First-year Students

Michal Kindernay: Entomological Acoustic Studies

The project "Entomological Acoustic Studies" explores the auditory systems and principles of hearing primarily in insects and other animals within the context of visual and sound art and in connection with concepts of acoustic ecology. The subject of the research is the analysis and development of intermedia presentation of insect auditory organs and sound perception in insect species. The aim is to develop sound sculptures/objects and special sound instruments simulating principles of sound transmission and perception, in contrast to the conventional and widely known human auditory system. The project examines the uniqueness of sound and auditory systems, interspecies interaction, a non-anthropomorphic perspective on the coexistence of different species in mutual harmony, in accordance with the complex ecosystems on Earth.

Supervisor: Filip Cenek

Zuzana Žabková: Prophetic and Prosthetic Bodies: Performative Practice

The proposed dissertation, titled "Prophetic and Prosthetic Bodies: Performative Practice", seeks to develop a studio practice format. Through embodied experience, dance scores, somatic techniques, game structures, and interpretation, this practice aims to create conditions that prioritise care, accessibility, and the ethical sharing of knowledge and experiences, while unlearning patriarchal and extractive patterns. The research methodology involves studying dance somatic techniques, role-playing games, and interpretative methods to explore bodily performativity, intimacy, positions of pleasure, virtual desires, and technologies. Termed ‘prophetic’, the practice aims to explore and cultivate the body based on intuition, anti-strategy, interpretation, games, chance, and the ethics of magic. It also focuses on the ‘prosthetic body’, which has the potential to generate new forms of subjectivity and desire, allowing for the dissolution of normative categories. This collaborative process creates performative practice with and for the community, serving as a laboratory to rehearse new forms of social relationships. How can this practice transform and sensitise the subject and its desires, facilitating the dissolution of normative categories rooted in separative concepts of gender identity or productivity? Through embodiment, experience, and interpretation, how do we learn to listen to and trust anti-strategic processes arising from chance, intention, and calling? How can we conceive of this practice as a philosophical apparatus that helps us critically name needs and problems, enables us to enter poetic realms through abstraction, and teaches us to think through the body—to feel and experience in touch and intimacy with others?

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Daniela Ponomarevová: Funfiction. Artistic Practice as an Amusement Park

The core of the research is the analysis of the amusement park as a symbol of instant entertainment, involving the deconstruction of iconography and visual elements derived from popular culture. These motifs, often referencing film and television themes, along with cheap commercial approaches and practical effects, will be reflected in my own artistic practice through signs, metaphors, and insights gained from surveys. The fundamental question of the presented dissertation is how entertainment and boredom are understood in contemporary artworks that are inspired by visual motifs of popular culture or function as a current echo of pop art. Analyses will be mediated through forensic drawings (artistic reconstructions or illustrations) and theoretical reflections based on study image and textual materials. These will be included in a systematically maintained conceptual sketchbook, which will take the form of an authorial book under the speculative title "Funfiction: The Most Entertaining Park in the World".

Supervisor: Katarína Hládeková

Tomáš Hrůza: Walking as an Artistic and Cultural Phenomenon

Walking has been, since the beginning of human history, a prerequisite for social evolution and revolution; through its simple forward movement, it is a driver of culture and history, and in the 20th century, it fully becomes an autonomous element of modern and contemporary art. In my doctoral project, I would like to work thoroughly with this phenomenon, within its research-historical definition from the past to current expressions, and in relation to my own artistic work connected with this theme, including pedagogical practice.

Supervisor: Barbora Klímová

Lucia Bergamaschi: Garden Me Tender

The dissertation project focuses on the theme of constructing the “natural” subject and examines landscapes shaped by human interventions and ecological and technological processes. The aim is to map the intricate web of relationships and subjectivities—including legal ones—that are established by processes occurring at the interface between the human and non-human worlds. Specifically, it involves research into plant communities and the ways in which plants appropriate territories occupied by humans, other organisms, and mineral entities, becoming their inhabitants or users. The project’s starting point, linking artistic practice, legal theory, and principles of environmental justice, is recent cases where legal subjectivity has been granted to natural entities. The project further responds to the temporality and fragility of residual lands, also referred to as “vague terrains” (Haluzík, 2020), “délaissé” (Clément, 2005), or classified as “other areas” in cadastral maps. It explores possibilities for legal capacity and protection of these places. In this context, it also addresses digital subjectivities and the agency of digital entities and their recognition in law. Part of the project involves the creation of a contemporary garden where AI-generated images and spontaneously growing vegetation act as inhabitants or users of these territories, acquiring ownership through the legal concept of “adverse possession”. The aim of the project is to explore constellations of non-human and more-than-human subjectivities that are not yet adequately represented in law. The project also seeks to connect research on legally excluded spaces with studies of digital environments, where the legal subject lacks physical form and operates within the category of “user”.

