A View from the Edge of a Pasture
Can we learn something from our pastoral history? When we say pastoral, the poetry, love and religion come to our mind? Pastoral is based on the polarity of Culture and Nature and its fundamental motif is hostility to urban life. What would pastoral be without this dichotomy? From the permacultural knowledge we have learned that the edges are the most diverse areas, they comprise elements from each bordering territory. How do we see the city from the pasture and vice versa? What will happen if we blur the borderlines between them? Where do we find shepherds these days? Do they have answers to our climate troubles? Where are their herds and what are they like? What would pastoral society look like? This event will present us with a collective imagination about the future of animals and humans on the grazing lands around our cities.
Edith Jeřábková is a curator of contemporary art. She has been following transformative processes in Czech art over the last forty years and is interested in exploring the permaculture and artistic intersections and the interconnection of ethical, ecological and aesthetic relationships in land and landscape systems and in interspecies communities. She observes these living interactions in the gallery environment, as a curator at PLATO Ostrava, as an independent curator, and outside the gallery environment as a founding member of the associations Forest – A Community for Cultivation, Theory and Art, Are and the Institute of Anxiety. Until recently, teaching at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague was an integral part of her actvities. In previous years she has worked at the following institutions: the Klatovy/Klenová Gallery, The Academic Research Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the Olomouc Museum of Art, the Fotograf Gallery, the Cursor Gallery, The Centre for Contemporary Arts Prague. She is also involved in publishing and editorial activities. She lives in a forest in the Orlické Mountains.
Denisa Langrová completed her Bachelor studies at UMPRUM in the Studio of Sculpture led by Edith Jeřábková and Dominik Lang. At UMPRUM she will also continue her Master’s studies in the Studio of Free Art III led by Dominik Gajarski and Michal Pěchouček. Simultaneously, she is studying for a Master’s degree in Management of Animal Health and Welfare at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. Denisa Langrová’s concepts are based on ecofeminist theories, environmental studies, interspecies and non-binary foundations. She is interested in the intersections of the stories of humans and other animals, in concepts of domestication and its possible connection to love, as well as in personal experience of living in global crisis and capitalism. She sees the personal as political and vice versa. She looks for spaces of concrete utopias at the beginning of the apocalypse. Her works are often based on stories in which she freely combines real and fictional elements. She creates works that move between the genres of speculative documentary and video essay. Langrova’s creative process often takes the form of alternative artistic research. She is also inspired by parallel studies where scientific and rational analysis prevail. Through art she seeks a space for emotionality, irrationality and paradigm disruption.
12. 5. PASTORAL SHARING WORKSHOP – tranzit.sk
The program is reserved for students of the invited art universities:
15:00 Introduction to Pastoralism: Lýdia Pribišová will present her wider curatorial project A Plant, which this symposium is a part of. After a general introduction, Edith Jeřábková and Denisa Langrová will present their personal fascinations with the topic of (urban) pastoralism.
(EN)*the event will be held in English
16:00 Pastoral Sharing: sharing knowledge on the topic based on students’ own materials and study materials sent prior to the workshop. The students will discuss their knowledge and opinions in groups before deciding on the symposium’s final output (film, performance, concert, etc.) (EN)
Public program:
19:00 Razing Arcadia and grazing amongst the ruins: online lecture by artist Fernando García-Dory + Q&A discussion (EN)
Razing Arcadia and grazing amongst the ruins is a title that arose from the artist’s reflections on observing sheep and cows in the fields as a kind of time-traveling vessel. If we follow them, as Ulysses did, we can pass through epochs and question the logic of progress and growth, as well as question the bucolic attitude of the viewer, whether a romantic artist or a scientist advocating wilderness. We can look at animals, kinship, and relationships as forms of rediscovery of the human environment.
