||| 160 cm of me |||

| sarka zahalkova | www.160cm.me |

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SONOLOGY OF SOIL, acoustic workshop, 2025 together with Vilém Řiháček, Cirkus C

realized in: Jesuit Cultural Centre, Alexandria, Egypt

organised by: Czech Centre, Cairo, Egypt with Live Performance Bazaar festival, Prague, Czech Republic

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THE ESSENCE OF THERMAL, series of audio essays for VZBUĎME VARY, 2025

on display: public space of Karlovy Vary, CZ

inauguration: 16/11/2025

Three short audio essays – audio walks dedicated to the Thermal Hotel in Karlovy Vary create a performative acoustic object in space. In these audio walks, the artist develops her earlier working methods based on the process of detaching sound (schizophonia) and its subsequent return. Across three chapters, she explores themes of approaching, invisibility, and everydayness.

The audio works combine authentic field recordings with a narrative in which the artist cites selected texts (not only philosophical ones) and mediates them through lived experience. The specific context of the location does not hermetically close the listening experience to other modes of reception. However, the interweaving of past and present, the temporality of a specific place, its acoustics, and the rhythm of walking offers a distinct perceptual experience and an alternative way of sensing.

The work was developed during an artistic residency (summer 2025) organized by the association Vzbuďme Vary and further during the autumn of 2025. The piece was presented to the public as a performative event in November 2025. The audio works remain publicly accessible via QR codes installed in the space.

Esence Thermalu

Listen to Esence Thermalu by Sarka | 160cm of me #np on #SoundCloud

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MEMORIAL FOR THE STORKS, audio memorial for BART II. / public art festival, 2025

on display: Mariánské náměstí, Broumov, CZ

inauguration: 29/8/2025

A commemorative run by walking and a memorial through listening. An audio sculpture, a poem, and a performative memorial realized on the occasion of the Broumov festival of art in public space – Bart. The work commemorates a rather ephemeral event that took place at the beginning of the summer of 2025, when storks, almost overnight, nested on the Marian Column. This naturally caused an immediate stir. The clattering of beaks resonated across the entire square; the town and local media began to follow the everyday life of the young stork pair, while heritage conservation authorities started to devise ways to remove them from the crown of the Baroque Virgin Mary with two faces. After a few weeks, they succeeded.

The work recalls this event in a poetic manner. It draws on the meaning of the word “memorial,” which denotes both a physical monument and the format of a commemorative run. It functions as a kind of mantra, inviting the listener to a run slowed down to the rhythm of repetitive walking around the Marian Column, sharpening attention and opening imaginative planes of reflection on the human and the more-than-human, the value of commemorated heritage, and their role in the future.

“… A halo of twigs and branches. / How much weight can the crown of the protectress of mothers, families, children, and pilgrims bear? …”

Memorial for the Storks here becomes an act of conscious contemplation. Formally, it was presented as a collective performative act within the Bart festival. In the public space of Broumov’s Mírové Square, it remains permanently present in its subtlety.

Memoriál pro čápy

místo: https://mapy.com/s/gozocepuku ~ Mariánský sloup na Mírovém náměstí v Broumově Připomínka toho, co není, co zmizelo, bylo odstraněno.

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IN DIALOG, spatial installation realised together with Clare Chun-yu Liu

on display: Galerie FavU, Brno, CZ, 30/4–11/6/2025

exhibiting artists: Clare Chun-yu Liu, Šárka Zahálková

The joint exhibition by artists Šárka Zahálková and Clare Chun-yu Liu explored ways of working with hidden, locally rooted narratives. Through active engagement, historical imagination, and academic research, the artists revealed and generated new forms of knowledge that illuminated the political, cultural, and ecological landscape of the site – one that would otherwise have remained concealed and invisible.

Clare Chun-yu Liu presented an artistic film based on her postdoctoral research at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology. Her artistic research offered a new interpretation of eighteenth-century Czech–Habsburg chinoiserie from the perspective of the Chinese diaspora, reflecting her Taiwanese background. The film proposed a cross-cultural historiography through a historical yet imaginative ethnography of relevant historical figures, including the painter Johann Adalbert Kratochwill, who decorated the Chinese Cabinet at the Šternberg Palace.