Supervisor: Lenka Veselá

Medard Zeman: The New Commission. Seeking a Path to Sustainable Financing of Painting and Sculpture Realisations

In the context of societal changes, ongoing armed conflicts, the emerging climate crisis and its impacts, the gradually declining public trust in the state, and growing inequalities among people, it is highly appropriate to contemplate and revise the conditions of the visual art market and seek possible solutions for its sustainable functioning in the future. The intention of my doctoral studies and the aim of the dissertation is to explore more closely the forms and methods of artistic commissions as a specific form of collaboration between the artist and the local community. Through realised artistic research, I aim to contribute to formulating a new vision for financing visual arts and to transfer the acquired knowledge into practice both in terms of theoretical work and practical artistic output.

Supervisor: Vasil Artamonov

Eva Jaroňová: Post-Digital Printing in the Time of Climate Disruption. Manifestations of Ecology in Zines and Free Illustration

The dissertation project will focus on manifestations of ecology in the post-digital zine scene. In the pre-internet era, subcultural zines primarily served as sources of information. My project focuses on the current period of post-digital printing. Life today unfolds online; therefore, there is a stronger need for materiality, analogue media, and zines are perceived more as artistic objects. Emphasis is also placed on sustainability and the context of the entire zine community. Therefore, I will also address the materials used, the way of organisation, and the subcultural background of the zine scene. In the zine scene, I will primarily follow the field of free illustration and themes such as environmental grief, anxiety, etc. In semi-structured interviews with authors, I will examine how their emotions and attitudes towards environmental issues have developed recently. The outputs will be two publications (an anthology and my own author's zine), where I aim to gather the most diverse new perspectives on the issue of the environmental crisis.

Supervisor: Jan Šrámek

Kateřina Spáčilová Blažková: The Workshop. Women as Actors or Silent Helpers?

The dissertation project aims to revise the role of women—actors who are often forgotten female artists working in printmaking workshops at higher art schools in the Czech Republic between 1922 and 2023. The first milestone defines the opening of the very first workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU). I intend to examine not only the historical context and social status of such working women but also the current conditions in which women printers and graphic artists work across printmaking workshops operated at higher art schools. I pose questions about the boundaries of class and material conditions, how they are influenced by technological development and power strategies, and what is the relationship between materiality and artistic forms (actor-network theory including the works of Bruno Latour). The first output of my artistic research will be artistic interventions and site-specific entries into public workshops, women's associations, and even into the realm of higher art schools. The main output will be a comprehensive scholarly text that will be beneficial not only for women artists or the graphic community but also for the public interested in printmaking. A practical output will be a manual for workshop operations inspired by the first "kitchens" where the first feminist prints were created in the 1960s and 1970s. These kitchen-workshops were characterised by not requiring expensive and specialised printing equipment. Part of the manual will be a workshop diary titled "Kitchen Print". Qualitative research based on interviews with current female heads of printmaking workshops at higher art schools will provide a comparison of the conditions and positions of individual actors. As an alternative medium for exhibiting prints, I wish to develop the CARART gallery project.

Supervisor: Ladislav Jackson

Second-year Students

Pavla Nikitina: State of War and Artistic Reflections. Stories of Interactions. From the 1990s to the Present

The dissertation focuses on practical and theoretical research of artistic reflections on recent and ongoing wars, emphasising dialogue between artists, their works, and viewers. The study is dedicated to Eastern European war art from Georgia, the Balkans, and Ukraine from the 1990s to the present, its role in traumatised societies, the role of artists in this context, and also the themes and experiences that connect them.

Supervisor: Tomáš Medek

Zdeněk Rychtera: Digital Playground. A Guide to Digital Games and Gaming Culture

The subject of the doctoral project is a deep analysis of publications that provide an overview of digital games and the creation of my own educational publication, which will serve as a foundation for subsequent pedagogical activities. These will take place in collaboration with secondary schools with an artistic focus and grammar schools, as well as within the festivals Lektvar and PAF. The main planned output is the creation of a clear and easily understandable publication that will serve as a basis for education in the gaming medium, aimed at parents, teachers, and secondary school students. It will be didactic material that will act as an informative guide to all essential aspects of the gaming medium and can also serve as a textbook. Individual chapters will be structured as comprehensive thematic blocks, which can be processed as presentations prepared for teaching. The theoretical text of the dissertation will essentially accompany and record the process of preparation, development, and writing of the didactic material. Both texts will engage in a dialogue reflecting the relationship to the applied methodology, theory, and pedagogy.

