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Denisa Kollarová & Anna van Lingen, Aldo van Eyck: Seventeen Playgrounds

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, English

This expanded second edition by Denisa Kollarová and Anna van Lingen delves into the unique design of Amsterdam's playgrounds created by Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. Van Eyck designed a network of over 700 playgrounds spread throughout the city. While many of these playgrounds have disappeared or now share space with new equipment, only seventeen remain untouched. The book analyzes van Eyck's designs, which use minimalist forms to encourage children's imagination and creativity. With contributions from invited experts, this edition builds on the original 2016 publication, addressing new topics, including the potential for heritage preservation of van Eyck's playgrounds.

Barbora Ilič, Where Them Stray Dogs At

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, English

This book explores the romanticization of Belgrade as a symbol of post-socialist life in the so-called Balkans. It brings together perspectives from authors who have lived in Belgrade or are currently residing there, offering critical interpretations of the essentializing portrayals of the city. The various forms of their artistic research share a common interest in unravelling the dualism between the external views of visitors and the internal perspectives of locals. The book particularly focuses on “Western” visitors who are often captivated by the city's urban decay and, at times, its literal toxicity. Through the case study of Belgrade, the book also addresses broader issues of gentrification, migration, and globalization within the context of European semi-peripheries. Each section of the book is accompanied by visual material from the exhibition of the same name, held at the FFA Gallery in the fall of 2023.

Lenka Klodová, FaVU: Odcházení [Leaving]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

This book explores the experience of stepping down from the role of studio head, focusing primarily on members of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. It examines the conditions and foundations necessary for successful art education and documents the complex web of professional and personal relationships that shape studio teaching, which also influence the unique nature of departure from such positions. The book delves into how, at the moment of departure, not only the dynamics within studio collectives come into play but also internal motivations and broader factors related to the status of artists and the economic standing of professional artists. It views leaving a teaching position as a transitional state that should be accompanied by appropriate rituals to ensure a proper emotional experience and avoid subsequent trauma. The book is co-authored by Lenka Klodová and Barbora Klímová, who approach the writing from the perspective of artistic researchers with a focus on social and pedagogical issues, and Lucie Vidovičová, a sociological researcher specializing in aging. Each chapter summarizes insights gained from semi-structured interviews conducted as part of an ongoing research project.

Michal Konečný, Tamara Divíšková: Můj život [Tamara Divíšková: My Life]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

This book, aimed at a broad audience, explores the life and work of sculptor Tamara Divíšková, a student of Vincent Makovský. Tamara Divíšková was a prominent artistic figure in Czechoslovakia during the second half of the 20th century. Her works, primarily made of ceramics, were exhibited in both domestic and international galleries and could also be found in architectural projects and public buildings such as hospitals, kindergartens, and housing estates, notably in Brno's Lesná district. Despite being limited by her social background, which restricted her artistic commissions, Divíšková maintained close friendships with significant artists like Sylva Lacinová, Inez Tuschnerová, Vincent Makovský, Bohumír Matal, and Miloš Axman. These relationships, along with her remarkable family background, play a crucial role in shaping this publication, which is structured as a biography. The book expands on the basic biographical narrative by incorporating themes currently emphasized in art historical research, such as the role of women in 20th-century art, the nature and process of state commissions, the influence of the state and Communist Party on artistic work, the role of official artists, the work of artists on the fringes of society, artistic associations, and the bonds of friendship between artists. The focus is particularly on the theme of women artists in the 20th century. The biography, with an expert introduction by the author, is based on interviews with Tamara Divíšková.

Judita Levitnerová, Art protis: tapiserie z černých ovcí [Art Protis: Black Sheep Tapestries]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

This book delves into the unique artistic technique of “art protis,” a type of non-woven tapestry that emerged in the 1960s at the Brno Wool Mills. Drawing from qualitative interviews with artists, technicians, historians, and various individuals across generations and professions connected to art protis, the publication captures a wide array of stories from those involved in this distinctive phenomenon. The book examines the repeated, yet unsuccessful, efforts to preserve art protis since the 1990s, seeking to understand why this art form is gradually disappearing from public spaces. It also raises the question of cultural heritage preservation. Using archival materials, the book documents this specific chapter of socialist-era Czechoslovakia, focusing on the development of art protis in Brno, where large-scale pieces were created and prominently displayed in public spaces. The author's artistic research methodology includes her own art protis practice and organization of art protis workshops, in which she collaborates with others to keep the unique art of art protis alive.

Barbora Lungová, Partyzánky s motyčkou v zelené městské krajině: (nejen) umělecké intervence spontánní zahradnické povahy ve veřejném prostoru [Partisans with a Hoe: Guerilla Gardening in Public Space]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

This book explores the concept of guerrilla gardening, focusing on (but not limited to) artistic interventions of spontaneous gardening in public spaces. These interventions aim to beautify the surroundings and even produce food within urban environments. The book is structured as a local guide to twelve selected sites in Brno, including courtyards, public areas in front of shopping centres, strips of land between tram tracks and sidewalks, railway viaducts and their surroundings, a solitary hollow stump in a park, areas around railway tracks, and the outskirts of housing estates. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that merges artistic and anthropological perspectives, a collective of artists and social anthropologists examines various forms of transforming, using, and sharing public spaces through gardening and planting interventions. The book also delves into the diverse motivations behind these guerrilla gardening efforts. The publication builds upon the group's extensive artistic, research, and organizational activities, which include documenting inaccessible or overlooked locations through photography and time-lapse sound recordings, sowing ruderal plants and other unusual botanical interventions, and organizing public walks.