Šárka Zahálková presented excerpts from her doctoral project in the form of a site-specific installation that entered into dialogue with Liu’s work. As part of her artistic research at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, under the supervision of Dušan Zahoranský, she focused on the dynamics of dialogue at various levels of its collective formation within the context of the surrounding world. Her work was grounded in an ecofeminist and posthumanist approach to shared spaces of dialogue and incorporated principles of acoustic ecology, binaural field recording, nonviolent communication, and critical pedagogy. Through a series of sound works, she explored how to co-create a more sensitive relationship with public space.

photo: Polyna Davidenko, FaVU

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DIPLOMKY (DIPLOMA WORKS) 2025, curatorial project, 2025

exhibiting artists: Jan Antoš, Zuzana Čerbáková, Valeryia Dzektsiarova, Romana Floreková, Bianka Ivanová, Elizabeth Kanabe, Orhan Kavas, Magdaléna Khýrová, Kateřina Krupová, Veronika Kuricová, Jakub Kurtulík, Natallia Luksha, Tamara Masnicová, Antónia Morihladková, Kristián Novák, Dominik Pohludka, Andrea Polakovičová, Simona Pospíšilová, Magdalena Prášilová, Tereza Řezáčová, Jaroslava Sikoňová, Marie Staníková, Simona Ticháčková, Anna Treterová, Vendula Váňová, Petr Vašinka, Nevena Živković

curator: Šárka Zahálková

graphic design: Vojtěch Kwolek

on display: GAFU (25/6–18/7 & 7–29/8/2025), GVUO (25/6–20/7/2025)

“The ability to navigate unexpectedly adverse situations relies far less on regulations, laws, and various directives, and far more on something as soft as our mental attitude and the specific, physical relational actions we take with others,” says philosopher Alice Koubová in the introduction to the book Resilient Society: Between Tyranny and Powerlessness, published in 2023 in collaboration with literary documentarian Barbora Baronová.

According to Koubová, resilience – or odolnost – cannot be taught; there is no clear guide or manual for how to build it. Resilience arises through inner transformation, which allows us to mitigate the effects of crises we find ourselves in – crises we often cannot fully comprehend. This inner transformation also reflects and deepens empathy, which lies not in generating similarities, but in appreciating mutual differences.

The diploma works of graduates from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Ostrava are marked by sensitive observation and personal engagement with the present. Artistic expression becomes a means of sustaining attention on things that might otherwise easily fade – memory, relationship to place, transformation of the body, the role of language, or the boundary between the private and the public.

Many of the works turn inward – towards themes of intimacy, family ties, everyday habits, or the inner landscape that remains hidden beneath the surface of the ordinary day. Others, by contrast, explore broader cultural, social, or environmental contexts, offering visual commentary on transformations in space, society, or technology. In many of the pieces, we encounter repetition, layering, and reconstruction. The body becomes an imprint of events, a record of relationships, or a bearer of inner tension.

Through this multifaceted and multilayered continuum of approach, the artists succeed in becoming aware of their own anxieties – and of what can still be relied upon today, what our sources of strength are. Through their artistic gestures, they explore spaces beyond the boundaries of normativity, seeking new ways of engaging in dialogue with themselves and with surrounding communities. To the viewer, they offer a sharpening and softening of perception – an expansion towards subtleties, and perhaps even perceived misfits – which nonetheless carry undeniable significance. Their creative approaches and final pieces become tools for building a more resilient society.

Šárka Zahálková

photo: GVUO

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ECHO INTERVAL, site-specific audio essay

on display: DUUL, Ústí nad Labem, CZ, 23/4–26/7/2025

curated by: Adéla Machová

The short audio essay Echo Interval, a site-specific sound walk, takes the audience briefly out of the House of Arts to return them to the gallery in an altered sensibility. Composed from site-specific field recordings and spoken word, the audio is in a way an exercise in listener perception. It offers an awareness of place and one's own situatedness within it. It invites reflection on the specificity of echo as a sonic space situated between past and future, a moment that contains both repetition and response.