Supervisor: Jan Šrámek

Veronika Šavarová: Liminality, Nostalgia, Plant

The pivotal point of the theoretical part of the dissertation project "Liminality, Nostalgia, Plant" is to examine the use of the term "liminal space" from its inception to the present. The core of the practical part of the dissertation project is the effort to make the liminal transitional place present through painting and to explore the emotions evoked by viewing the resulting images, into which various types of plants are to be inserted. The work aims to monitor the gradual transformation of the term "liminal space" and its increasing use in popular visual culture (especially social networks) as well as in the academic environment. The journey through the project leads through two-dimensional artistic creation, from liminal spaces to nostalgia, to the plant, and back. Liminal places are something that does not aim to draw attention, yet several publications have emerged about them recently, and many artists focus on their depiction. The project "Liminality, Nostalgia, Plant" seeks to decipher the increasing popularity of the term. It attempts to grasp the emotions described by those interested in the phenomenon. The goal of the dissertation is therefore to describe the approaches of both lay and professional public to the mentioned phenomenon and to explore the possibilities of its perception through two-dimensional media.

Supervisor: Petr Kvíčala

Olga Staňková: Fluid Nature

The dissertation project focuses on contemporary tendencies in current visual art reflecting the present state of nature. It deals with the way of viewing and relating to (disrupted) nature and the diversity of natural relationships. It examines the variability of the meaning of nature in artistic practice and records possible ways of processing the theme of nature along with experimental positions of artistic processing. Similarly, the work seeks the boundaries of painting, object, and materiality in connection with communication with the theme. The dissertation is divided into a theoretical part and a practical part; the practical part is based on my own artistic creation, which explores specific environments, and the theoretical part reflects this experience.

Supervisor: Milan Houser

Tereza Vinklárková: Emotional (Dis)Engagement

The research will focus on the body as a mediator of emotions, experiences, and traumas that surface through symptoms and the brain. Specifically, I will deal with the presence of neuropsychology in visual art and emotional experiences that, especially as a result of trauma, cause physiological changes in our bodies. The project is aimed at exploring the potential of emotional engagement, both through its manifestations and its possibilities of influencing changes on a societal scale.

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Kateřina Šillerová: Automagic

The dissertation project takes the form of artistic research and is formally multimedia in character. In various media, the doctoral student examines the motif of the human body and the ways in which we relate to it and other bodies. The project is based on theories of posthumanism, speculative realism, and panpsychism. The theme of the body in the work opens up further questions and focuses especially on finding ways to establish an empathetic relationship to bodies in general. Through a sub-question concerning the representation of the body in science, it focuses on the role this depiction plays in shaping our relationship to the body. By connecting this area with an imaginative approach to biology, the project achieves a hybrid character reflected in the practical output. The doctoral student plans interdisciplinary collaboration with experts in the field of material research and intends to use new materials in practical creation to achieve a closer connection between research activity and practical results.

Supervisor: Svätopluk Mikyta

Barbora Ilič: Too Cringe for the Biennale, Too Based for the Art Market. Post-Ironic Reflection in the Art World

The project deals with qualitative research into the meanings of post-ironic reflection in the art world environment, focusing on art schools and their current students. These students mostly belong to Generation Z, which is often labelled as oversensitive yet entirely nihilistic. The research focuses on the paradoxical, dual nature of contemporary post-irony, which can serve both as a tool of emancipation and as a means of ideological subjugation. Based on theoretical foundations, I propose a comprehensive approach to examining post-irony in hypothetical categories such as different levels, visual forms, communication strategies, and motivations. This research is carried out through methods of digital ethnography, discursive analysis, in-depth interviews, and my own artistic-curatorial activities.

Supervisor: Jan Zálešák

Maxmilián Máslo: Archive of Post-Revolution Memory

The aim of the dissertation project is to create a cohesive authorial archive that maps various forms of collective memory in relation to the events of the Velvet Revolution and the political events of contemporary Czech history. Using the historiographical methodology of so-called memory studies, the project will include the collection and sorting of materials into conceptual units. Primary emphasis is placed on materials in the form of video recordings. Theoretical reflection on the collected materials will focus on media analysis and the connection of methods of artistic research with historical research, which will be complementary to practical work on the archive.

Supervisor: Martin Mazanec

Kristýna Gajdošová: The Development of Rave Parties and Their Penetration into Contemporary Art in the Czech Republic

As a curator and artist, in my dissertation I will focus on the development of Czech parties in the past decade, their connection with the art scene, and their implementation into the language of contemporary art. I intend to grasp the phenomenon of rave parties through the concepts of escapism and neo-feudalism and explore what connects it, in this sense, with the themes and tendencies of contemporary artistic discourse. Part of my research will also involve creation through the already existing FaVU Radio in collaboration with the FaVU Label. These co-created situations will serve as an educational and entertaining platform that connects the world of rave parties and contemporary art. This space will allow me to gather research material, apply and verify research findings with regard to the specifics of my topic. In my work, I also plan to focus on romantic tendencies associated with the fantasy world and their parallel implementation into rave culture and contemporary art.

