Research Catalogue

This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Research catalogue documents some of these findings. The team Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project. Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT. Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine. Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT. The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION “Working Title” is an art performance about labor conditions and class structures. The motivation behind the piece is to interrogate the many ways in which work affects us. The boundaries between labor and art are also examined, as the physical and mental demands placed on the performers reflect the burdens of modern working life. The format mirrors a regular workday: the performance lasts eight hours, including a break. It is presented in two versions—a day shift and a night shift. Today, many sectors are marked by rapid change, demands for efficiency and ever-increasing productivity. Which values are prioritised, and which are undermined to meet the needs of such a labor market? In the piece, structural challenges will be studied and observed through scenarios acted out on stage. Some examples of questions that will be used to form these scenarios: -At what cost do you actually sell your time? -What kind of value is, beyond the monetary, created for those who buy your time? -In what ways, physically and mentally, do you experience your labouring hours, after you have clocked out? The performance will explore themes such as: - Monotony and repetition as fundamental elements of labor - Power dynamics in the workplace and how privileges are maintained and reinforced - The body’s needs in relation to work: illness, disabilities, menstruation, and pregnancy - The physiological consequences of labor - The value of time as an economic and social divide - The close link between economic stability and mental health In a time when the job market is shaped by rapid technological development, climate change and an uncertain future, thinking through alternatives for how to organise ourselves has become crucial. With this performance, we aim to dig into the mechanisms at stake in order to hopefully be able to both raise questions and think deeply about how we may face the challenges ahead collectively. A dynamic, experimental and collectively driven form of artistic expression is combined with societal critique. We believe in art as a way of adding to the discourse in poetic manners, activating questions through embodied experiences. With this unique format, we hope to open new perspectives on what labor means for individuals and society—and what values we wish to build our common future upon.

Based on the Jungian concept of the shadow, I wanted to develop illustrations that depict a journey within the self, leading to the discovery and understanding of one’s own shadow. It represents the dark side of our personality, which we refuse to acknowledge and accept.

'Latency Records: The Delay, an Inhabitable Field' analyses a fictional mediated environment by studying the lapses of time involved in its diffusion. Approaching media as a source for new habits of perception over a landscape, it is concerned with the electronic tools used for the representation of nature; in particular those applied for near-real-time broadcast from sensory meteorological tools, webcams or satellites. Introduced with seven images from audiovisual references, punctuated by fourteen quotes from various sources and interwoven to three poems written exclusively for the essay, 'Latency Records: The Delay, an Inhabitable Field' is inspired by humans’ incomprehension of the artificial structures in which they blindly place their hopes for representing the unrepresentable: a living image of the exterior world. In doing so, it delves into humans’ attempts to portray themselves in order to comprehend who they are. Therefore, 'Latency Records: The Delay, an Inhabitable Field' interrogates the instantaneity of these naturalistic archives, ultimately shaping our cognitive engagement with our environment—which acts both as a mirror and a departure from it.

Water covers more than 70% of the earth’s surface, and thus constitutes a major section of the ecosystem on Earth. It is a vital element on earth, all life (as we know it) depends on water to be able to thrive. The climate has always changed a bit, but in recent years, due to greenhouse gases, the climate has experienced extreme changes which have also strongly impacted the global water cycle. From melting glaciers to ocean acidifications, flash floods, and prolonged droughts, disruptions in ecosystems now happens faster than most species can adapt to. Because of global warming, the atmosphere can hold and transport more moisture. Water doesn’t have the opportunity to fully infiltrate the soil. This accelerates the hydrological cycle. While it is still important to decelerate this process as much as we can, it is also important to look into strategies of adaptation and think ahead to a future with water that will be compromised. In this book, we explore water futures through the speculative design approach. This design practice aims to challenge preconceptions, raise questions, and provoke debates. It opened the doors for designers to imagine and explore possible water futures globally. We start with the water spring in India where the Ganga river starts, then travel further down the river stream. We end up in the Netherlands where different rivers connect to the sea. We continue where the river meets the sea and travel to the salterns in France and Croatia. Here water changes form, turning into gas and flowing through the air as evaporating steam in the geothermal region of Iceland. Eventually this book will end up with the condensation of the fog net in the Namib Desert.

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