This time in Gallery 3 we encounter a spatially authentic sound work by Šárka Zahálková, which invites us to start a short journey and develop our own sound sensitivity and imagination. The introduction of the audio essay Echo Interval (2025) is constantly surrounded by a multiplicity of sound stimuli and gradually gives a space to our thoughts. The artist sensitively interacts with the sound tracks in an almost cinematic approach, working with both the detail and the whole, and relates the listener to different levels of initially invisible audiovisual stimuli, allowing us to view the perceived surroundings from different perspectives. Let's try to stay for a moment at a chosen point in the present, listen, focus our attention and step out of our own circles.

Echo Interval

G3 | DUUL | https://duul.cz | A short audio essay, a site-specific sound walk for the House of Art in Ústí nad Labem, briefly leads the list

photo: Filip Trubač, DUUL

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GROUNDS FOR REFLECTION, curatorial project, 2025

participating artists: Bára Bažantová, Virág Bogyó, Epos 257, Andreas Gajdošík, Oskar Helcel, Kája Hru, Markéta Kinterová, Karolína Kripnerová & Janek Rous, Tomáš Moravec, Eliška Perglerová & Iveta Šalamounová, Tadeáš Polák, Vladimír Turner, Ateliér Architektura 1 UMPRUM and others

curatorial team: Šárka Zahálková & Václav Šafka

graphics: Magdalena Gurská & Tereza Matěchová

architecture: RUINA office (Magdalena Uhlířová & Adéla Vavříková)

collaborators: Martina Johnová, Štefan Pecko, Kateřina Petrásková, Amálie Reichlová, Kateřina Stündlová, Marie Šrajerová, Klára Vlachová, Office of the Architect of the City of Ústí nad Labem and the Hraničář team

on display: Hraničář Gallery, Ústí nad Labem, CZ, 29/3–29/6/2025

Grounds for Reflection can be described as a collection of information, facts, arguments, or other data that underpins decision-making at various institutional or systemic levels. It is a basis for building considerations, formulating conclusions, or seeking solutions to problems.

In the case of this exhibition, the basis for joint reflection has been formed by past art and research projects, as well as records of performances or interventions by artists across media and genres. Although these works were created in different temporal and spatial contexts and addressed problems and challenges of various places and situations, they can, in many ways, serve as an inspiration for at least some of the current challenges in Ústí nad Labem, particularly those related to urban development of the city, future changes in its landscape, and life within it.

These artistic materials for reflection are spread out in the haven of the Hraničář gallery. However, rather than creating a permanently fixed exhibition from them, we intend to create a kind of open folder that can be freely browsed and drawn from. We present the works in order to activate and stimulate visitors’ imagination. The important things happen outdoors in the spatio-temporal mass of public dialogue, in which we continuously tune our imaginations into common visions of a shared future. It is these visions that are now becoming very important for Ústí nad Labem, and not only in the sense of creating a new spatial development plan.

A spatial development plan is an important strategic tool that should enable meaningful reflection on the future of a city. It should bring a clear and transparent structure to urban development, helping to harmonize interests and prevent chaos in the course of the planning. From certain perspectives, however, it can be a rather cumbersome document, incomprehensible to many; its production requires specific know-how, knowledge or position within power structures.

Manuals and strategic documents are good servants, but they can also be bad masters. In addition to their positive qualities, they can (albeit unintentionally) favour the voices of the most powerful.

Even the best-crafted documents and the best methods of working with the community need to be continuously re-evaluated and subjected to critical reflection in order to represent the interests and needs of all groups of city residents.

The presented artworks – our grounds for your reflection – exemplify subtle actions that, according to the metaphor of the British holistic physicist, philosopher, and writer F. David Peat, are not spectacular and/or loud explosions, but they enable gradual gaining of strength through the unobtrusive power of small ripples.

The morphology and structures of these subtle actions – artistic gestures spread over time and space – are variable and it’s impossible to create a clear guide based on them. They create a breeding ground for open dialogue and transformations of cities and places, functioning as a sort of healing for the hacking of systems. Through them, we can progressively reach transformations of larger entities. Participation implies not only the partnership but also the ability to create conditions for the genuine involvement of the socially disadvantaged and marginalized.