Supervisor: Jiří Suchánek

Jiří Žák: Writing the Counter-Narrative. Contemporary Art as a Tool of Revisionism

The doctoral project focuses on how affective strategies of contemporary art and methods of artistic research can be used to revise and rearticulate hegemonic narratives about Czech national identity and history. The revision aims to be conducted through research and interpretation of the relationship and influence of Czechoslovakia on the countries of the so-called Middle East, specifically through Czechoslovak arms exports to this non-European region and cooperation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with non-state actors such as resistance or terrorist groups. Theoretical bases that will support the interpretation of this history include the postcolonial concept of necropolitics and the discourse of the so-called spectral turn. The spectral turn analytically utilises the motif of ghostliness to understand historical events repressed from collective memory. An important aspect of the project will be two-way interdisciplinary collaboration with experts from historical sciences and an effort to situate the postcolonial discourse in the Czech context through a look at Czechoslovak arms exports. Partial practical outputs will include a performative lecture in collaboration with Czech and Syrian historians titled "Unlikely Alliances." Furthermore, the digitisation of a collection of films from the former state company Omnipol, which is located in the archives of the National Film Archive (NFA). The main output will be an experimental horror film titled "Skorpion Republic," which will reflect the export of Czechoslovak weapons to the Middle East and the involvement of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in international terrorism.

Supervisor: Jan Zálešák

Third-year Students

Kateřina Žák Konvalinová: Art in the Expanded Field

The doctoral project titled "Art in the Expanded Field" will address an area of contemporary culture that operates between art, applied art, and cultural landscape. The research itself will be primarily practice-oriented, with the ambition to become an auxiliary tool or handbook for environmentally focused artists. These artists strive to rethink the relationship between soil and humans, countryside and city, food production and consumption. The project will map practices at the intersection of art and agriculture and their mutual interpenetration in the areas of function, aesthetics, and beauty. Last but not least, it will consider the role of art and artistic competencies in solving the current climate crisis within such an apparently different field as organic farming. The research will be carried out using theoretical research (descriptions of case studies, a set of qualitative interviews, and documentation of practice) and applied artistic research (establishing one's own agricultural-cultural organisation).

Supervisor: Barbora Klímová

Dávid Koronczi: The World in Leverage. Fictional Writing and Artistic Practice at the Intersection with Food Policies

My scientific-research and artistic practice within doctoral studies is a continuation of many years of interest in places where artistic practice and speculative, magical, and visionary writing intersect with food policies—that is, with strategies concerning cultivation, production, distribution, and consumption of food. The research methodology will include qualitative research of the gastronomic and agri-cultural histories of the Novohrad region (around the town of Lučenec and the Cerová Highlands on both Slovak and Hungarian territory) and their incorporation into an imaginative narrative. I am interested in intertwining real places, characters, and events of history and the present with imagination, captivation, humour, and other literary qualities. Simply put, I intend to write a story where reality intertwines with imagination. Returning to scientific, dissertation writing, besides describing the mentioned histories and situated knowledge of the Novohrad basin, another main theme that interests me is an overview of the histories and current positions of artistic practices at the intersection with food policies. Since I wrote above about imagination and visions, I would also like to use doctoral studies to deepen knowledge in the field of visionary fictions, futurisms (Afro-, Roma-, Hungaro-futurism), and speculative philosophy. Part of the research also includes caring for a 0.25-hectare orchard and vegetable garden—a small family homestead—and initiating a residency art-research centre focused on interdisciplinary art practices with an overlap into agroecology. Another method will be experimenting with the materiality offered by the garden environment. I will try to create installations, objects, and architectures from leftovers (pits, wood, straw), tools (crates, demijohns, cans), and other rural objects without romanticising their patina and rurality.

Supervisor: Katarína Hládeková

Jakub Polách: Put Your Paws Up. The Influence of Digital Platforms on Subcultural Capital and the Possibilities of Organising Fandom in the Online Environment

The series of web, exhibition, audiovisual, or textual outputs mentioned in the study timeline aims to explore in various ways the behaviour and possibilities of consuming content or interacting with internet users—whether it concerns fan subcultures, groups around fictional internet worlds, or class-disadvantaged influencers. The first main approach to working on these projects is the interpretation of phenomena I study on the internet and their contextualisation in gallery or autonomous web environments through designing new environments or creating fictional narratives. The second approach involves experimenting with what working with the prevailing concept of the word "meme" can mean in artistic research—on social networks, I create types of information that are subsequently capable of self-replication among users (becoming popular in specific micro-worlds) and then plan to connect them into broader wholes. Within these activities, I use methodologies such as trolling, playing with self-presentation and adopting various roles in social network environments, or creating and remixing various forms of fan fiction.

