Sat 17/1 15:00
Art’s Birthday 2026

Celebrate the 1,000,063rd birthday of art with us! Art’s Birthday is a holiday whose idea was born in 1963, when French action poet Robert Filliou declared 17 January the day art was born a million years earlier. According to him, it happened the moment someone dropped a dry sponge into a vessel of water. The sponge soaked it up and became a rock painting from Ubirr, a Persian carpet with birds, Hildegard of Bingen’s chant floating down a cloister corridor, Duchamp’s Fountain, Cunningham’s dance under cold light, and Brno’s television productions. And of course also hand-strung beaded earrings, homemade tie-dyed pyjamas, or demo tapes recorded on a dusty cassette deck. Voilà! 

Art’s Birthday is celebrated all over the world, and this year GAMPA and Divadlo 29 are once again joining the festivities. One of art’s many tasks is to search for new, unbeaten paths — and now you have the chance to be right there when something new comes into being. The evening will offer exclusive live encounters created only for this day. This year’s edition will revolve above all around less traditional and entirely unique musical instruments. But you can also look forward to an interactive puppet visual novel, a spatial audio installation, and a prophecy hidden inside a fortune cookie. And of course, there will be birthday surprises!

15:00–17:00  Creative Workshop & Presentation of the Video Game Trinkets / GAMPA
Presentation of the artist-made video game and shared gameplay as part of the birthday workshop. Trinkets is an interactive puppet visual novel by Jacqueline Koch, exploring the renewal of a friendship within a group of friends. Players are invited to collect and discover words with the help of a small robot, learning how to overcome topics that can be difficult or uncomfortable for us. We are able to present Trinkets in GAMPA thanks to a collaboration with the festival of independent game and playful art Final_final.

17:00  Presentation of the Audio Installation Dialogues on Skin by Lukáš Hofmann / GAMPA
As you move freely through Lukáš Hofmann’s spatial audio installation, you overhear conversations between people reflecting on care, modification, stigmatization, and commodification of skin. The installation reveals skin as a medium that both connects and separates us — a boundary of touch, memory, and identity.

17:30  Launch of Krunýř Magazine / GAMPA
We invite adults, children, and their friends to the launch of the 6th issue of the workbook Krunýř, subtitled Těloles. The workbook is the result of collective work, meetings, and art workshops in the Kafkárna (UMPRUM Centre for Art and Ecology) and GAMPA, during which children and adults explored their immediate surroundings, practiced attentiveness and empathy, created stories, and discovered parallels between bodies and forests.

18:30  Performance by the Collective Těleso zázraků / GAMPA & Klub 29
Těleso zázraků is an authorial performance collective from Ostrava formed by Martin Pavlík, Tomáš Teper, and Hynek Chmelař. The group came together in 2022 from motives that remain somewhat unclear, and since then has been performing regularly on all occasions suitable and unsuitable alike. Their work draws on the aesthetics of the Ostrava performance school — which they either ignore or, on the contrary, exploit. For every action they devise new site-specific situations that are always slightly different yet reliably awkward.

Těleso zázraků will celebrate Art’s Birthday in Pardubice with an event poised between performance and happening. During a highly visual, symbol-laden performance, an action-based birth will unfold. The performance will begin in GAMPA, after which participants will be invited to join an allegorical procession to Klub 29, where the entire happening will conclude.

19:00  A Toast to Dear Art! (special birthday toast) / Klub 29
It’s said that luck waits in unexpected places. Maybe it’s true, maybe not — but one thing is certain: this year’s birthday toast comes in the form of a sweet little cake with a hint of prophecy. Every guest will have a chance to test their luck and discover a fortune hidden inside a cookie.

20:00  Amelie Siba & Mariana Jouzová / Divadlo 29
Amelie Siba is one of the outstanding talents of the independent scene. Within only a few years, she has moved from bedroom introversion to a raw electronic & metal sound and projects shaped by post-club aesthetics. She sings openly about her mental health and the work it takes to protect it. And increasingly often she leaves the safe harbour of songwriting for adventurous journeys into improvisation and sound collage. That will also be the case at D29. Harpist Mariana Jouzová collaborates with many leading Czech symphony orchestras (Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Philharmonia, Film Philharmonic). She is also active in contemporary and improvisational music. She has performed with experimental musicians Omar El-Sadek (QOW) and Ester Grohová, and is a member of the duo Mari & Anna, which sounds like “a deconstruction of shame brewed from a dandelion potion”.
www.instagram.com/ma.ri.jou
www.instagram.com/amm.sib



Veronika Svobodová & Manka Lustigová / Divadlo 29
Veronika Svobodová shapes her delicate, fluid acoustic landscapes using unique kinetic objects, noise-making devices, sand, stones, and field recordings. Her approach to sound unmistakably reveals her ties to theatre scenography, installation art, and performance. In her work she connects considerations of space, time, and situation. What matters is not only the sound itself, but also the way it comes into being. Visual artist and designer Manka Lustigová also works with non-traditional materials. In her artistic practice she explores the acoustics of ceramic material and spatial installations. In her project Rrhizzzomess, she uses a sound system built from sixteen porcelain plates of various shapes and sizes. Her performances move between soothing ambient drones, shimmering bell-like percussion, and high-frequency tones that test the limits of resonance.
www.mankalustigova.cz
www.instagram.com/veronikka_svobodova

Federsel & Arash Ghasemi (IRN) / Divadlo 29
Federsel is a musician, sound designer, performer, and theatre pedagogue. He is the frontman of the band B4, co-founder of the research-oriented theatre group Handa Gote, and performs with projects such as Gurun Gurun, Wabi Experience, and Krekso. On his blog Endemit Archives he maps home recording and outsider music, and he runs the experimental label Meteorismo. If all goes well, Federsel will appear at D29 with a special guitar setup. Tehran-born musician Arash Ghasemi is best known as a member of the duo Gnäw, which blends electronics with traditional Finnish and Persian string instruments and psychedelic rock into a hypnotic whole inspired by film noir. Arash plays setar, santoor, harmonium, kantele — as well as electric guitar and bass. His solo debut Ahvaz was released in December on the labels Řehole and XION.
www.federsel.blogspot.com
www.instagram.com/__arash.ghasemi___



The birthday visual was once again created with the help of Petr Válek. The hall at Divadlo 29 will feature a special stage design. Happy Art’s Birthday!

Art’s Birthday 2026 is organised by the Centre for Open Culture as part of the project Electroconnexion 2026 and GAMPA’s year-round exhibition programme. The event takes place with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Pardubice, and the Pardubice Region. Our thanks go to the independent game and playful art festival Final_final for their collaboration.

 

By donating a voluntary entrance fee, you will support the 2026 programmes of Divadlo 29 and GAMPA. Thank you!