The process by which we pursue change is as crucial as the change itself.

foto: Tomáš Lumpe, Hraničář

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WHEN YOU GET LOST IN THE WOODS for THE FOREST PASSAGE, 2025, spatial audio essay for the collective exhibition

on display: Cursor Gallery, Prague, CZ, 12/3–1/6/2025

exhibiting artists: Juliana Höschlová, Pavel Jestřáb, Martin Kochan, Martin Kubica, Tereza Samková, Jiří Šigut, Šárka Zahálková, Martin Zetová

curated by: Tomáš Knoflíček and Kateřina Štroblová

Picasso used to say that when a painter finds himself, he is lost, and this exhibition is more about losing rather than finding oneself. Nevertheless, it’s probably necessary to admit that it does not look for the requisite differentiation and thus blurs the meaning of both concepts. In the forest, which, albeit somewhat metaphorically, frames the exhibition, it is very easy. It is here that acquired meanings are easily transformed into their opposite, so that for some it remains Dante’s dark forest (selva oscura), in which one loses oneself before the very gates of hell, while for others it is literally the opposite, a place where one can find oneself, and where obstacles culminating in a thick fog perhaps only protect the primordial “paradise”.

More about the exhibition

Chůze lesem | Artyčok TV

photo: Filip Beránek / CSU Praha

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DIALOGICAL PRINCIPLES, 2025, dissertation

published on: Research Catalogue

In my PhD research, I examine both the practical and theoretical aspects of public space as a social substance and the role of art as an active mediator of potential positive transformations within it. Rather than focusing on the physical form of artworks, I concentrate on the dynamics of communication at various levels involved in the collective formation of these spaces within the broader context of the surrounding world. My approach is grounded in an eco-feminist and non-anthropocentric understanding of shared dialogic space and is informed by my extensive curatorial, artistic, and activist practice. I employ principles of acoustic ecology, conscious listening, and walking as tools to enhance sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Borrowing the term ecotone from the natural sciences– where it describes the transitional zone between different communities – I use this concept to reflect on the permeability of communities, resilience, hierarchy, empathy, and, importantly, the artistic gesture unfolding over time.

Defended on May 13, 2025.

Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, 2025

Studio: Intermedia 2

Supervisors: prof. Mgr. art. Dušan Zahoranský, doc. MgA. Pavla Sceranková Ph.D.

Consultant: Mgr. art. Magda Stanová Ph.D.

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ESSENCE, 2024, audio for the dance performance

realized: Vierte Welt, Berlin, DE, 17/11/2024

creative team: Tera Dvořáková (concept & curatorial leadership), Sophie Geisler & Marlene Kahl (choreography & dance performance), Päfgens (music), Šárka Zahálková (audio & soundscape)

Essence is a performance about close encounters with the worlds in which we live, places as unique universes inhabited by other non-human species, pulsating and breathing with many diverse rhythms.

During the Czech-German cooperation project Esence místa, two dancers from Germany joined a team of Czech artists in the town of Jáchymov to create a performative audiowalk up to a local hill (Klobouk Hill). The Slovakian music duo Päfgens, based in Berlin, composed a musical piece specifically for Jáchymov. The material and experiences gathered in Jáchymov was transferred and adapted to the location of Vierte Welt.

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SOIL RE-IMAGINED, 2024, research & share residency

realized: Czech Center Cairo & Fayoum Art Center, Egypt, 29/9–10/10/2024

The Landscape Research & Residency Project, initiated by the Live Performance Bazaar, brings together artists, arts managers and producers with scientists. During the residency, we visited Cairo (Masq), the Václav Havel European Dialogues 2024 (an international conference at the GrEEK Campus in Cairo focused on sustainability), and various areas in the desert, including Sekem, Fayoum Art Centre, Nazla Village, and Whale Valley.

Together with Vilém Řiháček (Cirkus C), whose practice focuses on promoting and researching the positive aspects of biochar, we ran a workshop for children from Fayoum.