Supervisor: Jan Zálešák

Adam Vačkář: Understanding Art Within the Framework of Biological Evolution

The doctoral student's scientific-research work focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration between art and biology. The doctoral student uses the Research by Design methodology, where the medium of research is the author's own artistic creation. In his artistic work, the doctoral student deals with the relationship between humans and nature on both spiritual and physical levels, as a source of spirituality and at the same time human dependence on its indisputable structure of epigenetic evolution, both in the physical body and in culture and art. He seeks to make visible the trajectories that operate in art, to view artistic practice through the language of biology, and to deviate from usual narratives and trajectories.

Supervisor: Barbora Klímová

Štěpán Brož: Echoes of Medieval Grotesqueness in Contemporary Visual Culture

The aim of the dissertation is to explore contemporary romantic tendencies in the works of the youngest generation of artists. Specifically, the work focuses on creation aimed at grotesque and mythological worldviews with an emphasis on reflecting medieval visual culture. The subject of the research is the question of how and why this phenomenon manifests itself, what the look into the Middle Ages means for young European creators, and how these tendencies relate to the theory of neo-feudalism. Besides the theoretical area, the work also focuses on researching contemporary pseudo-medieval DIY expressions of folk creativity in public space, popular culture, and on the internet. The final result will be a web publication that presents the research results in a narrative way, in both text and image form. During the research work, the doctoral student's own artistic practice will serve as a guide, a means of self-reflection, and a platform for sorting processes influencing the direction of the research.

Supervisor: Vasil Artamonov

Karin Grohmannová: The Artwork as a Public Commission – The Public Artwork as an Artistic Commission

The aim of my dissertation is to find and verify a mechanism, probably several mechanisms depending on the type of assignment, by which it will be possible in the Czech Republic to transparently acquire, commission, and select an artwork for public space. I expect that a great support in creating my dissertation will be the analysis of real case studies—competitions announced in the last few years, including during my future period of study. Primarily, I will focus on the public client who will want to acquire an artwork for state, municipal, communal, or institutional public spaces, buildings, or interiors. I will also try not to distinguish between artworks according to the field, although from the nature of my interest it follows that the disciplines represented will be those producing works of a permanent character or at least a permanently repeatable character. The planned output will be a written work consisting of an analytical part commenting on the historical development of commissioning artworks in public space, which will be set in the context of contemporary practice. The second part—provisionally titled "Mechanism", to avoid the term "manual"—will describe step by step, in variants, the optimal way to acquire artworks for public space in our environment. Emphasis will be placed on the acquisition process itself, its transparency, adequacy, suitability, and the comfort of all involved actors.

Supervisor: Markéta Žáčková

Jan Vítek: The Influence of Manufacturing Technologies on Automotive Design

The work examines how manufacturing technologies influence automotive design against the backdrop of the period's socio-cultural context. The aim is to explore the mutual relationship between manufacturing technologies and automotive design, which have so far been studied separately. It focuses on the period from 1967 to 1997 in Europe, analysing how advances in technologies such as sheet metal stamping, plastic injection moulding, and the use of CAD systems have influenced car design. By comparing representative models from individual decades, it illustrates how technological development has affected design possibilities and societal perception of cars. The practical output will be a workshop focused on redesigning a selected car from the given period using current manufacturing technologies, which will allow demonstrating their influence on design and the societal context.

Supervisor: Ladislav Křenek

Tamara Spalajković: Video as a Tool of Emancipation

The dissertation focuses on researching the emancipatory aspects of video in the field of contemporary art. In the first phase of the research, I will study historical examples of the use of video during the activities of art associations and subcultures associated with the so-called rise of video art. At the same time, I will examine the influence of crucial events such as the democratisation of video technologies, political and social overlaps, and the decentralisation of presentation through the internet, which have directed the development of video art over time. Subsequently, I will map the methods and practices of selected collectives currently active on the art scene. The key to selecting the examined collectives is the overlap of their practice into the lives of the communities from which they originate. Research techniques will include conducting interviews with selected actors and artists. The goal will be to describe various methods related to emancipatory processes and also to record how these processes are influenced by technical and geopolitical circumstances. The basic premise of the dissertation is that video technology expands these emancipatory processes and can subsequently influence the initial circumstances. The research itself will be accompanied by authorial and curatorial projects where I will apply formal experiments within a series of outputs. The result of the work will be an overview of various methods related to emancipatory processes. The results of both theoretical and practical research will be continuously presented through exhibitions and by publishing texts in professional journals. A crucial part of the dissertation is also artistic research, in which I focus on a specific research project titled "Imagination as a Path to Fairer Spatial Policies". The subject of the project is research into a deregulated part of the urban landscape—the Planýrka area in Brno. Based on the data obtained, a script for an authorial video is being created. The script contains an imaginative "guide" for practice aimed at improving conditions for interspecies coexistence in the area. Among other things, the project examines whether and how storytelling can influence political decision-making processes.

