Residency no. 3 – January – June 2020 NOMADIC WORKSHOP – across all six venues of Prague City Gallery 

‘Nomadic structured workshop’  means that participants travel through all venues of Prague City Gallery, at a frequency of 1 per month, for 60 minutes, and is intended for all employees of Prague City Gallery and TANEC PRAHA.
The theme is How to watch, using the whole body – How to be inspired by the eyes of another; How to look at how the other watches; How to focus on detail or how to look differently; How to discover the technique of watching; How to watch together; How to watch while being observed.

Create a space in which there is time for observation and relate this observation to personal experience. Observation time where there is no time limit. This work is nothing more than respectfully observing people in their simplicity and complexity. Offer zooming (focusing on detail) where there is no need to judge, but to ask yourself what this offer evokes in us and why. It is an offer of silence and reflection in the daily turmoil.
Body speaking, body looking …
It is work where one realises that the body is both something ordinary and something mysterious. The body never goes out of fashion – a body that can transform but not change.
I write the text as an advertisement for the employees of both organisations so that they understand and come. It doesn’t work. I have to rewrite it twice so that I can approach these people and make an offer of something that can entertain, enrich them…. It’s hard, I’m mainly thinking about how to write simply and clearly.
A somewhat different guide to Prague City Gallery.
Every month a different space and a different tour.
But it’s all about the way you look at it:
How to look at things differently or how to look at how the other is behaving; from another point of view, focused on the detail or, conversely, on the whole.
A space in which there is not only an object as an artefact but also me and other people, visitors or employees, floor, ceiling, wall, drawer, hidden space, cobweb, ray of light, dust…
The tour is without explanation, where the role of the guide is such that it will only create a design, and rules that will allow you to have a different experience from the exhibition itself and the space.
When and where: every month in the venues of the Prague City Gallery from 10:00 – 11:00am
We look forward to seeing you!

1st meeting in – Library of the Prague City Gallery – 12 January 2020
I went to the starting point of the whole project and to its name – Dancing Museums.
I realised that I didn’t want it to be mainly about me, but I would like to be the trigger for something that will take place in the future without my presence.
The project includes two organisations – dance and a gallery, and that is why I would like to start a workshop with all the people who are part of these two organisations. So that it is not just about us who are in that close circle, but about all of us who participate in the project either more actively or passively. I would like to involve and include all employees – from the office to all positions in the gallery itself – attendant, ticket seller, security… and the same in the other organisation – dance – people in the office, but also people from the theatre – technicians, presenters , bartenders, producers, etc.
And what I would like to do in the workshop in the gallery is based on a simple event – theme – watching – how to watch, how to look at someone watching, watching and being observed….
I tried to adapt the structure of the workshop, which was created in collaboration with Quim in Bassan, and transferred it to the library space, i.e. to another context and among other people.
It worked well. Although we were only women, the number of members of Tanec Praha significantly exceeded the number of members of the Prague City Gallery, which seems understandable to me at the beginning, but I take it as a challenge to gradually change this and try to involve more people from the Prague City Gallery in these activities in various ways.

2nd meeting in the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace – 14 February 2020
I emerged from the experience of the last workshop, but also from František Novotný’s quote – “new things are not invented, but found” – and so I always went the way of visual impulses, i.e. through the visual perception of the figure, which is based on this visual search for impulse.
Visual perception is as important as bodily perception.
Knowledge comes through a person’s relationship to the world around them.
The eye responds to the flow of information and inspiration.
The body processes these perceptions.
An interesting fact seems to me to be a question of attention, how to give something so much attention that it interests me, persevere with it for a long time, etc.
We are more used to thoughts running away.
The keywords for further research remain:
Body – expression – picture – architecture – space
The presence of the body in gesture, corporality in the context of fine arts and contemporary perception of the body.
Visual perception…
Feedback from the workshop participants; I asked for three words that somehow reflect what we did together in the space of the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace.

BREATH, RUN, EXHALE
WINTER, BACK, JOKE
GLUTTON, SLIDE, CHANDELIER
GAME, LAUGHTER, CHANGE

3rd meeting in the House at the Stone Bell – 12 March 2020 cancelled
On this day, a state of emergency was declared in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. We therefore postponed the program of regular workshops in galleries to the autumn of 2020.
Together as a team we are moving to the online space and focusing more on planning the June workshop in Prague and creating a program for our partners. We finally have time for ourselves and we meet regularly. Paradoxically, it has united us more as a team.
Here, for now, we end….

 

CONNECTIONS

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