As one of the outcomes of the residency, I created a short audio essay.

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THE ERROR IS NOT A MISTAKE, curatorial project, 2024–2025

exhibiting artists: Lucie Fryčová, Heřman Hůrka, Kateřina Konvalinová & Jiří Žák, Elena Pecenová, Šimon Rychlík & the Domácí umění collectives, Artyčok TV, TV Páteř, Tuke TV

exhibition architecture: Anna Chrtková, MAK! (Kateřina Vídenová, Adam Wlazel)

participants: A to je zakázáno (Tomáš Janypka, Jazmína Piktorová, Markéta Stránská), D’epog, Dominik Bárt & Filip Klega & Anna Sedlmajerová (literary residencies), Judit Navrátil (HU/US), Time's Up (AT) & others

curators: Vojtěch Novák, Dorota Václavíková, Šárka Zahálková

educational programmes: Nikola Březinová

visitor services, PR, production: Anežka Koukolová, Lucie Oplíštilová, Ondřej Uherek, Jakub Šturba, Dominik Jílek

graphic design: Josef Čevora, Mixage

on display: GAMPA, Pardubice, 2/11/2024–2/3/2025

Perhaps you came here by accident. That’s okay. We’ve been waiting for you. Don’t be afraid.

We welcome you and invite you to our home, the gallery.

We are GAMPA, a gallery of contemporary art. We used to reside at the former granary near the Pardubice Castle and we moved to the Automatic Mills a little over a year ago. If you’ve ever moved house, you can imagine what it was like. It’s no wonder people say it’s better to have your house burn down than have to move. But, for some reason, it happens, and it cannot be undone. This is our home now, and this is our fourth exhibition here.

We’re still settling in, testing the possibilities of the space, experimenting, getting used to it all. It’s very similar to any of us moving from one place to another. At the beginning is often an idea or a suggestion of what will be, then comes the reality of everyday living and things start to change, shift, transform. Lived experience is unique. You can’t make it on paper or a computer.

We invite you to our home so you can be with us, so you can spend your time in our gallery. After all, it is your home too.

Architecturally speaking, a gallery is a room whose length is many times greater than its width. You enter the gallery through a gallery.

According to this definition, a gallery can also be decorated with art. Yet another encyclopedia defines art as “the use of talents and the imagination to create aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with other people”. That’ll work…

The forms and roles of art and art institutions in society transform as the world transforms. They cannot operate separately. At our exhibition, we try to make the gallery more accessible and inhabitable for various entities. The boundaries between where art begins and where it ends are left intentionally porous and open to the interpretations, approaches, and emotions of each of you. Are a corridor, an apartment, a kitchen, or a pizzeria artworks, scenography, or utilitarian spaces? How will our perception of things and their situation change when we pass from the perspective of the spectator to that of the user? Would you order a pizza in a gallery?

This year’s theme is crowned off with an exhibition that doesn’t only explore mistakes and how we make them, but especially the moments at which we overcome them. The gallery is not reserved strictly for contemporary artists. Instead, we create environments on the boundaries of installation, scenography, and lived experience. We pay tribute to the mistakes, attempts, and failures that form part of our everyday lives. We provide a space for those whose existence is, unfortunately, sometimes perceived as a “mistake” or “error”.

Chyba není omyl | Artyčok TV

photo: Marie Matula Sieber

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ESENCE MÍSTA: KLOBOUK [ESSENCE OF THE PLACE: KLOBOUK], 2024, site specific performance & audio walk / essay

realized: Vzbuďme Vary (an independent platform that brings contemporary art to the Karlovy Vary region), Jáchymov, CZ, 28/7/2024

in collaboration with: Tera Dvoraková & Veronika Žáková (curators), Marlene Kahl, Sophie Geisler, Markéta Kuttnerová, and Zdena Nohejlová (dance & choreography), Päfgens (music)

A performative walk through Jáchymov.