Supervisor: Martin Mazanec

Daniel Nováček: Deconstructing Narrative Structures in the Era of Global Platforms

From the position of an active creator, within my doctoral studies, I focus on developing strategies for systemic changes in the possibilities of narrative constructions of fictional worlds presented through audiovisual means. These strategies define themselves against the monopolistic forms of contemporary storytelling, which already contain specific ideological premises at their core. In the process, I draw from a wide range of current screenwriting tools, reflecting the unification of narrative methods caused by the globalisation of platforms. I subsequently put the development results into practice by using them in my own film creation.

Supervisor: Filip Cenek

Judita Levitnerová: Contemporary Art Informel

The topic of the dissertation builds on the foundations of the so-called "Czech Informel" art of the late 1950s and early 1960s and deals with their integration into work with textiles within the framework of the craft turn in contemporary art. Through an authentic approach to material, the project deals with the phenomenology of craftsmanship in work and leisure time. The practical output will be a set of authorial techniques that develop forms of "contemporary Informel" and their testing within leisure activities for workers in the textile industry.

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Hana Magdoňová: Premedia. Experience Performative Research

The focus of my artistic research is the concept of premediality (i.e., before the medium); emphasising performative aesthetics instead of visual aesthetics, the inner experience that precedes the external gesture, the state of consciousness that is later transformed into a material medium. Deleuze and Guattari call this phenomenon the state of pre-signifying semiotics; art theorist Fischer-Lichte describes it as perceptual multistability, and Castaneda captures it with his poetic language as a crack between worlds. The platform for researching art in its premedial state has become the Realities Research Lab project, which serves as a safe space for experimenting in this field and for generating data for further theoretical processing. Specifically, I organise events of collective experience here, in which I use shamanic practices that work with altered states of consciousness, deepening and sensitising inner work, journeys into archetypal and mythological worlds, their embodiment, and reintegration. The metaphor I use for this type of experience is Eurydice, who can only exist in the underworld and cannot be brought into the light of everyday reality. The role of the artist, organiser, or dramaturge who creates the conditions for such a type of experience and guides participants through this imaginary world thus becomes identical to the role of a healer or shaman, similar to Orpheus.

Supervisor: Tomáš Ruller

Marta Fišerová Cwiklinski: Pavilion

The theme of both the theoretical and practical dissertation is strategies of escape from social reality. The work responds to the reality of informational overload and saturation from a networked, globalised world. In the introduction, the work will attempt the most accurate description of a performance-oriented society that evokes exhaustion and burnout in people of the 21st century, inability to make decisions, impairs concentration, yet requires never-ending movement and activity. In the second phase, the exploration will turn to possibilities of escape, monitoring various approaches, models, and strategies. Parallel to the theoretical exploration, tests and realisations of a practical character will be created—experiments and works can be perceived as a means of transmission or extraction. The result is a theoretical treatise, several partial practical outputs, and a curatorial project related to the dissertation topic.

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Fourth-year Students

Tomáš Absolon: The Influence of Digital Presentation Strategies on Contemporary Painting Practice

In my work, I would like to focus on reflecting the environment of online platforms and social networks, where most of the artistic discourse of the youngest generation has moved nowadays. I am interested in how this space influences (consciously and unconsciously) the process of creating an artwork, specifically a painting. I want to narrow down the complex topic to the youngest generation of painters. Based on research, I will seek to answer the question: If the virtual space is the primary exhibition space, how does this affect the practice of a contemporary artist when working on the conception and installation of their own exhibition? In my theoretical work, I would like to observe tendencies of painters changing decisions about their works so that they are best presented on social networks and online platforms. I will focus on new factors in the process of creating an artwork and will monitor whether new ones emerge. After finding common factors in the artworks of contemporary authors, I will look for a key to implementing the resulting publication.

