Guest Lectures 4

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor:

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Name of lecturer(s):

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

Introduction to topics not part of usual study plans and the perspectives of important figures in the field.

Mode of study:

Lecture and discussion.

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

None

Course contents:

OpenEye 2016 english

LS

17. 2. 19:00

Jan Zálešák ? Before the Apocalypse

The lecture presents an exhibition project in the process of its emergence ? namely the exhibition Apocalypse Me that will open on the 2nd of March, 2016 in the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. The lecture will reflect on the process of curatorial work, on the ever-present tension between the exhibition theme (curator?s intent) and works of art (artist?s intent). The topical structuring of the exhibition will be presented as a process which is not fully completed even 14 days before the opening. Several themes included in the curator concept will be presented, i.e. the ?ontological turn? in anthropology and philosophy or the current discussion on the Anthropocene. Emphasis will be placed on examples of current art practice which resonate with this topic.

Jan Zálešák (born 1979) is a university lecturer, curator and occasional critic. He has published the books The Art of Collaboration (2011) and The Former Future (2013), in collaboration with Jan Brož the book extension of the eponymous exhibit SSSSSS (2014). He is the author of thematic exhibitions Memories of the Future II (The Art House Brno, 2013), Moving Image (Futura, 2010) and Horká linka (Václav Špála Gallery, 2010).

2. 3. 19:00

Tomáš Dvořák ? Personification as a Form of Life

If we lift a rock from the earth, we find beneath it a strange form of life: a heterogeneous system made by a mix of mineral and organic elements from bacteria and mold to worms. If we lift contemporary critiques of anthropocentrism (approaches such as post-humanism, trans-humanism, new materialism or object-oriented ontology), we find beneath them strange forms of personification: inanimate and non-human entities become kinds of ?persons? endowed with rights, claims, intentions or wills. The most frequent form of this new form of personification is the attempt to ?give things a voice?. Inanimate objects, organisms of various domains, smart technologies or socio-technical organizations such as institutions and corporations and their infrastructures such as the market, public opinion or global warming do not speak for themselves but rather are represented and interpreted by particular groups of actors, who speak in their names and thus bring them to life. The lecture will present the historical development of cultural techniques of personification, its importance for our understanding of the differences between the animate and inanimate, human and non-human and the consequences of these demarcations for our contemporary forms of art, knowledge and politics.

Tomáš Dvořák, Ph.D. is a researcher and instructor in history and theory of photography, media and visual culture theory at the Department of Photography, FAMU and an associate researcher in philosophy and history of science at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

16. 3. 19:00

Pedro Maia ? Lecture and Q&As

FAMU, Smetanovo náb. 2, 1. patro, U1

17. 3. 20:00

Pedro Maia ? Films

Ponrepo Cinema

Portuguese filmmaker working mostly around the concept of Analogue Cinema, exploring the medium potentiality, and expanding the aesthetic and technological ?heritage? of the classic films procedures of working with 16mm and 8mm material. Collaborates with numerous musicians across the rock and electronic scenes and his works has been presented in numerous film festivals and galleries. Since 2004 has been developing live cinema concept, manipulating images in real time and interacting with sound, which collaborated with several musicians such as Panda Bear, Lee Ranaldo, Fennesz, Vessel, Craig Leon, Demdike Stare, Sandro Perri, Shackleton, Jacaszek, Tropic of Cancer, and others.

4. 4. 19:00

Geoffrey Batchen ? In Absentia: The Politics of Cameraless Photography

How can a photograph of nothing ? of nothing discernable or apparently significant ? be said to offer some useful political purchase on the world it inhabits? How can a photograph that represents, but does not depict, a given situation be freighted with historical knowledge and import? Confining itself to examples of cameraless photography, from the 1830s to now, this paper will ask these questions with a view to determining a politics for such photographs in the present. In fact, given our contemporary context, cameraless photographs assume that photography is always already a politics; to engage the visual and chemical grammar of the photograph is to dispute and challenge that fixity of that politics. To make such photographs returns photography to a unique, hand-made craft and away from global capitalism and its vast economies of mass exploitation. Not that these photographs are innocent; on the contrary they are often generated by actions that are toxic, radioactive, enigmatic, violent, dangerous. Nor are they ?abstract.? Instead, I will argue, they redefine the nature of photography?s realism as well as its potential as a political agent.

Professor Geoffrey Batchen teaches art history at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, specializing in the history of photography. His books include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997), Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001), Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004), William Henry Fox Talbot (2008), What of Shoes? Van Gogh and Art History (2009), Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010) and More Wild Ideas (forthcoming in Chinese, 2015). He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012). In April 2016, his exhibition, Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph, will open at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. A book with the same title will be published by Prestel.