During the walk, we explored topics related to the location, as well as broader contexts such as landscape, people, resilience, and sustainability. The walk featured original dance choreography by Marlene Kahl, Sophie Geisler, Markéta Kuttnerová, and Zdena Nohejlová; an original musical composition by Päfgens; and an original audio essay-guide by Šárka Zahálková.

photo: Barbora Ederová

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STÁVAT SE KOZMICKÝM UCHEM [BECOMING A KOZMIC EAR] for POHYB — ZVUK — PROSTOR 2024 [MOVEMENT — SOUND — SPACE 2024], 2024, series of participatory events for the festival

realized: Bludný kámen – Kozmice Meadows near Opava, CZ, 1–3/5/2024

The fourth installment of the project, curated by Magdaléna Manderlová and Michal Kindernay, features artists exploring the soundscapes along the Opava River and its surroundings.

The program’s dramaturgy was conceived as a chain of interconnected events, including participatory listening exercises, concerts, and performances. The invited artists created new works closely tied to the location. Šárka Zahálková's workshop focused on listening to the surrounding environment and the materials that shape it. Together with the participants, she transformed local natural materials into the foundation of "cosmic ears," which were later used during the main festival day in the composed sound walk featuring compositions and interventions created for Kozmice Meadows by Peter Cusack, Lucie Páchová, Martin Režný, Magdaléna Manderlová, and Michal Kindernay.

photo: me & Bludný kámen

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NA JEDEN NÁDECH [IN ONE BREATH], 2023, a year-round art project consisting of a series of workshops and events inspired by the world of aquabelles

realized: Terén & TJ TESLA Lesná, Brno, CZ, during 2023 (workshops in October 2023, final performances in November 2023)

authors: Eliška Říhová and Šárka Zahálková

performers: Lenka Nahodilová, Matěj Šíma, participants of the workshops In one breath: Zdeňka Obalilová, Hugo Kuhl, Luisa Habrová, aquabelles from the TJ TESLA synchronized swimming team sound collaboration: Michal Kindernay, Pavel Boika camera, editing: David Mišťúrik, Aňa Babjárová

What is there to do in one breath?

The project consisted of artistic research, participatory events, and public performances. Three workshops focused on exploring the body, water, and breath, and their possible interrelationships. The resulting experiences served as material for a theatrical event by the artist duo Šarka Zahálková and Eliska Říhová, which took place at the end of November in Lesná. The unique TJ TESLA building, with its wave-like roof and other distinctive features, was also explored by architectural historian Šárka Svobodová through several public architectural tours held throughout the year. The project was developed as part of a series of one-off events called Nové sady by Terén.

More information

photo: Terén

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MLÝNSKÝ OSTROV [MILL ISLAND], curatorial & research project, 2022–2024

participating artists: David Böhm & Jiří Franta, Ondřej Buddeus & co., Kateřina Jirsová, Kristina Fingerlandová, Artur Magrot, Ian Mikyska, Tomáš Moravec, and others

guests: Agnieszka Foltyn (CA/NO), Sayed Sattar Hasan (GB/NO), Alessandro Marchi (IT/NO), Araiz Mesanza (ES/NO), and others

curators: Kjetil Detroit Kristensen (NO), Šárka Zahálková

& the collective of collaborators: GAMPA: Nikola Březinová, Josef Čevora, Tereza Drábková, Václav Jánoščík, Tereza Kopecká, Jakub Kudláček, Jolana Lažová, Tomáš Magrot, Aleš Mach, Jaromír Možíš, Vojtěch Novák, Elena Pecenová, Honza Rous & co., Marie Sieberová, Patrik Sedlák, Damián Sommer, Valentýna Šatrová, Adam Trbušek, Dorota Václavíková – & Divadlo 29: Martina Dvořáková, Jaroslav Horecký, Dominik Jílek, Jakub Štrba, Jaroslav Tarnovski, Zdeněk Závodný, and others

on display: GAMPA – City Gallery Pardubice, Pardubice – Automatic Mills, CZ, 29/9/2023–25/2/2024

The multi-layered project with which GAMPA enters into a new phase of its existence explores the possibilities of time-space narration in the context of one of the most iconic structures in Pardubice: the Automatic Mills. In the last ten years, the site has gone from an operating mill to a centre for the arts. The participation of the city’s inhabitants and the independent arts scene played an important role in this transformation. The aim of the Mill Island project is to reflect on this role and use the language of contemporary art to commemorate and retell the story of the site through a different narrative.