Supervisor: Luděk Rathouský

Matěj Pavlík: Para-Normalisation

The doctoral project titled "Para-Normalisation" deals with the possibilities and specific practices of mimicking scientific knowledge by pseudoscience and art. The project builds on ongoing artistic research into the history of Czechoslovak psychotronics and psychoenergetics. I will continue to view pseudoscientific knowledge from a historical perspective within the research, but I also approach the possible relevance of questions that this type of knowledge brings towards current discussions about the role or crisis of expert knowledge. The doctoral research is accompanied by a practical part, primarily an authorial book dedicated to the relationship of the sceptic movement to pseudoscience, and an experimental documentary film about the role and function of photography in searching for missing people with the help of sensitives and psychotronics.

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Adam Hejduk: Glass as Part of Artistic Approach and Meaning

In my dissertation, I focus on glass and its significance. The main assumption of the research is viewing the material of glass as an object with socio-cultural overlap moving through human history. I consider its physical properties, technological processes, environmental overlaps, meanings, and expressions associated with glass in the context of human manipulation of this material.

Supervisor: Pavel Korbička

Marie Štindlová: Speaking the Language of Symptoms

The dissertation thematically deals with illness, which it examines from the perspective of its perception and depiction in art and pop culture. The project's primary aim is to revise the way of viewing and referencing otherness (in this case, illness). To try to find new forms of sharing and communicating this experience in a way that is more inherent to the actors themselves and provides the surroundings with a greater chance of empathetic insight. The research will map the needs and specific experiences of people with illness experience (patients, doctors, healers, therapists, etc.) as well as search for a method of writing that can convey this extreme experience. An important aspect beyond theoretical research is my own artistic practice, the study of Eastern medicine, and translating these physical ways of understanding the world into words. The dissertation will be an experimental prose (provisionally called a novel) that applies the research results in both linguistic and content levels.

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Valentýna Filípková Landa: Responsible Design as Collaborative Practice

The dissertation "Responsible Design as Collaborative Practice" is based on the premise that high-quality and environmentally responsible designer creation cannot do without interdisciplinary collaboration (intensive teamwork). Since the aim of the entire work is to motivate and direct other designers and students to apply a collaborative way of practice here in the Czech Republic and to initiate the creation of such an interdisciplinary space at the Brno University of Technology (VUT), the project maps functioning interdisciplinary foreign teams (design, science, art, engineering) in the field of design and material innovation and focuses on their motivation, functioning, and ecological impact. Through research and interviews with initiators and members of these teams, it seeks to answer the main research question: How do such interdisciplinary teams function, and how can different fields like design and science collaborate?

Supervisor: Jana Kořínková

Erika Velická: Autotheory in Czech Spatial Art and Literature since the 1960s

The aim of this dissertation project is to explore the possibility of applying creative autotheoretical approaches in spatial non-literary creation, including the intention to find adequate examples of works close to autotheory in the Czech cultural environment since the 1960s, in the form of artistic research. The output will be a sculptural garden, which will arise as a case study of the direct use of autotheoretical approaches in the form of environmental and sculptural interventions into vague space, and simultaneously an (auto)theoretical text that will encompass theoretical findings of qualitative research and record the course of the case study.

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Petr Mucha: Comparative Measurements and Precise Comparison of Originals and Casts of Sculptures to Determine Authenticity and Origin

The dissertation aims to map and document technological influences on the shrinkage of bronze during casting to reveal the relationship between a cast and the original or between two different casts. Measurements will be carried out using precise 3D scanning technology.

Supervisor: Michal Gabriel

Veronika Vlková: Getting Lost and Wondering. Spirituality as a Challenge for Contemporary Fine Art

The dissertation deals with the form and role of contemporary spirituality in current visual art and the challenges that contemporary visual art faces. The project aims to capture, name, and depict—through artistic research—new unexpected approaches in perception, feeling, thinking, and language, and entirely new possibilities of social organisation influenced by current processes occurring in the collective consciousness of humanity. Besides incorporating the theme of spirituality into the general discussion when viewing current crises and seeking their solutions, the project aims to point out possible paths and benefits in sensitising the relationship to oneself. The main focus of the research is based on qualitative research consisting of interviews with artists, experts, and other individuals touching on the dissertation topic, and on personal experience—through unlearning the learned, not-knowing, waiting, getting lost, and wonder while working with the body, which serves as a research tool of authentic knowledge. The theoretical part of the research will be expanded by authorial books related to the dissertation topic, and the practical part of the work will be realised by combining artistic and therapeutic practice. For now, rather than an exhibition, a satisfactory goal seems to be a series of healing, pedagogical, and creative meetings.

