About — Kafkárna

Vision

Kafkárna/ The Center for Art and Ecology is a specific type of organism which consists of a building, garden, people, sculptural artworks in a state of becoming, animals living here as well as just passing by, plants, mushrooms as well as interactions between all of these actors. It invites those open to learn through art, theory, and collective practice and engage in a mutual intergenerational process of learning (both as part of The Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design as well as a place which opens its doors to wide audiences and diverse communities). It listens to natural processes out of human control and often marginalized voices, perspectives and practices and follows the rhythm of the cycle of the seasons rather than the academic year schedule or usual opening hours. It also questions its own functioning and asks what it means to be an ecological art institution - one which serves as a creative and learning space as well as a caring community and a shelter in the world of multiple crises.

History

Kafkárna is a 100-year-old sculpture studio and garden created for the renowned interwar sculptor Bohumil Kafka in Prague’s garden district. Kafka realized his monumental works here, especially the largest horse-riding statue of Jan Žižka at the time. During the communist era, sculptors continued to work here, including a project of a monumental statue of Stalin for the center of Prague in the 1950s. Since 1989, the studio has been used by the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design for students to work here on their sculptural projects. The wooden building of the studio, originally built as a temporary structure, is still almost in its original state and is surrounded by a large garden which contains many layers of culture and nature (stones, trees, fragments of sculptures, abandoned objects etc). In 2021 the garden became the central point of our artistic, educational and community-based activities as well as a conceptual point of departure around which the institution of the Center for Art and Ecology is being formed. The place was transformed into a laboratory space exploring the possibilities of intersection between artistic and ecological practices and started to open its doors to a wider public.

Between 2022 and 2024 Kafkárna realized an extensive international program consisting of three interconnected thematic cycles (ecofeminism, building communities, and degrowth) with a series of public events including three symposia. Since then, programs for students and the wide public (workshops, readings, lectures, screenings, dinners) continued to take place at Kafkárna, and part of the educational program of The Academy of Art, Architecture and Design related to art and ecology is currently being moved there. Last year, the first milestone of this transformational process of turning the project of the garden into a creative and learning space was summarized by an exhibition in UM Gallery with a rich live program and a collective book The House & Garden – an anthology and theoretical-artistic reflection of this ongoing collective project. Among others, Kafkárna has collaborated with Berlin-based collective Raumlabor, which realized several smaller structures in the garden - an outdoor classroom, a kitchen and a pizza oven. Kafkárna is also a place where many students can realize their creative experiments and test them for the first time with audiences. It also often organizes events for the youngest ones by forming temporary children’s working groups and summer camps and publishing a children’s magazine.

Team

Programme, Garden, Education: Amálie Bulandrová, Kateřina Konvalinová, Eva Koťátková, Dominik Lang, Matouš Lipus, Kateřina Vídenová

Guarantor: Dominik Lang

International Advisory Board: Tereza Porybná (České centrum New York), Aleksandra Vajd (AVA Ljubljana), Lenka Vráblíková (Goldsmith University London), Šárka Zahálková (FaVU Brno)

UMPRUM ecological-education: Eva Koťátková

Visual identity: Žofia Fodorová, Magdalena Konečná

Web design: Andrej Kučera