Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

About this portal
The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) is the largest institution of its kind in the Czech Republic, with an enrolment of approximately 1,500 students. The institution provides its students with the opportunity to further develop their talents and to refine their specific personal presentation in the areas of theatre, film, music and dance. It provides them with a profound immersion into their respective disciplines within the context of European culture, and enables them to identify their own place in a unique blend of artistic, social and political life that is Prague.
Artistic research represents one of the most dynamic emerging fields at AMU, encompassing MA projects, specialised doctoral programmes, conferences and grant competitions.
contact person(s):
Radek Hylmar (amu) 
,
Tobiáš Kolmačka 
url:
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3728191/3728443
Recent Activities
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Performing the changing landscape
(2024)
author(s): Alžběta Trojanová
connected to: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition refers to arts-based research on simultaneous performative walking and singing practice in a changing environment. The act of walking is put in the context of landscape and singing representing two aspects of relation to the environment – inner and outer landscape. The object of research is traditional and authorial songs and their bodily and sensual interconnection with the process of experiencing landscape. This experience is gained with a group of artists and environmentalists who have over the course of more than a year repetitively walked through the landscape of the natural park Prokop Valley in Prague and its adjacent urban areas. Qualitative research is taken within the project “Walking as a liquid constant in urban space and landscape”. The method of data collection uses mental maps, inspired by the concept of Kevin Lynch, as a means of documentation. The exposition has three parts 1) the opening video essay, 2) Opus caementicium, autoethnographic reflection of the site, where the project takes place, and 3) Fugue of the vanishing world – an essay on the musical aspect of the project. Chapter titles are inspired by musical terminology that has content connotations in the text or mirrors the structuring of text and musical compositions.
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Vrstvy konstelace: poznámky ze střižny
(2024)
author(s): Tereza Reichová, Kateřina Krutská Vrbová
connected to: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
published in: ArteActa – Journal for Performing Arts and Artistic Research
Jak vyprávět filmem procesuální charakter systemických konstelací? Mým záměrem bylo prohlédnout si, jaké varianty jako filmaři máme k zobrazení komunikace vnitřních procesů a vícevrstevných dějů prostřednictvím audiovize. Snažila jsem se osahat hranici mezi prožitkem účastníků systemických konstelací a jeho záznamem. Hlavní otázkou pro mne bylo, zda je možné adekvátně zprostředkovat dění v konstelačním poli pomocí filmu, a spolu se střihačkou Kateřinou Krutskou Vrbovou jsme ve střižně zkoumaly, jaké filmové a střihové přístupy by byly pro zachycení této složité dynamiky nejefektivnější.
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The Making of 'Commotion'
(2023)
author(s): Sara Pinheiro
connected to: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
“Commotion” is a fixed media multichannel composition that revolved around the principles of minimalist music. This exposition aims at understanding these principles while it tries to place the process of composing the piece within the common premises of artistic research. Due to the nature of its context, this approach includes also theories of reception - mostly by exploring themes such as intentionality, interpretation and representation. With this exposition, the author shares technical terminology of sound practices, in order to promote it in contexts predominantly visual-oriented.
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We Are Public Space: Bodies and Minds in Post-pandemic Cities
(2023)
author(s): Marketa Kinterova
connected to: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The project aims to pay heightened attention to public spaces in cities on several levels. The first follows the trend of newly developed privately owned public spaces (known as POPS), which establish a precedent for how corporations and cities define public space and what they prioritize within it. A clear focus on people as consumers – rather than citizens – have several effects, including strict restrictions, the creation of societies of control (Deleuze 1992: 3), and various forms of often indirect exclusion of certain groups of inhabitants.
The second level attempts to accentuate subjective experiences focused on our bodies and making them consciously present in relation to public space. Both layers are a significant component of the performative lecture walks, on the basis of which I introduce the results of interactions with the respondents in my case studies. Finally, I shall describe what cities looked like during the pandemic and consider whether these scenes might be a model for the future. Are we to expect further experiences of empty cities?
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Digital Unrealities
(2019)
author(s): Sara Pinheiro
connected to: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition explores the making of the multi-channel sound installation “digital unrealities, study I”. It goes through the process of constructing an unreal environment by sonic means, particularly through the use of contemporary digital tools. Because sound is heavily dependent on its propagation through a physical space, the idea of unreal considers reverberation and spatialization as the main subjects of interest. Consequently, reverb became the main tool to explore the subject in practice. Due to the multidisciplinarity of the project, the subject had different approaches: from exploring the understandability of a sound according to its spatialization; to creating the sound material using reverb artifacts; as approaching spatialization through ambisonic strategies; and to processing sound sources through convolution reverb and cross-synthesis towards abstraction. In the end, the research and practice evolved analogously; concluding that the idea of sound digitality is only part of a process, not of an experience, because sound occurs only when propagated. Nevertheless, the composition is a proposal of “reduced listening” in a digital media context.