Supervisor: Jan Zálešák

Darina Zelenitca: Brno Industrial Design 1950–1990

The dissertation project focuses on Brno industrial design, whose development during the studied period was significant for the whole of Czechoslovakia. The subject of the research is the development of industrial design in Czechoslovakia as a whole, as well as the work of individual industrial designers who worked in Brno engineering companies. The project emphasises the necessity of capturing disappearing indispensable information about Brno industrial design, which would contribute to preserving an important part of Brno's cultural heritage and strengthen the relationship to the place where we live. The primary research method of my dissertation will be the analysis of archival sources based on the exploration of archival funds of public institutions. This will be followed by an exploration of personal archives of industrial designers. During the research, photographic documentation will be made. Another method will be oral history research in the form of interviews with industrial designers during personal meetings. The practical output of my doctoral studies will be a book publication based on interviews with representatives of Brno industrial design. The aim will be to introduce readers to Brno industrial design and acquaint them with the most significant industrial products of the studied period.

Supervisor: Jan Rajlich

Pavol Lupták: Evaluating the Contribution of Using Tools and Virtual Reality Environment in the Design Process of Industrial Design

The dissertation addresses the issue of virtual reality and its opportunities and challenges associated with the application of this technology, its tools, and environment in the field of industrial design. The work emphasises finding parallels, overlaps, and differences with traditionally routinely used analogue and digital techniques and procedures in the design process during product development. The application of virtual reality technology in the industrial design process has the potential to bring new possibilities, connect its individual phases, and accelerate the design development cycle. The motivation for addressing this topic was the increasing occurrence of virtual reality technology in the context of industrial design, personal interest in new technologies, and, not least, the possibility to participate in establishing a VR laboratory at the Department of Industrial Design at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. I see great potential in using virtual reality and its tools in the design process and believe that the obtained results will benefit not only me but also have further practical applications.

Supervisor: Ladislav Křenek

Jakub Adamec: Art Can Be This and That, but What Is Post-Art?

The term "post-art" appears in descriptions of various interdisciplinary borderline art projects, especially in Poland. In activities where art mutually penetrates other areas of human activity. Post-artistic practices are often long-term and may not always have a clearly assigned author. Artistic tools can be used by participants in street protests, in scientific experiments, in ethnography, cartography, agricultural cooperatives, or alternative tourism, etc. Artists may stop producing artworks but do not cease to be artists. Art can lose the properties that allow it to be recognised as art. I am interested in exploring post-art, what art can be used for, its usefulness, or what J. Ludwiński meant when he wrote in 1972 that we overlooked the moment when art became something we can no longer name, but it gives us entirely new possibilities. Furthermore, I am interested in exploring the artistic coefficient and competence.

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Advanced-year Students

Martin Kermes: TheSHE, Virtual Supermodel

Supervisor: Richard Fajnor

Gorazd Filip Martinek: Fools for Christ: Convergence of Theology and Performance Art

Supervisor: Kaliopi Chamonikola

Martin Žák: Possibilities of Applying Permaculture Design Principles in Visual Art and Art Operations

Supervisor: Barbora Klímová

Erika Mészárosová: Women in the Slovak National Uprising

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Michal Kučerák: Blockchain and Artistic Creation. Revolution, Evolution, or Dead End? Blockchain Technology and Its Forms in the Context of Contemporary Artistic Practice and Art Operations

Supervisor: Jan Zálešák

Alina Matějová: Artificial Intelligence as an Artefact of Visual Culture

Supervisor: Mikuláš Macháček

Lucie Králíková: Revive, Celebrate. New Traditions and Rituals in the Landscape of the Sudetes

Supervisor: Milan Houser

Tomáš Moravanský: Post-Dance: Choreography and Politics of Ideological Space

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Simona Koutná: My Surrogate Self

Supervisor: Mikuláš Macháček

Markéta Filipová: The Dream of the Image. The Motif of Dream and Dreaming in Czech Painting after 2010

Supervisor: Petr Kvíčala

Kristýna Kašparová: Happily Ever After (the Ideal Opposite of Ageism)

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Andreas Gajdošík: Cultural Artefact in the Time of Its Automated Genesis: Ontology, Social Role, and Impact of Machine-Generated Artefacts

Supervisor: Mikuláš Macháček

Pavol Fabuš: The Measure of Art: Aesthetic Practice in the Digital Environment

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Dragana Zarevska: "Future of Work"

Supervisor: Filip Cenek

Marika Volfová: Environmental Activism within Artistic Practice

Supervisor: Václav Magid

Romana Drdová: Inner and Outer Identity

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová

Ondřej Homola: Overlaps of Visuality in Music Pop Culture into Fine Art

Supervisor: Mikuláš Macháček

Kristína Jamrichová: (Im)possibilities of Depicting the "Other" in Artistic Imagery

Supervisor: Petr Kvíčala

Klára Hosnedlová: Adolf Loos's Sample Book: Textiles—An Integral Part of the Interior

Supervisor: Lenka Klodová