The newly created curatorial working group consists of Aziza Harmel, Rado Ištok, Renan Laru-an, Piotr Sikora and the tranzit.cz collective.

Over the course of this year and the next, the group will be preparing the concept for the second edition of the biennale, which will take place in the summer of 2022 in Prague. The group was formed through an open selection process in which over 30 curators participated. The thematic foundation of the planned biennale builds on current discussions about the decolonization of art institutions with an aim to develop them within the Eastern European context. Curator selection was based on submitted proposals and interviews with participants. The four invited curators (Harmel, Ištok, Laru-an, Sikora) were chosen by representatives and board members of tranzit.cz.

Press release

We bring you a new interview with the artist Zorka Wollny conducted by curator Tereza Stejskalováin which they discuss art in a time of social unrest. This text marks the beginning of an interview series which aims to introduce the ten artists who will participate in the upcoming festival of performance art We Are All Emotional, Have We Ever Been Otherwise? Towards New Gestures of Empathy. The event was supposed to take place in November 2020 but had to be cancelled due to the pandemic of COVID-19. In the meantime we decided to connect with the artists through this series of interviews thematizing emotions in difficult times.

The festival is being curated by the network of independent initiatives tranzit.org and organized by the Biennale Matter of Art and will take place in autumn 2021 in Prague.

The videos Lavish Issue by Alžběta Bačíková and It Was Probably Our Karel, She Said by Jiří Žák were among the twelve new artworks commissioned for the exhibition Biennale Matter of Art Prague 2020. Due to the government restrictions introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition was prematurely closed and therefore many people missed it. We have managed to shift a minor part of the program online, including these two projects.

STREAM
→ Lavish Issue
→ It Was Probably Our Karel, She Said

Společný projekt bienále Ve věci umění a organizací Slovo 21 a Život 90 vznikl původně jako performance pro živé publikum, z důvodů omezení kulturních akcí v souvislosti s koronavirovou pandemií však tvůrci přistoupili k zásadní změně koncepce, a vznikla tak série čtyř krátkých filmů – intimních portrétů, které skrze zprostředkované příběhy zachycují historii všedního dne a nabízejí divákům možnost prožít zkušenost těch, kteří se často ocitají na pokraji zájmu většinové společnosti. Filmy je možné kdykoliv zdarma streamovat online na plaformách Vimeo a Facebook.

tranzit.cz announces an open call for the new members of the curatorial working group for the next edition of the Biennale Ve věci umění / Matter of Art. The task of the group will be to develop a conception of the biennale edition for 2022 within the context of debates on decolonisation. The theme of the planned biennale is a response to contemporary discussions on the decolonisation of museum collections in the USA and Europe, and its ambition is to develop these discussions within the specific Czech-Slovak and broader Eastern European context.

The newly formed curatorial collective should take up this theme, develop upon it, and in co-operation with the team of tranzit.cz prepare an exhibition project and publication for the second edition of the Biennale Matter of Art, which shall open in June 2022.

→ Call details
→ Press release

This year's biennial had to be closed for the course of its final month. To make it up for those who missed the exhibition, we filmed a two-hour guided video tour with curators Tereza Stejskalová and Vít Havránek. Stream all three episodes now on our Vimeo channel

The Biennale Matter of Art 2020 exhibition came to a close on Sunday November 15th

Effective from October 12th, 2020, the exhibition Come Closer: Biennale Matter of Art 2020
 is temporarily closed due to government restrictions introduced in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The live & community programme has also been suspended. We will inform you about future 
developments of the situation.
 Thank you for your understanding.

We are concerned about the increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 in the Czech Republic. In order to minimize the risk of potential disease transmission, we have decided to temporarily suspend the program of larger public events planned in the course of Biennale Matter of Art 2020 and we hope that we will be able to proceed with the plans later this year. At the same time, we are working intensively on alternative forms of distribution of the Biennale program designated for online space. Please stay tuned for more information. Thank you for your understanding and #staysafe. For an up-to-date schedule as well as other information about the ongoing exhibition please visit www.matterof.art/program.

