FaVU VUT / Jarní sympozium o biotopech v perspektivách umění a vědy

Barbora Lungová, Introduction to the panel (program probíhal v angličtině)

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová is a visual artist active in the medium of painting through a queer and feminist lens; however, in recent years, she has been interested in environmental aspects of art as well. Her focus is on vegetation, botanical philosophy, horticulture (urban gardening in the context of right to the city, cultural imaginary of ornamental plants), and queer ecologies. At present, she is finishing her Ph.D. at AFAD Bratislava.

Ing. Vilém Jurek vystudoval krajinné inženýrství na lesnické fakultě MENDELU v Brně. Dlouhodobě působí jako vedoucí úseku Péče o přírodu ve spolku Rezekvítek , kde se zasadil o celorepublikové povědomí o této malé brněnské organizaci. Od roku 2020 se v rámci ČSOP ONYX podílí na realizaci dvou projektů LIFE. Je také autorizovanou osobou pro hodnocení zásahů na přírodu a krajinu. V rámci sympozia povedl exkurzi ornitologicky významnou lokalitou Černovická pískovna.

The artists presented their long-term project Wild Garden Utopia. This project is a botanical sci-fi about a future based on our contemporary anxieties about the Japanese knotweed, and its Japanese origin and early European history. Kitti Gosztola and Bence György Pálinkás have been working together since 2016 on projects that focus on the perception and representation of the so-called invasive alien species. Their workshops, installations, videos, and audio works tell stories of green xenophobia, eco-patriotism, the various notions of utility and ways of coexistence. They have worked with institutions and organisations such as the Volkskundemuseum in Vienna, the Kunsthalle in Bratislava, the Hungarian, Slovakian and Romanian tranzit.org institutions, and the Art Encounters biennale in Timișoara, the DYSTOPIE sound art festival in Berlin.

Kitty Gosztola, MFA, Ph.D. (HU) graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2012 Arts in Budapest, where she also obtained her PhD. She focuses on aesthetics and politics of the natural sciences, ranging from material solutions to archival research and collaborative projects. In recent years, her work has been exhibited in a number of institutions, MSUB in Belgrade, Trafó Gallery and Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest. She is represented by Kisterem Gallery in Budapest.

Bence György Pálinkás, MFA., Ph.D. (HU) works mainly on collaborative art projects, runs experimental courses in public education and creates post-dramatic theatre. He studied for his PhD at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, was a visiting researcher at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and a recipient of a research grant from the Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung. His work has recently been presented at festivals and projects such as Wiener Festwochen, Austria (Singing Youth), Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia (Wild Garden Utopia), Konträr, Stockholm, Sweden (Hungarian Acacia).

The talk "Invasive Plants as Agents of Regeneration: Creative Practices for Local Communities" explored situated engagement with invasive plants through Ivana's artistic initiatives, Creative Laboratory Krater and Notweed Paper.

Trajna is a cultural association, founded by Gaja Mežnarić Osole and Andrej Koruza, whose creative work explores the intersection of design and ecology. They pioneer innovative approaches to invasive plants, such as Notweed Paper, which repurposes Japanese knotweed biomass into sustainable paper. In 2020, Trajna launched Creative Laboratory Krater, an 18,000 m² rewilded construction site in Ljubljana that hosts cultural and ecological initiatives spanning biomaterial and biodiversity co-production, situated advocacy and urgent pedagogical work.

Ivana Papić is a Croatian multimedia artist-researcher and educator based in Berlin. She holds master's degrees in restoration (University of Split, 2011) and Art in Context (UdK Berlin, 2022). Using video, sound, and objects, she creates poetic installations to engage audiences. Since 2021, her research has focused on invasive plants, particularly the Tree of Heaven. In the series Wild Walnut, she explores her female heritage through five senses, questioning contemporary concepts of identity and belonging.

Co bylo dřív – slepice nebo ropa? V performativní procházce po svazích Ždánického lesa jsme se zaměřili na téma geologické paměti místa a prožívání hlubokého času. Zkoumali jsme také slepičí krok a ladili jej ve vztahu k frekvenci kývání těžebních kozlíků.

