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.

Documentation of preliminary steps and collection of musical material and related reflections during the first Term of the Master's Program in Improvisation and World Music. December 2022

Ongoing process. Workshops about public space developed with children and teenagers inhabitants of Bairro do Cerco, Porto, Portugal.

How can we practice, think, and write contemporary circus beyond the human? What would it mean to create new modes of performance that would (re)valorize the animal in the ring? This exposition presents an exploration of the inventive, creative, and active dimensions of non-human animals in the context of circus. In 2022, we — Natan Hansi Alberca (multidisciplinary visual artist), Franziska Trapp (dramaturge and researcher), and Sabrina Sow (equestrian artist) — came together to create a vivid dialogue between practice and reflection, artistic and academic research, informed and naive approaches. We now exhibit our exchange through video installations, academic writings, and poems, that expand on, express agreement with, or contradict each other. Our intention is to make perceptible how artistic and reflective processes are fundamentally intertwined. Download Accessible PDF

This exposition charts the creation and musical-narrative structure of Pearl, my recent composition for symphony chorus, orchestra, and solo baritone: a setting of extracts from the medieval poem Perle, translated into modern English by Simon Armitage, commissioned as part of the BBC Proms in 2022. Envisioned as a contemporary adaptation of the poem’s historically distant, yet somehow timelessly poignant and continually resonant story, Pearl takes the form of a musical narrative that evokes both past and present, through personal and more universal reflections on the nature of loss, grief, and acceptance. By drawing together analytical techniques taken from musical theories of narrative (principally Byron Almén 2008), musical topics, and the adaptation of narratives across media (Marie-Laure Ryan 2014), with a self-narrative approach to documenting my practice in action (as advocated by Christopher Leedham and Martin Scheuregger 2018), I unpack my creative approach to Pearl in what might be understood as ‘bricolage’ as proposed by Robyn Stewart (2007). Constructing a ‘new story’ through a ‘plurality of approaches’, I adopt Stewart’s methodological eclecticism to theorize and situate the work as a musical narrative. However, through the slippage that occurs between narratology and self-narrativization, Pearl is shown to also mirror and situate my personal artistic experiences as a contemporary practitioner. In response to the recent and ongoing debate about the nature and validity of Practice Research in Composition, the article addresses calls to share the ‘messy, complicated, uncertain, and soft’ (Arthur Bochner 2000) aspects of the artistic process suggesting a more open, and even collaborative, role for the sharing of compositional research. Download Accessible PDF

The thesis Architecture of democracy focouses on the relationship between architecture and democracy and describes the word combination - a neologism in (Slovak and Czech) language - Architecture of Democracy. My assumption is that on the one hand, it is architecture that has the ability to influence social events and co-create the democracy that takes place in it. On the other hand, it is democracy that determines the conditions for architecture, architects articulate the ethos of the political era. Architecture here becomes not only an aesthetic medium, but its ethical function is synergistically applied. Can we notice this relationship between architecture and democracy? Is it really the fact that architecture can support the functioning of democracy? And does democracy have the ability to be transcribed into architecture? What tools does it use for this? As the main method, I create the method of the Barometer of Democracy Architecture, which is inspired by german-swiss politological instrument Democracy barometer. There the freedom and the equality are functional only in balance with the control. This equation allows us to look at architectural buildings through 9 properties, in which I perceive areas where architecture and democracy interact: 1. individual freedoms, 2. public freedoms, 3. mutual ties 4. transparency 5. participation 6. representation, 7. restrictions, 8. security, 9. competition. In the next step, I apply the Barometer of Democracy architecture to two buildings, the current seat of the Chamber of Deputies and the former seat of the Federal Assembly. For this application it is necessary to bring closer their short but competitive period, when both buildings were possible candidates for the democratic parliament of the new state of the Czech Republic in 1993. By following the views of differenet participants, decision-making committees, political discussions and the views of the professional and non-professional public, but also in comparison with the parliaments of the world and alternative student projects, several specificities of the current seat of the Chamber of Deputies in the palace complex in the Malá Strana will be clarified. In the final discussion, I will try to use Barometer of Democracy architecture as a heuristic tool that will try to articulate a possible future development scenarios. In the last step, I present student alternative projects and also my project, a winner in a public architectural competition for the reconstruction of the vestibule and entrance areas of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague, in which I work with tree values freedom, equality and control in architectural way. Dizertačná práca sa snaží vysledovať vzťah medzi architektúrou a demokraciou a popísať tak slovné spojenie - novotvar v našom jazyku - Architektúra demokracie. Mojím predpokladom je, že na jednej strane je to architektúra, ktorá má schopnosť ovplyvňovať spoločenské deje a spoluutvárať demokraciu, ktorá sa v nej odohráva. Na strane druhej je to demokracia, ktorá určuje podmienky architektúre, nastavuje (nie len legislatívny rámec), v ktorom architekti artikulujú étos doby. Architektúra sa tu stáva nielen estetickým médiom ale synergicky je uplatňovaná jej etická funkcia. Dokážeme tento vzťah architektúry a demokracie vysledovať? Je to skutočne tak, že architektúra dokáže podporiť fungovanie demokracie? A má demokracia schopnosť prepísať sa do architektúry? Aké nástroje k tomu používa? Ako hlavnú metódu vytváram optiku Barometer architektúry demokracie, ktorý je inšpirovaný politologickým nemecko-švajčiarskym Barometrom demokracie. Tu je na miskách váh sloboda a rovnosť funkčná jedine v rovnováhe s kontrolou. Touto rovnicou je možné nahliadať na architektonické stavby skrze 9 vlastností, v ktorých vnímam oblasti, kde architektúra a demokracia navzájom interagujú : 1. individuálne slobody, 2. verejné slobody, 3. vzájomné väzby 4. transparencia 5. participácia 6. reprezentácia, 7. obmedzenia, 8. bezpečnosť, 9. súťaže. V ďalšom kroku aplikujem Barometer architektúry demokracie (BAD) na dve stavby, súčasné sídlo Poslaneckej snemovne a bývalé sídlo Federálneho zhromaždenia. Aby táto aplikácia bola možná, je dobré ozrejmiť proces a dôvody ich výberu. Obe budovy boli možnými adeptami na demokratický parlament nového štátu Českej republiky. V sledovaní pohľadov dobových aktérov, rozhodovacích komisií, politických diskusií a náhľadu odbornej a laickej verejnosti, ale i v porovnaní s parlametmi sveta a alternatívnymi projektmi študentov, sa objasnia viaceré špecifiká súčasneho sídla Poslaneckej snemovne v komplexe palácov na Malej Strane. V záverečnej diskusii sa pokúsim BAD použiť ako nástroj heuristický, ktorý sa pokúsi nasvetliť možné budúce scenáre rozvoja týchto stavieb. V ďalších krokoch prichádzam s aplikáciou na alternatívne študentské projekty a taktiež so svojím autorským návrhom vo verejnej architektonickej súťaži na rekonštrukciu vestibulu a vstupných priestorov Ministerstva priemyslu a obchodu v Prahe, v ktorých zadanie predznamenávalo architektonickú prácu so slobodou, rovnosťou a kontrolou. Contributor (graphical support): Matěj Hanauer, Petra Roubalová, Studio DIP The doctoral thesis supervisor: prof. Mgr. akad. arch. Roman Brychta The doctoral thesis consultant: doc. Mgr. Cyril Říha Ph.D.