The live streamed symposium of the East European Biennale Alliance is taking place on Friday 18 September 2020, and is devoted to mutual relationships of institutional co-operation, decolonisation, ecology and technologies, as well as the society-wide changes that cultural institutions are facing, among other factors as a consequence of the present coronavirus crisis. The symposium will be broadcast live on the online channels of the hosting Biennale Matter of Art (VVUMOA), which together with the Biennale Warszawa, Kyiv Biennial and OFF-Biennale Budapest is a founder member of the EEBA.

Links

Facebook event
Symposium programme

The symposium shall take place in English language, and will be broadcast live on the Facebook profile of the Biennale Matter of Art. The stream begins at 12:00 Central European Summer Time on Friday 18 September 2020, and lasts until 16:30. During the stream, viewers will have the chance to join the discussion. The course of the symposium will be recorded, and the video will be published and freely available after the end of the event. For more information, including the programme of individual contributions, click here.











East European Biennale Alliance presents the online symposium
Culture at the crossroads: How do we want to co-operate in Eastern Europe? 

18. 9. 2020, 12.00–16.30



Participants

Tereza Stejskalová, Veronika Janatková, Dominika Trapp, Kateřina Smejkalová, Noemi Purkrábková, Zoltán Ginelli, Eszter Lázár, Eszter Szakács, Serge Klymko, Wolfgang Schwärzler, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Aleksandra Jach, Michał Dąbrowski, Bartek Frąckowiak and Marta Michalak.

All Power to the Imagination! The Ukrainian artist Volodymyr Kuznetsov has decided to dedicate his upcoming biennale project to local grassroots organizations and as a tribute to these collectives, he will create a large-scale mural in a pedestrian underpass at the Praha–Holešovice train station and anyone can join in to participate in the project! The process will take place this weekend from Friday Aug 21 to Sunday Aug 23 daily from 11 am until the evening and will culminate on Saturday night from 6 pm with an evening programme including music and refreshments. More info in the Facebook event and in the Program section of our website.

Today we published the first episode of the podcast series Somebody There by the Ukrainian artists Anna Kravets. The artwork was commissioned by the Biennale Matter of Art 2020 and is available for streaming on our website and on SoundCloud. Situated in the gaps between art and language, the project is somewhat a reenactment of the loss of a common language amid increasingly shared conditions of life and struggle.

What does it mean to speak for someone else? What responsibility do we take on? Where is the line between art and interpersonal encounters and dialogue, and what might they have in common? Kravets is a professional listener who lets herself be carried away by the stream of words. She listens, records, and edits many voices into one single voice that speaks, reads, or tells a story. She shows the act of recording, questions the various phrases and labels that we are accustomed to using without thinking about them, and circles around the things left unsaid.

Anna Kravets (*1988 Sumy) is active as a radio journalist, producer, artist, researcher, and translator. In her practice she has addressed the linguistic aspects of power relations as well as mechanisms of collective imagination, anthropology of voice, work in migration, and experimental media. Her current experimental and research projects oscillate between work and routine philosophies, conditions of precarity and participative vocalizations. She runs a radio show about the shifting status of work and leisure. She lives and works in Kiev.

Solitude is often perceived as an uninvited guest whom we are afraid to look in the face. It makes us feel uncomfortable and frightens us, and so we try to ignore it or escape from it. But solitude is full of potential and can help us along the path towards inner strength and harmony. The workshop’s experienced instructors will explore the subject of having faith in oneself and will demonstrate how solitude relates to independence and why a good relationship with oneself can be a solid foundation for a mature relationship with others. The experiential workshop will focus on gentle body and breathing exercises. The workshop is organised by the Biennale Matter of Art in cooperation with the organisation Freya.

Book your place at the workshop now!

About Freya:
Freya consists of a team of experts who know that senior citizens and people with disabilities have the same rights and needs in the areas of sexuality and relationships as anyone else. Founded in 2016, it is the only organization to offer comprehensive services in the areas of sexuality and relationships through education, advisory services, therapeutic and publishing work, the creation of educational tools, and by working for systemic change.

The Biennale Guide comprises information about the first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art and is available as free download. A print version of the pocket book will be available at select biennale venues (the Prague Market and GHMP | Municipal Library) from July 27.