MgA. Tomáš Hrůza (*1979) pochází z Klatov. Žije střídavě v Praze a ve vsi Miřenice na jihozápadě Čech. Vystudoval fotografii na Fakultě umění a designu UJEP v Ústí nad Labem. Je jedním ze zakladatelů platformy Fotograf 07 a nezávislého kulturního rozcestníku a nakladatelství ArtMap. S Jiřím Zemánkem organizuje pod hlavičkou „Pilgrim – Potulná univerzita přírody“ program zaměřující se na téma revize vztahu člověka a přírody. Několik let pedagogicky působil na pražské FAMU a brněnské FaVU, kde v současné době studuje v doktorském programu. Je také členem hudebně- výtvarného uskupení Střešovická Kramle s kořeny v electronicoru a undergroundu. Ve své tvorbě využívá hlavně médium fotografie a video. Zajímá ho především poetická reflexe přírody a kombinace tvůrčí práci a propojení tvorby s ekologickou tématikou.

NPP Malhotky je území nacházející se poblíž obce Nevojice a je hodnotné pro své teplomilné trávníky. Je obklopeno teplomilnou šípákovou doubravou a konvenčně obdělávanými poli a v této krajině představuje vzácné území s mnoha ohroženými druhy rostlin a živočichů, zejména hmyzu a ptáků.

RNDr. Libor Ambrozek je absolvent geobotaniky na PřF UK Praha, diplomová práce na téma stepní vegetace na jižní Moravě. Ochraně přírody a životního prostředí se věnuje od mládí na nejrůznějších úrovních, od Okresního úřadu v Hodoníně přes Poslaneckou sněmovnu po vládu ČR. Od roku 1980 člen Českého svazu ochránců přírody, od roku 2000 jeho předsedou (s ministerskou přestávkou). V současné době vedoucí oddělení péče o přírodu a krajinu na Správě CHKO Bílé Karpaty.

Cities are the fastest growing ecosystem globally. Urban environments are created and altered by humans, which leads to the loss of natural habitats. In contrast, cities are areas where the emergence of new human-made habitats is coupled with high rates of introduction of non-native species. This results in novel plant communities with new species combinations. Plant species in urban environments are influenced by multiple factors, such as land-use types and their spatial distribution, climatic, edaphic, and socioeconomic conditions, disturbance, and other stochastic processes. Cities are also transportation hubs, facilitating species dispersal from one city to another and spreading urban-tolerant species across the globe. In my talk, I talked about urban flora of Brno as example, where I identified local centres of plant diversity and the factors leading to their occurrence. I also presented our ideas, how such a data could be further use to determine Nature’s contribution to people of these urban centres of biodiversity and how the public perceives them.

Doc. RNDR. Zdenka Lososová, Ph.D. (Dept. of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno) is a botanist and a plant community ecologist with both practical and theoretical experiences in the field of community ecology, urban ecology, ecology of European habitats, particularly ecology of human made habitats, and macroecological studies. Her research focuses on understanding biodiversity patterns, especially in functional and phylogenetic diversity of plant communities. Doc. Lososová has extensive experience in fieldwork and analyses of large vegetation-plot databases across various spatial scales, regions and vegetation types. She has led a project investigating the diversity of plant communities in urban environments and their impact on residents‘lives.

Doc. Lososová has led a project studying emerging urban plant communities in Europe, analysing their structure across different climatic regions of Europe, projecting potential changes in urban plant communities under global change, and identifying key drivers of these changes. The findings, showing that native and alien species respond similarly to climatic factors, were published in leading ecological journals. She has also initiated and managed a floristic survey of Brno, compiling a database of approximately 70,000 records, now available for studying urban biodiversity. The results were published in early 2024.

In her presentation, Paula Malinowska introduced her long-term artistic research and practice in which she builds speculative narratives centered around contemporary climatology, biology, and technology research. She presented her short 3D animated films (How Did Daphne Turn into a Plant (2022), Ballad of the Waves that Rotated the Earth (2024), Branching Light and Flickers of a Dawn (2024) which represent through the digital medium a fascination of more-than-human world and questions the role of fiction and narrativity in searching for human relationality towards the planet and ourselves.

What kinds of fiction narratives can be obtained by an uncontainable ivy plant, an immortal jellyfish, or the mystery of synchronically flickering swarms of glowworms understood in the context of reevaluating human position within larger ecosystems? What role can digital art play in these efforts?

MgA. Paula Malinowska is a digital artist and a photographer based in Bratislava. Her artistic practice encompasses CGI audiovisual works - 3D graphics, animation, and print. She builds speculative narrative about contemporary climatology, biology, and technology through working with elements of fiction.

