Lecture series "Wednesdays at AVU" - summer semester 2013/2014

VVP AVU warmly invites you to the public lecture series
Wednesdays at AVU
         
The lecture series in the summer semester 2013/2014 focuses on architecture and its methods of presentation. The first two lectures will provide a critical perspective from two personalities – architect and architectural theorist Jan Tabor living in Vienna and architecture promoter Adam Gebrian – on innovative domestic and foreign architecture exhibitions of recent times. This will be followed by a May debate with curators who continuously (Petra Hlaváčková from the Brno collective 4AM, Michal Škoda from the Art House in České Budějovice, and Dan Merta from the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague) or occasionally (Vendula Hnídková, Rostislav Koryčánek) focus on exhibiting architecture in the Czech Republic. Philosopher Martin Škabraha's lecture will center on architecture as a political matter, where the interests of private ownership and the public interest intersect.

March 19, 2014, 18:00
JAN TABOR
HOW NOT TO EXHIBIT ARCHITECTURE
Eero Saarinen thinks: painting a picture is art, hanging it is architecture. Three antitheses: doing architecture is architecture, exhibiting it is art. Contemporary architects lack artistic ambitions and aesthetic abilities. (Contemporary) exhibitions (of contemporary) architecture are the art of dilettantes. Architect and theorist Jan Tabor, who lives in Vienna, will deliver his lecture from the center of the audience. Eating and drinking allowed!
 
April 9, 2014, 18:00
ADAM GEBRIAN
THERE ARE MANY POSSIBILITIES
Architect and architecture promoter Adam Gebrian will show various ways of presenting architecture in his lecture, using examples from recent years, whether they are permanent exhibitions or temporary displays, individual or group shows, in the Czech Republic or abroad. Among other things, he will speak about this year’s exhibition Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where seven world-renowned studios attempted to convey to the audience the impression from selected architectural spaces.

April 23, 2014, 18:00
MARTIN ŠKABRAHA
“THIS IS NOT THE DEVELOPER'S!”
ARCHITECTURAL (ANTI)COMMUNISM?
Philosopher Martin Škabraha will focus on some contemporary efforts to defend architectural heritage from the dictates of the commercial value of land. The investor of the building presents himself with the ethos of deregulation, privatization, and globalism, while activists demand height regulation, emphasize the uniqueness of the place, and oppose “the privatization of the panorama”; sometimes they also defend “socialist” buildings from demolition. For this reason, activists are sometimes labeled as communists. Is there a hidden architectural anti-communism in the pressure from investors and developers? If so, what is the ethos of its opponents?
 
May 14, 2014, 18:00
DOCUMENTATION VERSUS STAGING
PETRA HLAVÁČKOVÁ / VENDULA HNÍDKOVÁ /
ROSTISLAV KORYČÁNEK / DAN MERTA / MICHAL ŠKODA
moderated by Karolina Jirkalová and Terezie Nekvindová
How to exhibit architecture differently than through portfolios? How to convey its main ideas within a gallery? Are (re)staged environments, the effort to experience with all senses, or direct citations or reconstructions a new path? Why and if at all should we attempt other forms? Curators who deal with methods of presenting architecture will discuss.
 
The lectures take place at 18:00 in the auditorium of AVU, U Akademie 4, Prague 7.
Lectures can be viewed online at ČT24 Portal and on Czech Television’s iVysílání.
Technical support DigiLab AVU.