Tomáš Moravanský, Odkud se berou děti: kniha reprodukcí / Where Do Babies Come From: Book of Reproductions

artbook, 2024, Czech and English

This non-fiction, conceptual book presents a series of seventy-two images that depict the genitalia of twenty-four parental pairs alongside their biological offspring. Designed in the style of a “coffee table book” and released in a limited edition of 150 copies, the publication seeks to connect two often disparate perspectives: the artistic (conceptualism) and the scientific. Each of the twenty-four chapters consists of a trio of photographs – two images are juxtaposed on a single spread (A4 size), with the photograph of the offspring occupying the entire next spread. The book features a foreword by Prof. RNDr. Jaroslav Flegr, CSc., a renowned Czech biologist, university professor, and science communicator. Flegr's research primarily focuses on biological evolution, particularly in ethology, evolutionary parasitology, and evolutionary psychology. He initiated a citizen science project involving large-scale surveys, including what is likely the largest Czech sexology survey to date, with 65,000 participants.

Martin Pfann, Partyzánská stezka: Průvodce po historii antifašistického odboje Strachujov – Veselí – Prosetín [Partisan Trail: A Guide to the History of the Anti-Fascist Resistance Strachujov – Veselí – Prosetín]

guide and audiobook, 2024, Czech

This multimedia guide explores the history of the anti-fascist resistance during World War II in the Českomoravská Highlands. It consists of a printed map detailing key historical sites and a series of audio stories tied to specific locations. The project focuses on the everyday lives of villagers involved in the resistance, who were not merely “victims of occupation” but also active participants in the resistance movement – an aspect often overshadowed in Czech historiography by the prominence of Soviet partisans and military figures. The guide draws on research conducted both in archives and through fieldwork at these sites, including interviews with local residents. The Strachujov – Veselí – Prosetín route follows on from a previous guide covering the Telecí – Sněžné – Strachujov route, linking the unified mountain massif with the local Protestant community and the stories of resistance fighters like Serinek, Hyška, and others who operated in the area. The project is supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation.

Jakub Polách, Czechoslayvakia

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, Czech

The collective monograph Czechoslayvakia serves as a guide to political imagination, an artistic catalogue, a theoretical anthology, a dictionary, and a literary-photographic meme fiction centred around a fictional state of the same name. The content weaves together speculative narratives with essays that connect themes from visual projects to historical parallels, digital anthropology, legal and fashion theory, and music subcultures. The publication aims to compile over 200 dictionary entries and neologisms created by TikTok users in response to the author's exhibition projects. This book not only maps and contextualizes an internet micro-universe but also acts as a dynamic tool for expanding the subcultural capital of this digital community.

Markéta Skalková, Houba [Mushroom]

artbook, 2024, Czech

This book is an environmental fable, created during the 2020 lockdown, that serves as a bleak allegory expressing despair and sadness, as well as a warning. The story follows a little ant seeking shelter from the rain under a small mushroom, which barely provides enough cover. Gradually, more animals arrive, all hoping to find refuge under the mushroom. Despite its limited size, the mushroom miraculously expands with the continuous rainfall, accommodating them all. However, the rain doesn't stop. As the downpour continues, the reader is offered several alternate endings, each presenting the animals with different challenges: How will they cope with hunger? Disease? The arrival of more animals seeking safety? The instability of the mushroom's structure? Flooding? The book straddles the line between illustrated storytelling, comic book, and gamebook, offering a unique and thought-provoking experience.

Kateřina Žák Konvalinová, VLNA [Wool]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

This book consolidates current knowledge on the domestication, breeding, and socio-economic conditions that influence the structure of sheep farming, breed representation, and wool typology in the region. Through a combination of expert texts, speculative storytelling, and analysis of selected artistic projects, the publication explores the sustainability of sheep's wool as a material in contemporary art. Drawing on contemporary eco-philosophical trends, posthumanism, new materialism, and feminist frameworks, the book delves into the often-overlooked complexities of the relationship between humans and domesticated/bred animals. The monograph further examines the intricate more-than-human relationships and connections involved in the craft of processing wool, such as weaving, felting, and knitting. It is based on a series of interviews conducted by artist Kateřina Žák Konvalinová and social scientist Tereza Špinková with various experts in the field, including a sheep breeding specialist, sociologist, breeder, shepherdess, a student of contemporary tapestry from the Brussels Academy of Arts, and other artists and designers. The focus is primarily on the local context, supplemented by examples from Spain, which held a monopoly on merino wool until the 18th century, and Belgium, where the Royal Academy hosts studios dedicated to contemporary tapestry and tapestry restoration. The book's creation and publication are accompanied by a series of public events, workshops, debates, and artistic interventions, including the production of a wool-based art protis piece in collaboration with artist Judita Levitnerová for the Prague Biennale Matter of Art.

