Orchard, Meadow, Forest, River, Gallery: Symposium on Biotopes in Art, 1–3 Nov 2024, FFA
We cordially invite you to the autumn symposium on biotopes in art – Orchard, Meadows, Forest, River, Gallery, which will take place from 1 to 3 November 2024 at FFA and at various locations in the form of excursions.
1 November 2024
10:00–14:00, FFA, building U2, room 325
Speakers: Tomáš Prištiak (Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava), NGO Hopelessness and Despair (Bratislava), Tereza Jindrová (Entrance Gallery), Edith Jeřábková and Denisa Tomášková (PLATO Ostrava)
Tomáš Prištiak: The Danube River and the flow of diverse conceptual materials. The river as an open possibility to create their own strategy. Listening to the river as a boundless process, a bridging human and more-than-human strategies in a single flow of water and river ballast.
NGO Hopelessness and Despair connects cultural and environmental spaces. In their first project, they planted trees and mushrooms with pupils, teachers, and parents in a school garden in a close vicinity to a location laden with environmental disaster in the Istrochem chemical plant. The NGO attempts to start a soil cleaning process through fytoremediation and mycoremediation. The NGO members also work on individual projects, such as performative gastronomic lectures where the audience consumes chestnut soup, a dish typical for 16th century, an era when the „little ice age“ started. Untangling the strands of the soup recipe, lines of discussion are developed about the contexts of climate change in the 16-17th centuries and the present global warming.
Tereza Jindrová works as a curator in the Jindřich Chalupecký Society and was previously associated with Meet Factory, the A2 journal of culture, or Artyčok TV. Since 2014, she has been a curator of the Entrance Gallery whose program from the recent years dedicated to more-than-human entities, their living environment, and their meeting points with the human factor she is going to introduce.
Gallery Plato is involved both in indoor exhibitions and events and in what happens behind its brick walls. Since 2022, it has been creating a public garden on a area of 7.500 m2 dedicated to education, rest, and comfort where people, incects, invertebrae, and vertebrate, terrestrial and water animals, amphibians, plants, and funghi. The garden was established in accordance with permarulture principles which help the institution to reflect its work, agency, and inner environment. Denisa Tomášková who is the author of the design and Edith Jeřábková, the program curator, are going to talk about the birth of the garden in the context of an art institution.
2 November 2024
Field trip with biologist Vilém Jurek to Medlánky Hills (Brno); meeting at the Technologický park tram stop at 13:00.
„Join us and see the story“: our field trip will not be „just“ any outdoor naturalist walk, but it will also comprise the historical-environmental aspect. We will see it demonstrated on the Medlánky Hills – two small hills on the North of Brno which are listed natural reservations. Many fascinating plants and animals live here (as it is end of season, we will see some of them in illustrations). Both hills provide a rich array of views of the city, surrounding landscape, other protected sites nearby, and also views of the past and future. We
are going to discuss the future prospects of the site together and will search for additional landscape contexts.
Vilém Jurek is landscape ecologist and landscape engineer, but first and foremost, he is a nature conservationist. On most occasions, you will meet him outdoors where he cuts grass, shrubs, maps flora and fauna, determines plants, or plans. For fifteen years, he has been active in the Rezekvítek environmental charity and in ONYX local branch of the Czech Union of Nature Conservation since 2019. Apart from these activities, he writes, lectures, and promotes. He is preoccupied with the topics of paradoxes of nature conservation, atomization of landscape, agroforestry, patch land management, urban wastelands, reclamation of public spaces and postindustrial mining sites. Recently, he has associated himself with the „Brno Will Be Hot“, „Memorial Biocentres,“ and „Tree Ombudsman“ initiatives.
3 November 2024
Field trip with biologist Jan Běťák to Holý Kopec (Chřiby); meeting at Kamenná studánka beneath Holý Kopec at 11:30, or at 9:50 at the Central Bus Station Zvonařka, platform No. 1.
Jan Běťák studied systematic biology and ecology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Masaryk University, specializing in mycology. He works at the VUKOZ (Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Horticulture), department of forest ecology, and specializes in biodiversity of mushrooms growing on decomposing wood in natural forests.
The Holy Hill nature reserve was established in the 1970s. Thanks to natural, management-free regime existing in the reserve for the last thirty years, immensely precious vegetation has developed there which enables the thriving of a wide spectrum of exceptionally rare species. The place stands as the only example of a larger area left for natural development in the Central Moravian Carpathians area. On our field trip, we will focus on the importance of fungi for the functions of forest ecosystem, we will gain insight into the mysterious world of their diversity and changeability of forms. We will also touch upon the problems of contemporary forms of commercial logging and forestry and into possibilities of integrating interests of nature conservation in it.
The symposium is organized by the Department of Art History and Theory at FFA BUT.
Please direct any questions to Barbora Lungová, lungova@favu.vut.cz.
| Author | Mgr. Tímea Vitázková |
|---|---|
| Published | |
| Short URL | https://www.favu.vut.cz/en/students/news-and-calls/f26745/d267234 |
Responsibility: Hana Křížová