→ Download the guide in PDF
→ Download the guide in EPUB

Due to the ongoing restrictions of international travel, the artists Volodymyr Kuznetsov could not arrive in the Czech Republic to organize the Indefinite Collective which had been commissioned to create a mural painting on the walls of the pedestrian underpass in Praha–Holešovice. We hope that the situation will resolve in the course of the upcoming weeks and the painting will be realized on a later date.

Join us at the vernissage of the first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art. The evening will begin at 6 pm with the opening ceremony at the GHMP at the Municipal Library and will continue from 7 pm at the Prague Market with performances by Iza Pavlina and Tuan Mami and an afterparty with the DJs of the collective Glory Affairs.

Find more details including opening hours in the Visit section

Biennale Matter of Art 2020 venues:

Prague City Gallery
Municipal Library of Prague, 2nd floor
Mariánské náměstí 98/1
110 00 Prague

Prague Market
Hall (11) (17) (19)
Bubenské nábřeží 306
170 00 Prague

Panorama Hotel Prague
Milevská 1695/7
140 63 Prague 4

DBK Praha Shopping Mall Plaza

Budějovická 1667

140 00 Prague 4


Praha-Holešovice station – underpass

Plynární 21

170 00 Prague
 7

Menza Strahov
Jezdecká 1920

160 17 Prague 6

Participating in the biennale exhibition Come Closer are Ragnar Kjartansson, Sung Tieu, Karol Radziszewski, Lucy Beech, Selma Selman, Candice Breitz, Tuan Mami and dozens of others. You may find the full list of artist with biographies on the Participants subpage of the website. The first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art will be open from July 22.

DBK Shopping Mall is one of the two biennale venues (along with the Panorama Hotel Prague) found in the district of Prague 4, where Isabela Grosseová & Jesper Alvaer have situated their commissioned project which aims to recreate a lost sculpture titled ‘Stele', dismantled from the DBK Plaza in the early 1990s. If you have a memory of the original glass object created by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, write us a message to info@matterof.art – your story will become a part fo the exhibition.

On the occasion of the upcoming Biennale Matter of Art 2020, tranzit.cz has published the book Come Closer: The Biennale Reader, edited by Tereza Stejskalová and Vít Havránek, curators of the biennale. The book expands on the theoretical background of the project and we invite you to the launch of the book which will take place at the ArtMap Bookstore on 2 July 2020 at 6 PM when the book will be available in store with an introductory discount. The book will be available in worldwide distribution via Sternberg Press from 22 June 2020.

Come Closer: The Biennale Reader

Editors: Tereza Stejskalová, Vít Havránek

Published by: tranzit.cz
Design: Laura Pappa

Distribution: Sternberg Press

14 × 21 cm, 296 pages, paperback

Available from 22 June 2020


Institut úzkosti / Institute of Anxiety aims to overcome the limits of imagination and asks for your help! Send them your STIMULANTS – could be methods, objects or other entities that hep you to expand the blimits of your own imagination. The project is a part of the Biennnale Matter of Art 2020.

"These 'stimulants' can take on various shapes ranging from instructions in the form of a text, a drawing, a collage, a photograph, a video, to an audio or a cooking recipe, a design of a machine, a description of a situation, or even a formula." — read more here

You may send your stimulants until June 21, either online to iu@institutuzkosti.cz, or by mail to the following address:

Institut úzkosti
Pplk. Sochora 7
17000, Praha 7


Good news! The first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art will take place this year after all. The international exhibition entitled 'Come Closer' will be open from 21 July 2020. Despite the difficult situation, the project will be postponed by only four weeks. We will publish further details on the programme during the course of the following weeks, for the latest news you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Similarly to other cultural organizations, the coronavirus crisis has had a paralysing effect on the process of planning of the first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art. However, at the moment the situation appears to be promising and with the recent loosening of the government restrictions it is highly likely that we will be able to open the exhibition in 2020. Read full statement here.

The first edition of the Biennale Matter of Art will take place in two locations – the Prague City Gallery in the Municipal Library building and in the Prague Market at the premises of a former slaughterhouse.

Programme director of tranzit.cz Tereza Stejskalová and Vít Havránek, organizer and theorist, are the appointed curators of the first edition of Biennale Matter of Art. Find their profiles in the Institution section of our website.