Visual artist MgA. Adam Vačkár has been researching the topic of giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) and examines this plant both as a real biological being and as a way in which to perceive the world - as a tool of reimagining the human perspective of relating to nature, otherness, and environmental control. The artist’s work interconnects scientific research with artistic methods of imagination, which open up new perspectives of invasive species and their place in ecosystems and human thinking.

Adam Vačkář places an extraordinary importance on cooperation with biologists. In his presentation, Vačkář focused on the possibilities and tools of relating to plants which do not fit into the ideal schemes of globalized consumer society. He questioned the binary relations of eradication and extraction, the categories of good and the bad, and limitations which are related to human existence which is tied to our bodies, which limits our objectivity, and which emphasizes the existence of human evolutionary interests. Our bodies exist in concord with the Earth and the Sun, with nature. Although people project human discourses to more-than-human worlds through the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and other tools of research, the friction and resistance of these more-than-human beings represent real life since resistance makes this life real. It is not the accord with our thoughts and ideas, but the resistance to them which enables things to grow.

Adam Vačkář graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. His works have been presented in institutions such as S.M.A.K., Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Art Basel, Cologne Kunstverein, Museum Morsbroich, Národní galerie v Praze, Galerie hlavního města Prahy, FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, and other. Vačkář has participated in artistic residencies in Delfina Foundation in London, Pavillon v Palais de Tokyo in Paris,, and Boghossian Foundation in Brussels. His art is conceptually oriented, it connects visual art, biology, environmental thinking, and biosocial topics. Together with evolutionary biologist Dr. Jinřich Brejcha he has established an interdisciplinary platform called Transparent Eyeball oriented at interdisciplinary research.

The presentation introduced the concept of ecosystem services as a conceptual framework for analyzing the complex relationships between nature and society.

Ecosystem services provide a means to examine the multiple benefits that nature offers and their impact on human well-being, particularly in relation to the diverse values attributed to nature. The One Nature LIFE-IP project serves as a practical example of ecosystem service assessment, demonstrating stakeholder engagement in the management of protected areas. Additionally, the lecture highlights the role of informal urban green spaces - often overlooked yet significant - as contributors to ecosystem services within urban environments. The discussion emphasizes the importance of better understanding how ecosystems contribute to human well-being and the quality of life in both natural and urban contexts.

Mgr. Davina Elena Vačkářová, Ph.D. , Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Czechglobe) is an environmental researcher with academic training in environmental studies and applied and landscape ecology (Faculty of Science, Charles University), and in gender studies (Faculty of Humanities, Charles University). Her work explores the societal impacts of global environmental change. She is interested in how nature contributes to human well-being, how its benefits and services are (under)valued, and how knowledge about ecosystem services is co- produced through the integration of diverse perspectives and within policy processes.

In her research, she connects ecological thinking and global change with questions of inequality, justice, and identity. She has contributed to international processes under IPBES, the European Environment Agency, UNDP, and IUCN. She sees sustainability as a search for ways to live within ecological limits with respect for the diversity of the world around us.

The research team ( MgA. Tamara Spalajkovič, FFA BUT, Ing. arch. Kateřina Singer, FA BUT, Ing. arch. Marek Hlavička, FA BUT ) has been connected together through their common interest in the research of new typologies of landscape and of making visible interspecies relationships which exist beyond the visibility of hitherto common everyday human perception and urban planning. The team has led a studio at the Faculty of Architecture in the winter semester of 2024/25 called “Planýrka: the future of ecosystem within a city” and was awarded with annual Bohuslav Fuchs Prize as a collective project. Kateřina Singer dedicates her research to looking for argumentation to defend typical examples of post- industrial landscapes, new wilderness and vague terrain and their related social phenomena, which she understands as new typology of landscapes in urbanized environments. Marek Hlavička is occupied with the research of new forms of collectivities arising on the site, including the research of interspecies relationships and their relatedness with the architectonic development of the site. Tamara Spalajkovič dedicates her work to the creation of alternative scenarios for the development of the site and searching for the methods of video art which enable stepping out of centralized anthropomorphic thinking about cities.

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The topic of the rights of nature resonates across legal, artistic, and activist space and opens up crucial questions of representation. How can we represent entities reaching beyond “human” experience? How can we speak on behalf of others, without falling into the trap of the power patterns, and eschew being passive in the face of injustice? How do artistic practices reflect questions of representations of more-than-human subjects? How can they contribute to the reshaping of legal thinking?

