VIDEO PREMIERE SCHEDULED: TUESDAY, 16.6. at 19:00

As part of the Dancing Museums Prague International Workshop How Can We Embody the Artwork and the Art Space, and How Does It Change Our Perception? / How to be together when we can’t be together? 14. – 19. 6. 2020.

A doctor is a doctor, a teacher a teacher, a priest a priest… their roles are clear. What role does the artist have in society? How long will the phantasm of “social distance”; last behind the necessary veil of a state of emergency? We cannot move or avoid the issue of the virtual world and digital entertainment. The risk, however, is that this apparent vivacity under protection in the desert of reality causes fiction to mix with reality. We are all convinced and we are fighting the virus alone. But at the same time, we know that theatre is an assembly, an agora, a square, coexistence. The theatre of life is now also around the Virgin Mary axis, where a few individuals in the square seem to be dancing, but society is not flowing there yet. It is an acupuncture site for discursive democracy, i.e. a place for public debate, which seems all the more necessary when democracy itself is being undermined and we are losing fundamental freedom to an undisputed emergency. How long will we endure and when will we ceremoniously get rid of the veil of fear
and socio-political loyalty?

Tomáš Žižka focuses in his work at cooperation on contemporary independent and experimental projects by theatre makers, fine artists, dancers and multi-instrumentalists as well as other non-artistic professions. After graduating from SUPS in Bratislava, department of carving, and the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre in Prague (DAMU), he worked on various theatre projects (TUJU, Theatre fairs 1987 ’ 89, mamapapa projects) and as a teacher (assistant professor at KALD-DAMU 1990 – 2015 and a number of workshops). His career as a stage designer includes work for Laterna Magica, HA-Theatre Brno, Babkove Theatre Bratislava, Municipal Theatre of Kladno, Grand Theatre Groningen, Théâtre Les Montreurs d’images, Genève, Lofoten Centre – Stammsung Norway.
He is an initiator and organizer of a number of site-specific projects in untraditional spaces and situations (3WW3 wastewater treatment plant, Demolice-CKD Karlin, Kvas-Holesovicky brewery within International Festival 4+4 Days in Motion). Most of these project were organized as a collective work by the mamapapa organization.  Besides creating in non-traditional environments and situations, he focuses on film, documentary, audio-visual works and the creation and implementation of a number of museums and galleries. He implemented and provided expert consultation on the Museum Gate Open Society Fund projects, NZM multi-year experimental project Forest Stories of Trees and People, Recycles, gallery exhibition in the Drak Theatre as part of “Beuys was here”, which was devoted to the creative principles of German performer Joseph Beuys, the Nanopolis projects at the New Stage of the National Theatre, Republic Day and presentation of the Pardubice Region at EXPO 2016 in Milan, and many more.

Video & music: Dominik Žižka

The DANCING MUSEUMS Prague International Workshop is organised by Tanec Praha in collaboration with Prague City Gallery and Tereza Ondrová as part of TANEC PRAHA Festival.

Supported by: Creative Europe, City of Prague, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic

CONNECTIONS

Tanec Praha (CZ) // Tereza Ondrová (CZ) // Prague City Gallery (CZ) – Associate Partner //