Česká centra, Czech Centres

Anna Hulačová at Frieze London

For Frieze Art Fair in London, Prague-based Hunt Kastner Gallery present a new project by Anna Hulačová, which reflects a continuation of her interest in social hierarchies and how these affect interaction and communication between people.

Little Crusader @ BFI London Film Festival 2017

In southern Italy, a knight searches for his son who has joined the Children’s Crusade in this unusual, visually evocative take on the Middle Ages.

Martin Fahrner at Family Tales of War

How can literature reconcile the personal with the national, even international, experience? As authors around Europe increasingly write about history through a familial lens, Dulce Maria Cardoso of Portugal, Martin Fahrner of the Czech Republic, Polish-Ukrainian author Zanna Sloniowska, and Péter Gárdos of Hungary discuss how they use family stories to tell wider stories of war and its impact across Europe.

Robert Balzar Trio: One Day

Following in the footsteps of great Czech bassists such as Miroslav Vitous and George Mraz, bandleader, innovative composer and bassist Robert Balzar demonstrates fine bass technique along with focused and strong support by pianist Jiri Levicek and drummer Kamil Slezak in their new project One Day. Originally recorded for Czech Television as a live concert in a forest, the project features trio’s own compositions and adapted jazz standards.

The Macula: Hidden Towers

Inspired by the writing of William Gibson, ‘the father of cyberpunk’, whose dystopian novels of the 1980s and 1990s (including Neuromancer and All Tomorrow’s Parties) now seem like documents that have both predicted and informed our present day, Czech studio The Macula presents an audiovisual journey through cyberspace. An ominous drone grows as the viewer is sent on a twisting, turning 360° trip through kaleidoscopic virtual space, where just as patterns seem to become identifiable, they shift and warp once more: clouds of particles give way to infinitely complex geometrics, mysterious mechanisms and star-filled spaces.

Radek Brousil: Red Naomi

Taking its title from Red Naomi, one of the most popular roses exported from Kenya to Europe, and celebrated for its “high petal count, improved longevity and resistance to transport”, Radek Brousil’s project deals with the symbolism and impact of our fondness for flowers. It circulates freely around Glasgow botanical gardens glass house and its marble sculpture of a ‘Nubian Slave’, touching on the Czech textile company VEBA and its textile designs for the African market, Naomi Campbell and the story of a pouch with “dirty looking” stones, and water as a connecting element and asset for both transport and production, the exhibition is interested in shifts, twists, appropriations, misinterpretation and the absence of the “natural” in current frames of cultural and economical exchange. Its aim is not just academic or critical: with humour and irony it allows certain elements to appear in new contexts, parallels and configurations, understanding cultural symbols as loose containers for adjustation and productive hybridity.