radoslav Schmelzová, Mgr., studied art history and cultural heritage management at the University of Ostrava and the theory and history of design and new media at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

Petr Meduna, Ph.D., is an archeologist and historian. He graduated from the Charles University in Prague, and worked at the Archaeological Institute in Most (1986-1996), and later in the Archaeological institute in Prague. He is especially interested in the Middle Ages, and the relationships between the social and natural sciences.

The history and current state of mining and recultivation

Ing. arch Martin Říha, Jaroslav Stoklasa, Marie Lafarová, Jan Marek, Petr Pakosta.

Dana Recmanová, Mgr. holds a masters degree in media studies from the Faculty of Social Sciences (1996-9). In 1997, she worked as a assistant in the studio of video-multimedia-performance at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. From 1997-1999, Recmanová worked as the editor of cultural programs for the English-language service of Czech Radio.

Václav Cílek is a Czech geologist, climatologist, writer, philosopher, and popularizer of science who combines a knowledge of the humanities with natural science. He is the author of around 400 scientific articles and several books, including the award-winning Inscapes and Landscapes and Makom Book of Places.

Miloš Šejn works in the fields of visual art, performance and study of visual perception. From the beginning of the 1960s he took pictures, drew, collected and described his observations of nature during his wanderings through the Czech landscape. Currently he teaches mixed media and the relationship of nature and art as intrinsic needs of the mind, and focuses on immediate creative possibilities, based upon relations between historical humanized landscapes and intact nature.

Miloš Vojtěchovský is one of the initiators of the the Frontiers of Solitude concept and program. He is a curator, art historian, and audiovisual artist born 1955 and living in Prague. He graduated in Art History and Aesthetics from Charles University. Since the early 80s he has been involved in independent music, visual art, action art, and curatorial work in Prague and abroad.

The head coordinator of Frontiers of Solitude, sculptor and curator Dagmar Šubrtová lives and works in Kladno, where she is continually confronted with the environment of an industrial landscape.

Michal Kindernay is an intermedia artist, curator and performer. His audio-visual installations interconnect art, technology and science. He reflects ecological issues through various technological approaches in relation to nature environment.

Multimedia artist and publisher Lloyd Dunn currently lives in Prague. His work began in 1983 with the project PhotoStatic Magazine, for which he served as editor, publisher and frequent contributor. Dunn’s curent work is embodied in the filecast project nula.cc.

Peter Cusack works as a field recordist with a special interest in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. His projects have included community arts, research into sound and our sense of place, and documentary recordings in areas of special sonic interest (Lake Baikal, Siberia).

Gallery Školská 28 (DEAI/Setkání) is a multifunctional space for nonprofit cultural and artistic activities, founded in Prague in 1999. The programming concept of the space arises from the specific characteristics of the location where it is situated, and the space offers the community a variety of public activities connected to social life.