Jiří Žák, We Love Shooting

peer-reviewed monograph, 2025, Czech

We Love Shooting is a collective interdisciplinary monograph inspired by a participatory theater production of the same name, created by artist Jiří Žák and the theater group 8lidí, which premiered in the spring of 2023 at Display Gallery in Prague. The book, in collaboration with selected authors from the fields of history, visual culture theory, and theater and art theory, aims to further explore and contextualize the themes raised by the performance. The monograph delves into the role of Czechoslovak, and later Czech, weapons in the Syrian conflict, examining this within a broader postcolonial perspective on Czechoslovakia's and the Czech Republic's involvement in the Middle East. In addition to historical analysis, the book expands on other aspects of the performance, such as the ongoing refugee crisis that peaked between 2015 and 2017, particularly in relation to Czech arms exports, and the issue of Czech racism towards refugees from the Global South. In addition to expanding on these themes, the monograph examines how the performance translates historical and artistic research – along with investigative documentary theater techniques – into a performative artwork that blurs the boundaries between exhibition and theater. The individual texts not only introduce readers to the complex issues of Czech involvement in global processes and history through arms distribution but also demonstrate how art can articulate and communicate this complexity. The book will be published in co-edition with Display.

Adam Vačkář, The Heracles of Hogweed

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, English

The book examines the complex relationship between humans and Giant Hogweed, an “invasive” plant from the Caucasus. Challenging conventional views on plant migration, it traces Hogweed's journey from Central Asia to Europe and the Americas, exploring media-driven fear and the author's spiritual connection to the plant while encouraging reflection on our relationship with nature from a non-human perspective. Heracleum mantegazzianum, or Giant Hogweed, is a large, controversial plant known for causing severe skin burns and potential blindness. Originally introduced to Europe as an ornamental plant, it quickly spread uncontrollably, posing ecological threats by outcompeting native flora. Once admired, Hogweed's relationship with humans deteriorated as it spread beyond gardens into neglected spaces, symbolizing the unintended consequences of human activity. Today, European law mandates the plant's eradication by 2050. While some botanists criticize this goal as extreme, others support it. The book also highlights how, in regions like the Czech Republic, eradication efforts expose issues of exploitation and discrimination, with marginalized communities often tasked with this dangerous work. Giant Hogweed carries socio-political symbolism as well. The book discusses how, in post-Communist Czechoslovakia, the plant was metaphorically linked to the spread of the Communist regime. In the Sudetenland, it evokes memories of historical displacement and conflict, symbolizing the complex and often painful human history of the region.

Pavel Ryška, Háček + Čárka

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, Czech

The comic series Háček + Čárka was published on the back page of Sluníčko magazine from 1972 to 1974. Although Sluníčko was a magazine for preschoolers, Jaroslav Malák's authorial comic was far from the usual picture stories for young children. It featured two children who were aware that they were characters in a popular comic series. Their adventures can be interpreted in various ways: as a light-hearted picture story, a playful exploration of comic book techniques, or an unexpected commentary on Czechoslovak society at the turn of the 1960s and 70s. Regardless, it stands as a unique testament to the maturity that Czech comics had already achieved fifty years ago. This complete book edition of the Háček + Čárka stories is accompanied by an extensive study by Pavel Ryška on Malák's work, richly illustrated with visual materials.

Pavel Ryška, České spotřební pohádky [Czech Consumer Fairy Tales]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, Czech

This book provides a comprehensive overview of a century's worth of both traditional and commissioned fairy tales crafted to serve the consumer market. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later socialist Czechoslovakia, private companies and state enterprises produced vibrant picture cards, leaflets, and small booklets. These colourful materials captivated children, even when they presented only simplified versions of classic stories or rudimentary texts designed to promote specific products, where magical items were often substituted with advertised goods. Illustrated by a mix of popular artists and anonymous, untrained illustrators, these advertising and promotional fairy tales became a significant cultural phenomenon of the 20th century. They shaped the imagination of multiple generations, contributed to the sale of industrial products, and had an educational purpose, teaching children about hygiene, nutrition, the benefits of insurance, the importance of saving, and the value of recycling. However, after the fall of the communist regime, these fairy tales disappeared from public spaces, overtaken by the rise of digital technologies and the new entertainment and advertising trends that accompanied them.

Jozef Mrva ml., Mraky/Vrstvy/Dimenze: Topologie a vnímání prostoru v 21. století [Clouds/Layers/Dimensions: Topology and Perception of Space in the 21st Century]

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, Czech

Jan Šrámek, Kouzlo zapomnětlivosti Josepha Beuyse [The Magic of Joseph Beuys' Forgetfulness]

artbook, 2024, Czech

Jan Šrámek, Ohrožené druhy [Endangered Species]

artbook, 2024, Czech

Martin Mazanec, Frederick Kiesler: Selected Writings on Moving Image, Film, and Cinema

peer-reviewed monograph, 2024, English