Guest Lectures 3

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor:

Tomáš DVOŘÁK, Štěpánka ŠIMLOVÁ

Name of lecturer(s):

Tomáš DVOŘÁK, Štěpánka ŠIMLOVÁ

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

A series of lectures will be given by interesting personalities in the field of photography and the theory of photography. It is aimed at broadening students´ horizons and taking a critical approach to contemporary artists and theorists.

Mode of study:

DeOpenEye 2015

A series of lectures by guest theoreticians, artists and instructors on topics in contemporary arts and new technology.

FAMU, Smetanovo Náb. 2, 1st floor, Room U1.

Lectures are intended for FAMU students, other schools and the public. They take place once everz 14 days, in Englsih, or are interpreted into English.

The series is a part of the Audio-visual Course (CAS) and Guest Lectures (Dept. of Photography).

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

Assignment:

Each student will choose ONE lecture PER SEMESTER and will write essays on IT. These essays should further elaborate on the topic. It should be a critical and analytical study not just reproduction of what was said by the guest or his or her biography.

These essays are to be written, amounting to at least two pages of text each (3600 signs).

Deadline: always before the end of the semester.

Course contents:

Wed. 21.10.19:00

Václav Janoščík - Return to the objective and restless things (in contemporary art)

Perhaps earlier than we were aware of it, our world is a world of objects. Now in the era of global warming, artificial intelligence, mass production and continuously innovated and individualized products we are confronted with that, that people do not merely exist, they have behaviour and rights. Those objects, our planet, animal species, computer applications and other immediate objects make themselves known. The book with the title „Object“ attempts, from the perspective of philosophy and media, to summarize various views on this explosion of objects. It attempts to give the objects a voice. The book presents the first collection of writings from speculative realism trend, object oriented ontology, accellerationism and new materialsim available in the Czech language. Lecture will be in English.

Václav Janoščík is an art theoretician, curator and instructor among other activities at the Academy of Fine Arts, Industrial Arts College and the Philosophy Faculty at Charles University. Inter-disciplinary areas including arts dialogue and philosophy are the constant aims of his activities. Currently he is concerned with the connections between criticism theory and speculative realism.

Wed. 4.11.19:00

Matěj Smetana - Stylization, symbol, movable drawing

The lecture will cover the potential of the moving image in visual arts. This will include, along with others, stylization, working with symbols, particulars of using movable drawings. We will inquire about the manner in which the computer „understands“ drawing and computer generated graphics. Also mentioned will be the concept f „uncanny valley“. Finally, we will cover the relationship between the moving image and static image.

Matěj Smetana (b. 1980) came into the audience and theoretician's awareness as a creator of conceptually tuned objects and computer animation in which both media create a complementary balance of his work. His subjects come from a wide variety of areas - transforming symbols of national identity, working with real and fictional emblems, inspiration of sci-fi literature and film. With accompanying wonder and a dash of irony he links these and, in his own manner, conjectures an unexpected result of an artistic effort at the utopian avant garde and artists of American minimalism. He rejects the perception of his work as political content and resorts intentionally established ignorance considering the amount of previously proclaimed significance of his pieces. In this approach Matěj Smetana places emphasis on absolute playfulness on one side and questions of fundamental considerations of reality on the other distinguishing himself from many other artists of his generation.

Wed. 18.11. 19:00

Ondřej Buddeus - Work, Network, Field, Composition, Intermedia, etc.

Expanded literature? Literary multimedia? Why? Why not? Ondřej Buddeus in this artist's lecture presents his current projects on the edges of literature and other arts (music, theatre, new media) with an emphasis on multiple collaboration strategies.

Ondřej Buddeus - is a Czech artist, translator, poet, artist, editor and essayist. He works at Alfred ve Dvoře theatre. He is an editor of the contemporary poetry review Psi vino. Although the aim of his work is contemporary literature, he works, also, in galleries, collaborates with a number of artists, musicians, designers and composers. His writings have been translated into German, Polish, English, Lithuainian, Welsh, Romanian, Hungarian and Italian. He lives in Prague.

Wed. 2.12. 19:00

Karel Císař - Signatures of all things: Index, mimicry and likeness in contemporary photography theory

In the era when the ability of photography to depict reality is strongly doubted, the intepretation of photography as a type of tangible imprint of things may seem obsolete. If we compare, of course, the context in which the thesis of American art historian Rosalind Krass published in the magazine „October“ at the turn of the 1970s, we see that at the same time Didi Huberman's study of the Shroud of Turin, Caillois essay on mimicy and Nadar's own biography came out at the same time. Only in this context does Krauss's interpretation seem current, because in does not merely uncover the past but also the future of photography as a media.

Karel Císař is an arts theoretician. He studied Philosophy at Charles University and at the University of Geneva. He is a study assistant for Arts Aesthetics and Theory at the Industrial Arts College in Prague and a research assistant at the Philosophy Institute a the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic. He deals with theories of modern and contemporary arts and histories of photography. He has published, among others, Věci, o kterých s nikým nemluvím (2010), Stav věcí (2012) a Abeceda věcí. Poznámky k modernímu a současnému umění (2014). As a curator he prepared the exhibitions „Vzpomínky na budoucnost“ (Galerie Václava Špály, 2009) a „Obrazy a předobrazy“ (Galerie hlavního města Prahy, 2013).

Recommended or required reading:

Depends on the personalities invited.

Assessment methods and criteria:

To get credits for the course, you need to send a 2-page essay (minimum of 3.600 characters) by 10th January 2016 to tomdvorak@famu.cz (as an attachment in doc, odt or pdf format). If you do not receive a confirmation of submission by email, consider your text not submitted. Texts received after the given date will not be taken into consideration. If your text fails to meet given criteria, you will have the option of rewriting. Required format is a critical reflection of one of the guest lectures from winter semester 2015. Do not include biographical information about guests or plain abstracts of their talks. Instead, focus on the topic of the lecture of your choice or one of its partial problems and elaborate, comment on it or confront and compare it with different approaches.

Course web page:

Note:

None

Schedule for winter semester 2015/2016:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2015/2016:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Photography EN - Bachelor (qualification subject)