After eleven years at Příhrádek, GAMPA is now saying goodbye to its exhibition haven near the Pardubice Castle. From this September on, please look for us in the area of the reconstructed Automatic Mills in the neighbourhood of the Gočár Gallery, as well as the two new institutions – Automatic Mills Foundation and Sféra.
Aware of this change, we stepped out of our Gallery with the Intermezzo project last year, and together with collaborating artists, curators and all of you, organised pilgrimages, explored the surrounding living and non-living environments and focused on caring for the community and the relationships around us. We were looking for the limits of what a contemporary art gallery can be for its city.
For us, saying goodbye is not filled with sentiment but joy. We recall some of the projects that were created during the year with Intermezzo, but we also host previously unseen audio-visual experiments.
We look forward to seeing all familiar and unfamiliar faces. Goodbye and Příhrádek and see you on the Mill Island during the grand opening in September 29–October 1, 2023.
Wednesday 12th April
10:00–12:00 Family Wednesday: Move › workshop
An open workshop for children and their parents or grandparents. A space where we meet, have fun and learn.
Entrance Fee: 50 CZK / parent + child, each additional child 25 CZK
Contact: Nikola Březinová, brezinova@gmpardubice.cz, +420 608 209 897
18:00 Velká pardubická – the most demanding horse race in Europe (suffering and great business) › discussion
The relationship between humans and horses will be presented in several contributions and a subsequent non-confrontational discussion. Although horses are not part of everyday life for most of us, this highly hierarchical relationship has shaped human history. On the basis of historical insight, we will connect to the present and unveil some of the hidden economic aspects of Velká pardubická, and reflect on the issue of horse racing in general. Subsequently, we will be transferred to a utopian future, in which we will discuss ways that could help us fix the relationship between humans and horses so that it is based on mutual empathic cooperation without exploitation. The discussion is one of the outputs of Denisa Langrová's project (The Research and Life of Interspecies Utopias).
The evening will be hosted by Tereza Špinková, an art theorist, publicist and Ph.D. student at the Department of Environmental Studies at the Masaryk University in Brno (CZ), where she deals with the relationship between human and non-human beings in the context of contemporary art.
Guests: Barbora Hunčovská, Lenka Rážová, Vojtěch Ondráček
Thursday 13th April
15:00–18:00 Hana Kokšalová: Pardubice tarot › card-making workshop to predict the city’s future
Past, present, future. What do those words mean? What is hidden in the stars? What is hidden in the streets? An afternoon of playful magic and future thinking for anyone aged 10+.
What awaits us is a walk through Pardubice, during which we will try to look for typical signs of the past and future in our surroundings. We will record these signs with the cameras in our mobile phones. We will then create collages from these photos in the Gallery. From these collages, we will make a few pieces of tarot cards, to which we will assign our own meaning.
The workshop will be led by Hana Kokšalová, who prepared within her Future Studio a series of workshops for GAMPA last October which are based on the principles of documentary theatre.
Friday 14th April
10:00–12:00 Senior Friday: We say goodbye to Příhrádek › workshop
A workshop for creative grandmothers and grandfathers. Our motto is: age is just a number.
Entrance Fee: 50 CZK / person, reservation required
Contact: Nikola Březinová, brezinova@gmpardubice.cz, +420 608 209 897
16:00–17:00 Hana Kokšalová: Collective Divination of the Pardubice Future › performance
Not sure of what the future of Pardubice holds for us? What key moments, places, symbols, situations, phenomena, actors have the greatest weight at a given moment? Ask the cards! A joint tarot reading will give us space for a debate over the local future. The cards have been produced during workshops in collaboration with the people involved.
The tarot reading is accompanied by Hana Kokšalová, one of the participating artists in the program entitled Can we help you?
17:00 Martin Zet: What Time Does the Sun Set? › performance
A year-long project (Places where a person has violated the earth's surface in order to use what they find) will be concluded with the event of What time does the sun set? by Martin Zet. During this project, Martin Zet moved around Pardubice, exploring the essence of the suburban landscape and specific places, the shape of which has been significantly influenced by human activity over time. From the collected materials, the artist gradually created installations and objects in the Gallery, the form of which continuously changed due to the influence of other interventions including also those of visitors.
Zet's final event consists of the act of returning the works to their original environment, and will symbolically close the entire process of mapping the cultural landscape and the use of its resources by people. Moving the objects together and throwing them into the Elbe will not only be an opportunity to share a particular experience, but will also represent an imaginary transfer of what one has appropriated to the river.
19:00 Tim Shaw & Dirty Electronics: Transmission Lines › audio performance
A new performance-installation for spark-gap transmission and electromagnetic spectrum.
Spark gaps made from everyday objects used as conducting electrodes. Scrap metal, tin cans, chairs, barrels, cooking utensils, a bicycle wheel are hung and agitated by performative action and motor mechanisms to create intense electrical sparks and raw sound. Whilst radio waves omitted from the high voltage constructions are picked-up by DIY coils, sound-circuits and portable radios. Sequences of charged Xenon camera flashes, Franklin bells, Jacobs Ladders and electromagnetic pumps are folded into the environment. A wayfaring journey through the danger zone of high voltage light and sound.
Dirty Electronics & Tim Shaw’s Transmission Lines was developed during a recent residency in an old timber yard in Yamaguchi, Japan.
20:00 něco něco & Ima Teva › concert › Divadlo 29
Saturday 15th April
14:00–19:00 Principles of Cooperation › afternoon discussion of what Intermezzo has given to us and much more
With the Intermezzo project, we have stepped out of our Gallery, and together with collaborating artists, curators and all of you, have organised pilgrimages, explored the surrounding living and non-living environments and focused on caring for the community and the relationships around us. Within the individual parts of the project entitled Can we help you?, By the way, and Amalgating layers, we have explored the limits of what a contemporary art gallery can be for its city. During the afternoon, together with the participants of the art projects and the audience, we will try to summarize and reflect on what is behind us, whether there is value hidden in the events that have taken place, and what is it. We will also unveil the mystery of our future in the area of Automatic Mills.
20:00 LyrArkestra+ › audio-visual performance
The experimental collective entitled LyrArkestra+ relies in their work on Lyra 8, the extraordinary synthesizer, which in this case serves the new concept of interpretation of graphic scores by primarily Czech and Slovak authors. These are not only sonically shifted with the help of modern electronic instruments, but their artistic level is also organically involved, which is updated with new and old media. Works that are often decades old come to life in a new form, adapted for a contemporary audience. After the initial phase of its operation, when it interpreted the works of Milan Adamčiak, LyrArkestra+ chose to interpret the graphic score of the essential draftsman Jan Steklík (1938–2017).
Sunday 16th April
15:00–17:00 Creative Sunday: At the end! › workshop
A weekend workshop (not only) for children, but also for their parents and other adults who are not afraid to explore the varieties and possibilities of contemporary art and themselves.
Unless otherwise stated, admission is voluntary.
We thank the statutory city of Pardubice and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic for the financial support of GAMPA activities and the Intermezzo project.