MgA. Lucia Bergamaschi and MgA. David Přílučík focus their research on the analysis of artistic projects which reflect the relationship between lawn and nature.Through semi- structured interviews with selected artists and collectives (Terike Haapoja, Organism Democracy, Symbiotic Lab), they identify topics such as alliances, representation, or questions of legal recognition of more-than-human actors.

The research is based on the personal artistic practice of both presenters. Lucia brings forth her prior experience with the collective Corpi Idrici, working on the Charter of Rights of Water Bodies in Genoa, which appreciates city streams as a lymphatic system. Her participation on the European workshop called Hydro Body Assembly further opened up questions, such as who can speak on behalf of a river, how outcomes can be shared with the wider public, or what kind of roles experience, expectations, and privilege can play.

David has been engaged in a long-term project called Divoká Šárka which speculatively develops possibilities to acknowledge legal subjectivity to the eponymous nature reserve within the neoliberal state. His previous works - for instance The Art of Anthropocene (2019), Breed (2015 - 2022), or Unprotected Nature (2022 - 2024) focus on cultural and environmental conditions of care, mutual living and responsibility in the times of climate and social changes.

The presentation offered an insight into current research and also opened space for collective ruminations on the ways in which art and cultural practices can play in the change of ways in which we understand law, representation, and our relationships with more-than human world.

Landscape management is one of the fields on the border between science and art. It is often dealt with by experts with an artist's heart. Photographs as a partial result of their work can be a pleasure for the eye and working material for further analyses or as an information tool. Will they have the same set of values in any case? You can have a photograph of forest growth on the wall in your bedroom instead of a painting or it can be material in a questionnaire survey. The photographer automatically tries to express his artistic view of the topic or scene with it. The scientist should try to take a picture as realistically and as mundanely as possible and comparable to other locations. The third way is to have a sufficiently large capacity on the storage medium...

I am Ing. Jiří Schneider, Ph.D. , former Dean of the Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies at Mendel University in Brno. Head of the Institute of Environmental Science and Natural Resources there. I graduated in Forest Engineering and received a doctorate in Landscape Management. My long-term topics are ecosystem services, practical nature conservation, landscape management and environmental policies.

I am a happy person for whom work is a hobby. A forester-nature conservationist- landscape engineer-environmentalist-academic with an inherited love for the camera. When photographing the landscape (and life in it), I perceive both its aesthetic value and its professional dimension. A river, a forest, a landscape mosaic in its current form reflects the history and the approach to their management and use. When I like a forest, I like the result of the work of a forester and natural processes. However, I am currently also looking for ways to increase the resilience of the landscape, settlements and society in times of intensifying climate change.

Drawing on ethnographic engagement with a necropolitical apparatus aimed at complete eradication of the so-called invasive plant ‘Giant hogweed’ from the Czech Republic, this talk explored figurative potentials for escaping ethical and practical impasses of such a form of environmental politics. Rather than addressing the well- criticized adjective ‘invasive’, the contribution critically examined the premises and promises of the administrative ontology of biological species as an intuitive and unreflected category for environmental governance which systematically distributes and accentuates in/visibilities of certain phenomena over others in a way that compromises the objectives of the apparatus. Next, I turned my focus onto a preliminary decomposition of this category through a figure of Spectral Hogweeds which embodies two etymological kin: ‘specters’, as present absences; and a ‘spectrum’ of hogweed becomings. Finally, I outlined how this figure can potentially infuse administrative practices of multispecies flourishing.

If one can fall for activism through the pages of books, Mgr. Jakub Kvizda , FHS UK is pursuing that path with persistence and passion. As a doctoral candidate for environmental anthropology and a member of an interdisciplinary project Resisterra at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University, he is researching forms of power and resistance that cross the boundaries of the human and other-than-human. With his training also in socio-cultural ecology, he continues to explore debates in the natural sciences as well, bringing in wild speculations based on his fieldwork experience.

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Skupinová česko-norská výstava pojednávala o mizejícím ptactvu zkoumající náš vztah k přírodě prostřednictvím fascinace světem ptáků, jejich zpěvem a pohybem. Propojovala umění, vědu a filozofii a čerpala inspiraci z tvorby Olgy Karlíkové, která už v 60. letech vnímala přírodní zvuky jako kresbu prostoru a času. Výstava reflektovala úbytek ptactva jako obraz širších environmentálních změn a ztráty biodiverzity – jak v krajině České republiky, tak na norských ostrovech, které utichají. Pomocí zvuku, světla a výtvarného jazyka vytvářela prostor pro zamyšlení nad naší schopností naslouchat přírodě a nést za ni odpovědnost. A díky publikaci – antologii si ji můžeme ještě lépe připomenout.

