How does ambivalence affect the perception of European and Soviet history when some erroneously homogenise everything European as white and Western, while others idealise Soviet socialism as non-Western and lacking colonialism, both approaches ignoring cultural, religious and ethnic diversity and internal discrimination or colonisation in the context of Eastern Europe and Central Asia?
The conversation focuses on critical reflections on colonialism and power from a non-Western perspective and highlights the fact that binary views of history prevent a full understanding of these complex relationships…
Łukasz Gorczyca is not only an art historian, curator and gallerist, but also an avid collector of Polish socialist postcards. Pavel Vančát discussed his view of “socmodern” architecture, leisure and tourism through the prism of postcards and the changes in socialist elan and ethos…
Fotofestiwal Lodz has already established a strong international presence. We recently interviewed Krzysztof Candrowicz, the co-founder and member of the festival’s event team, to shed light on its humble beginnings, original vision, and the remarkable transformations it has undergone over the past two decades…
The American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson is one of the pioneers of new media art. Her solo exhibition is a prologue to the 13th instalment of the Fotograf Festival named Hypertension23 and its eponymous group exhibition at the Trade Fair Palace of Prague’s National Gallery…
We will be talking about collecting from the perspective of a gallery owner and the perspective of an art photographer. I would also like to create a kind of a general overview for somebody who would like to gain more insight into the field…
Can less typical models of human thought processes help us understand artificial intelligence? Why is it important to have empathy for differences and new kinds of subjectivity? In what ways is reason understood from a human perspective limiting? How do humans and technology shape each other? Can thinking and feeling be separated? We talked with theorist Palo Fabuš about neurodiversity and artificial intelligence…
When I was approached for an interview with Pavel and Markéta about the founding of the magazine and its overall twenty years of its existence, I was somewhat surprised, but I took it as a challenge, as a natural feeling that is good to let out…
In mid-June 2022, I visited Photo Basel, a charming boutique fair dedicated to photography that takes place during the Art Basel week. It is a stop worth making as the fair’s approach is different in comparison to others…
Thanks to his photographs of Prague and the Czech Person (Český člověk) project, Jiří Poláček was among the most interesting artists of the 1970s and ‘80s. Following several years spent at the photo lab of the Czech News Agency (ČTK), he branched out as a freelance photographer…
What does it mean for images to be mobile? How does the photographic capturing of a radioactive trace help us come into contact with non-human temporality? And what do digital images have in common with Alice in Wonderland? We discussed the co-existence of incommensurable timescales and more-than-human agency in image production, as well as her recently published anthology Images on the Move, with media theorist Olga Moskatova, who recently visited Prague to deliver a talk at the Reconsidering Cameraless Photography conference at FAMU…
How to attune oneself to different genres of being human by pausing and listening instead of ‘giving a voice’? What does it mean to be a vulnerable body? Can an understanding of one’s own animality aid in recognizing the exploitation of non-human bodies in the capitalist economy? In this conversation, the duo Gustafsson & Haapoja introduce their monumental audiovisual work ‘Becoming’ presented at the eleventh edition of Fotograf Festival, and contextualizes their efforts in terms of rethinking categories of the human, the animal, and the modes of ‘making liveable’ and ‘making killable’ these categories enable…
This fragment of an interview between Anna Daučíková and students from the New Aesthetic Studio at the Photography Department of the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) intentionally foregoes a direct relationship to the artist’s work, focusing instead on grasping the conceptual and political foundations of her practice in direct relation to the themes of the edition of the Fotograf magazine you are now holding in your hands…
According to the United Nations, 2.2 billion people will die over the next three decades. Many of them have a digital presence today, resulting in vast collections of data. These include thousands of documents and photos, but also things like search history, or biometrical information…
I first met Karol in February 2020 when he was guiding a group of East European art historians through his brilliant exhibition at Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. That meeting became the cornerstone of the present interview, held in July via Skype, shortly after the Polish presidential election…
During the week between April 27 and May 4, 2020, Binna Choi and Lydia Matthews met on a Zoom platform in their living rooms in Amsterdam and Brooklyn…
The Prague-based INSTITUTE OF ANXIETY is dedicated to projects that transcend the imaginary category of what is
considered art. It works in a medium that wants to provide a voice to those who are otherwise not heard, whether people or animals…
In the West, the late 1980s and early 1990s also brought a wave of extraordinary interest in Czech and Slovak photography, which never returned. Let us try to find out what it meant. Were we ready for such an interest? Which activities do those who still remember the times recall most? What institutions could help in providing contacts and preparing exhibitions abroad?
At that time, most exhibitions in Western Europe or the USA were retrospectives…
Your works from the past 3 years often return to similar themes in different contexts. These themes include the use of information, civic activism, military conflicts, and public interest in the events in the Middle East…
Where are the roots of the project in which you make yourself
a corporation? I’ve read you were influenced by the Snowden
revelations in 2013, so you started a “protest project” as a part of
your MA studies…
Kurdistan exists – but not on internationally recognized maps. At the moment, the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq is one of the safest areas in the region. More than 2 million people – Arabs, Christians, and Yazidis – have fled Kurdistan, to escape the fearsome fighters of the Islamic State…
As an anthropologist and thinker you have often been quoted in texts dealing with exploitation by the Western world and its disastrous attitude and how it contrasts with the outlook of indigenous peoples across the world…
Pavel Smetana – From Canvas to Immersive Installation
Pavel, you gained a name as a painter but early on you wholly turned your attention to new media. Did the motivation stem from distrust in the powers of classical painting?
The cover of the present issue bears your autotype entitled Out of the City III / Z mesta von III (1970, autotype, paper, 700×500 mm, courtesy of the artist) taken one day after the eponymous action Out of the City, which took place in Zvolen, Slovakia, and its near vicinity…