More than an exhibition, this is an artistic environment – architecture inside architecture. This vision began with the motif of the island, changing landscapes, tectonic plates, and the history of the mill factory itself. This basic framework of ideas then served as a space in which both collective and individual multi-genre work by both the artists and curators could develop. The narrative is focused into three chapters: reverbation, shift, transformation. These themes concern the history of the locality, but they also have to do with other societal themes; they offer up further interpretations and connections.

The reverbation chapter explores changed urban acoustics in the context of the transformation of cities, as well as voices of the public and various communities in public spaces.

Shift is a chapter about work, its transformation, changes in priorities – it is about labour in the context of factory shifts as well as about the value and valuation of artistic labour.

The transformation chapter addresses not only the transformation of the site itself, but especially the transformation of institutions.

More about the project

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1: ACAB 

All curators are bastards. Is a statement with footnotes really a statement?

Does the art world need more statements, or manifestos? Perhaps building on the already successful ones, the poetic and visionary ones – with genuine wishes for communal and personal growth (not green growth, obviously…) can be enough? As an attempt to strangle some of the noise that constantly occurs in the busy and often bullshit-infused business of international contemporary art production, somewhat fuelled by the expectations of commissioning institutions, national donors, or collectors and their fancy freeports, where no work is free.

Perhaps becoming a footnote is the key, becoming a reference for future productions. Becoming a reference to find. Creation of access to the future Islands, with goals of becoming the magic marks, the desired X’s on treasure maps. By mapping their institutional-infused golden dreams of control, of narrative, sponsors, norms, and expectations, which do not necessarily function to meet the needs of the society they are set out to “represent”. It is all in the footnotes… There are many brilliant manifestos out there already, this we know, let's make them real: I want a dyke for president…

2: Becoming sympoietic

There is an area in between two biological communities where they meet and integrate. In biology, this is called an ecotone. The border between communities doesn’t have to be sharp; it can be gradual or diffuse. There can be regions of transition, where the boundary is, for example, characterised by the differences in the heights of plants due to variable access to light. Because an ecotone is the zone in which two communities integrate, many different forms of life have to live together and compete for space. Therefore, an ecotone can create a diverse ecosystem.

There is an ecotone in between the object and us. We meet there and communicate; sometimes we fight. We search for understanding. It’s not a one-way journey.

There is an ecotone on the edge of spaces. This is where engagement meets.

There is an ecotone in between utopias and systems that rule the world.

There is Mill Island, which is our ecotone. 

3: All these words, or how to handle them

Reverberation, workshift, transformation.

Spaces, labour, institutions. All these words.

Listen, speak, work, and learn.

Or rather:

Remember, forget, unlearn. 

Through the echoing of manifestos, create a space for a dialogue.

Soften relationships.

Dismantle powers. 

4: In the space of reverberation

The sound persists. 

It leaves, only to return back at that moment.

It cuts itself into layers to be put together again.

We tend to suppress quiet voices in both the human and non-human worlds. To protect us from decay, we need to create utopias. Imagine, this space of reverberation allows sound to behave differently. Silent voices and sounds gain their space. They are heard. Their messages are not twisted. We understand them. We share an ecotone of a diverse ecosystem.

5: It seems that nothing remains the same 

But it does.

We move from one place to another, but we keep our habits, our rituals. We create our habitats, our specific conditions to be able to live and survive.

What about institutions? How do they behave? Adapt? Unlearn?

The Detroit Kunsthalle, in many respects, is a utopian institution: it is invisible; it does not interfere; it does not impose an agenda; it is honest in its exploitative tactics; it attempts genuine non-politically motivated self-reflection; it is not interested in cultural power; and it openly struggles with its flaws. It is an institution willing to sacrifice itself even if no one else is watching!

Can GAMPA, as a municipal kunsthalle, become a utopian institution? Hard to say. It can at least try to do so, and serve as an ecotone for speculation about its own institutional transformation. Becoming an ouroboros...