MgA. Tea Záchová je kurátorka a výzkumnice současného umění působící v Oblastní galerii v Liberci. Zároveň se věnuje psaní a editaci v rámci nezávislých vydavatelských platforem a uměleckých magazínů. Pracuje samostatně mezi Prahou (dříve galerie 35M2, nyní Pragovka), Libercem a v mezinárodním kontextu. Studovala v Ústí nad Labem, kde absolvovala tři programy v letech 2011–2013: Kurátorská studia (na Katedře dějin a teorie umění Fakulty umění a designu), Katedru výtvarné výchovy Pedagogické fakulty a Humanitní studia se zaměřením na estetiku (na Katedře politologie a filozofie). Ve svých diplomových pracích se věnovala tématům galerie ve veřejném prostoru a muzeum jako umělecké médium. Tato témata dále rozvíjí v rámci postgraduálního studia na Univerzitě v Göteborgu (kurz Commissioning and Curating in Public Art). Ve své kurátorské praxi se dlouhodobě zaměřuje na environmentální témata a problematiku globálního oteplování. Vychází z naléhavého stavu planetární krize, úbytku biodiverzity a potřeby chránit naši Zemi. Kurátorskou práci chápe jako metaforu péče – jako péči o zahradu. Zahradu vnímá jako útočiště umění, kde mohou vznikat cenné a vzájemné vztahy mezi různými druhy – rostlinami, zvířaty i lidmi. Její výstavní projekty jsou vždy rozšířené o doprovodné programy a publikační činnost – například zvukové procházky, setkání s vědci nebo speciální edice knih.

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Jak se žije ptákům v Brně? Které druhy jsou ve městě hojné, či vzácné a které ubývají? Proč vlastně ptáci ve městě hnízdí, co jim škodí a jak jim případně pomoci? Na tyto a mnohé další otázky ohledně avifauny města Brna jste se dozvěděli odpovědi v ornitologické přednášce pro veřejnost.

Mgr. Kryštof Horák je absolvent programu Zoologie a učitelství biologie na Přírodovědecké fakultě Masarykovy univerzity (Česká společnost ornitologická, MUNI). Odborný biolog, zkušený ornitolog, pracovník EVVO. Zaměstnanec Jihomoravské pobočky ČSO a Masarykovy univerzity, pracoviště ENVIROP. Působí jako lektor ornitologického kroužku a víkendovek. Dlouholetý člen České společnosti ornitologické a kroužkovatel s vědeckou a terénní praxí. Dlouhodobě se věnuje problematice ptáků ve městech, podpoře jejich hnízdění, působí jako biologický dozor při rekonstrukcích objektů s výskytem zvláště chráněných ptáků a netopýrů.

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Umělecké přístupy využívající zvuk jako prostředek environmentálního vnímání, nástroj mezioborového zkoumání a médium intermediální tvorby otevírají nové možnosti pro reflexi vztahu člověka a krajiny. Klíčovým příkladem je umělecko-výzkumný projekt Po proudu zvuku, který systematicky mapuje zvukové prostředí řeky Opavy a již čtvrtým rokem probíhá ve spolupráci s Magdalénou Manderlovou a platformou Bludný kámen. Projekt zahrnuje publikaci, webovou platformu a zvukovou mapu. Prezentace nabídla pohled na metodologie terénního nahrávání, kontext site-specific výzkumu a ekologicky orientované umělecké praxe. Součástí byla také reflexe každoročního setkání Zvuková citlivost v krajině na Kozmických loukách, které funguje jako experimentální prostor pro sdílení, performativní intervence a environmentálně angažovanou zvukovou tvorbu.

Představeny byly i další vybrané projekty autora, které navazují na koncepty akustické ekologie, časosběrných metod a způsoby extenzivního vnímání krajiny.

MgA. Michal Kindernay , FaVU VUT je intermediální umělec, pedagog a kurátor. Ve své práci propojuje zvukové umění, environmentální témata a nové technologie s důrazem na výzkumné a site-specific přístupy. Dlouhodobě se věnuje akustické ekologii a ekologicky orientovaným tématům v současném umění.

Předmět je realizován v rámci řešení aktivit projektu Akcelerace zelených dovedností a udržitelnosti na VUT v Brně, r. č. NPO_VUT_MSMT-2143/2024-5.