13. 4. 19:00

Michal Rataj ? Painting with Sound

Sound as a medium producing spatial images ? this is the main guideline of Michal Rataj?s recent work. It appears in his work for radio, acousmatic music and live sound concerts. He will presents a selection of works from the last few years and demonstrate a graphic tablet as an interactive musical instrument as he uses it in the field between human hand gestures and real-time sound production. Michal Rataj will also present current artistic research at the Department of Composition in which students of both music and film faculties have taken part.

Michal Rataj (born, 1975) is a composer, producer and university instructor. He studied musicology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University and composition at HAMU. As a composer he is dedicated to electro-acoustic and instrumental music, he is the author of some 20 film scores and 100 sound scores for radio plays. He has worked as a music director and producer at Czech Radio, since 2003 as the producer for the Radioateliér program focused on progressive forms of contemporary acoustic arts. He is an associate professor at the Department of Composition at HAMU and a lecturer at the New York University in Prague.

20. 4. 19:00

Piotr Tkacz ? Architectural scores

FAMU, Smetanovo náb. 2, 1. patro, U1

21. 4. 19:30

Piotr Tkacz ? Live concert

Galerie AMU, Malostranské náměstí 12

The standard musical notation for many years doesn't suffice to express all the ideas that composers have. Because of that various forms of scores (using graphic means, text or combining both) have been developed. In my lecture I'll talk about works of Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Roman Haubtenstock-Ramati, R. Murray Schafer, Iannis Xenakis, Manfred Werder among others. I'll also draw upon my own practice of using architectural plans as starting points for realization of music compositions.

Improvizátor Piotr Tkacz se podílí na řadě hudebních projektů a kolaborací (spolupracoval např. se Seijim Morimotem nebo Alicí Hui-Sheng Chang). Českému publiku se představil v rámci Ostravských dnů nové hudby. Sólově vystupuje mj. jako DJ 2 Lewe Ręce. Jeho idiosynkratické sety, pojaté podobně ironicky jako jeho pseudonym, jsou multižánrovými kolážemi spojujícími zdánlivě neslučitelné. Spolu se svým bratrem Mikołajem Tkaczem je členem dua Radioda. Pod touto hlavičkou se poslední tři roky věnují živé hře na radiové přijímače a vydali album Rondo (2013). His articles were published in HIS Voice, Czas kultury, Glissando, 2+3D, Dwutygodnik/Biweekly, Fragile. Tkacz was invited to festivals as Ostrava New Music Days, Animator, Musica Electronica Nova and gave lectures in National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw and Kulturhauz in Toruń.

4. 5. 19:00

Filip Suchomel ? Photography in the Far East at Point Zero: Beginnings of New Media in China and Japan in the middle of the 19th Century

The lecture will present the beginnings of photography in the Far East and its gradual establishment as an important instrument of knowledge about Far East societies. It will focus not only on photography intended for foreign subscribers, who were primarily Europeans and Americans coming to the Far East for business, entertainment and as travellers, but also on the first pieces of domestic artists who in their work linked local traditions of contemplation with principles imported from the West.

PhDr. Filip Suchomel, Ph.D. is an art historian and Japanologist. His professional practice has been long devoted to a study of the Japanese and Chinese use of art, graphics, photography and the influence of Far Eastern art on European culture from the 16th century to the present.

Recommended or required reading:

by the invited guest.

Assessment methods and criteria:

To complete the course, you must choose one lecture from the series and write a critical interpretation of it: you may criticise, further develop or supplement the topic of the lecture (do not simply sum it up or provide biographies of the lecturers). the texts must be at least 2 pages (3600 characters) long and sent as an attachment (doc, odt, pdf) to tomdvorak@famu.cz by 19th june 2016. unless you receive a confirmation by email, consider your texts undelivered. texts received after the given date will not be considered.

The following aspects will have an impact on the grade according to specified proportions:

Final essay: 40%

Joint discussion above essays: 50%

Participation: 10%.

Course web page:

Note:

none

Further information:

This course is an elective for all AMU students

Schedule for winter semester 2015/2016:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2015/2016:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
Tue
Wed	místnost 107 Učebna 1 (Lažanský palác) DVOŘÁK T. 19:00–20:30 (paralelka 1)
Thu
Fri

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
	Wed	19:00–20:30	Tomáš DVOŘÁK	Učebna 1 Lažanský palác		paralelka 1

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Photography CZ - Bachelor (qualification subject)