Anyway, let’s be honest with ourselves: utopia is one thing, illusion is another. Is it even possible to think about alternative systems in a building made of concrete and bricks? Whether it can be done, the future will say. Bricks are just bricks, but what matters are our minds and relationships beyond.

Kjetil Detroit Kristensen & Šárka Zahálková

The Detroit Kunsthalle feat. GAMPA

Dictionary:

ACAB – a street-smart acronym; it actually means All Cats Are Beautiful (but so are dogs and chinchillas). Green growth – another fancy word used when talking about change while sprinting away from the very idea of change… Freeports – where art involuntarily is sent to die. I want a dyke for president… – the opening sentence of ‘I want a president’ (1992) by Zoe Leonard. Please put it on your reading list. X’s – not your previously loved one(s), but almost kind of – since it used to mark the spot where you could find the treasure. Sympoietic – as Donna Haraway says in her book Staying with the Trouble (2016): “Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means ‘making-with’”. Ecotone – a sort of in-between space for creating unexpected futures, interweaving of entities and their thinking. Reverberation – when sounds hit a surface and bounce back – ack – ck…  Workshift – an element of the endless cycle of labour. It may not always make sense. But somehow we have to survive, right? Transformation – this area used to be a flour mill; galleries used to be places to display pictures and perhaps some marble stuff; in mathematics, a transformation is a function f, usually with some geometrical underpinning, that maps a set X to itself. Unlearn – to make an effort to forget a certain way of doing something to be able to find a new and sometimes better way of doing it – and, yes, Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America (it was “discovered” by Leif Eriksson and his Vikings). Utopian institutions – do you understand what the Detroit Kunsthalle is and what it does? If so, you understand utopian institutions. Ouroboros – some snakes have been known to consume themselves. Yes, they really do. If you see one, it’s an ouroboros, or Jörmungandr – otherwise a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal.

photo: Maxine Vajt, Marie Sieberová & Sayed Sattar Hassan

[sarka-160cm-me]

AIMLESS WALKS for BLOUDĚNÍM K SOBĚ [BY WANDERING TO YOURSELF], 2023, site specific installation for the collective exhibition

on display: Gočár Gallery [Automatic Mills], Pardubice, CZ, 29/9/2023–31/3/2024

The installation introduces Šárka Zahálková's long-term project Aimless Walks [Bezcílné procházky] through a rhizomatic map of places, times, and spaces, along with extracts from the aforementioned audio recordings of her Aimless Walks.

Wandering or rambling—these words capture the essence of the exhibition, which explores the intimate relationship between the artist and their immediate surroundings. It merges purposefully aimless wandering with the desire to push the boundaries of imagination and uncover new, even seemingly unremarkable, moments. This reflects a deep connection to familiar environments. During these seemingly aimless wanderings, intimate internal dialogues emerge, sparking new creative impulses and processes within the artists. They discover fresh stimuli in their surroundings, striving to make these once-familiar places feel unfamiliar once again.

This concept introduces new possibilities and contexts in Czech fine art. The exhibition aims to connect generations of designers and artists from the early 20th century to the present, with a particular focus on the contemporary Pardubice region. By anchoring the exhibition in this local context, the project seeks to elevate and make more visible the art that originates from our region.

Curated by: Eliška Burdová, Filip Jakš, Eliška Jedličková

Participating artists: Veronika Šrek Bromová (Střítež u Poličky), Zuzana Capoušková (Pardubice), Martin Dašek (Hájek u Potštejna), Bohuslav Dvořák (Kameničky), Ludmila Jandová (Osík u Litomyšle), Aleš Lamr (Potštejn), Milan Langer (okolí Ústí nad Orlicí), Johana Merta a Ondřej Merta (Skuteč), Otakar Nejedlý (Kameničky), Jindřich Prucha (Kameničky), Antonín Slavíček (Kameničky), Jan Steklík (Potštejn), Miloš Šejn (rybník Šantrůček u Herálce), Jiří Toman(Pardubice), Josef Váchal (cesta z Litomyšle do Vysokého Mýta), Šárka Zahálková (Pardubice)

photo: Michal Kudláček [Gočár Gallery]