13. 5. PROGRAMME AT BROZ PASTURE – Geological Museum, DEVÍNSKA KOBYLA
(In case of bad weather, the programme will be moved to Kunsthalle Bratislava, the exhibition space A Hall)
How to get to the Geological Museum: Take bus No.29 to Devín, get off at the Devín Castle stop and walk 350 m from there towards Devínska Nová Ves The Geological Museum has no descriptive number, but the next house is No. 224, Kremeľská Street. GPS: 48.183228189620024, 16.978948120919092
Programme is reserved for students of the invited art universities:
11:00 Students’ joint action at Pasture (by common agreement) (EN)
12:00 Collection of sounds and workshop of herding calls (kulning): workshop led by artist Denisa Langrová, DJ, artist Ida Tausch and musician Adriána Vančová (EN)
The workshop will begin with a sound practice that is used to develop a relationship with our voice and a relationship with deep listening. It will focus on the practice of deep listening to the sounds of pasture and field recording as an exploration, a process of discovery and a subjective manifestation of the perception of sounds. Another part of the practice will be a sonic experimentation and the creation of a shared acoustic space, an audible collective body that transcends our individual bodies. We will be introduced to sonic instruments and the practice of kulning, a type of herding call that is still used in Scandinavia today.
Public program:
14:30 Paleological pasture: a walk with paleontologist Martin Vlačiky (SK + EN translation)
We will be transported back in time to 16 -12 million years ago, stepping out of the subtropical jungle onto the sandy beach of a young tropical sea and then diving beneath its surface. We will be amazed by the diversity of life around us. Devínska Kobyla is a unique palaeontological site where over 300 species of various fossilised organisms were found, ranging from seaweeds, invertebrates, marine vertebrates to terrestrial mammals. Through this walk, we will be able to learn more about them today.
16:00 Urban pastoralism: an excursion to the BROZ pasture with Filip Rovný (presentation of the BROZ programme and a discussion with the shepherd) (SK + EN translation)
18:00 Prague Pasture in Bratislava pasture: ethicist Martina Skohoutilová will present the Prague Pasture project, which she has been administratively leading since its inception, while managing and caring for the animals and the individual and corporate volunteers for the last three years. Pražská Pastvina (The Prague Pasture Community Land Association) aims to promote Prague’s biodiversity through the grazing of goats and sheep. It has returned the rarest Czech butterflies to Prague, but it also returns man to the land and vice versa. (CZ + EN translation)
19:00 Discussion with representatives of the Prague and Bratislava pasture and the city of Bratislava: Andrej Devečka (BROZ), Martina Skohoutilová (Prague Pasture) and Peter Štipák (Department of Urban Greenery of the Bratislava City Hall). Moderated by Edith Jeřábková and Lýdia Pribišová (SK + CZ + EN translation)
20:30 Sounds (from) the pasture (participatory concert): artist Denisa Langrová, DJ and artist Ida Tausch and musician Adriána Vančová
The midday sound workshop will culminate in a concert. The event will be devoted to collaborative sound experimentation, kulning and the singing of pastoral songs. It will be accompanied by Ida Tausch’s field recordings from the pasture and followed by a vocal intervention by musician Adriána Vančová, whose inspiration is, among other things, folk music and so-called “grasslands”. Adriána works with the tuning of tones into multiphrases, harmonies and dissonances, and imitates the sounds of animals and nature with her breath.
14. 5. PROGRAMME AT BROZ PASTURE – Geological Museum, DEVÍNSKA KOBYLA
(In case of bad weather, the programme will be moved to Kunsthalle Bratislava, the exhibition space A Hall)
How to get to the Geological Museum: Take bus No.29 to Devín, get off at the Devín Castle stop and walk 350 m from there towards Devínska Nová Ves The Geological Museum has no descriptive number, but the next house is No. 224, Kremeľská Street. GPS: 48.183228189620024, 16.978948120919092
Programme is reserved for students of the invited art universities:
11:00 Pastoral Therapy: Tereza Porybná, curator and yoga teacher (EN)
12:00 Students’ joint action at Pasture (by common agreement) (EN)
Public program:
14:00 Queer pastoralism as lingering with the herd of the earth: artist Alexandra Sihelská (EN)
Often reduced to a purely urban affair, queerness has always been an integral part of relations to land and to non-human actors, just as it has had a place in the countryside. We will look at the significance of queer aspects in rural settings through diverse narratives of pastoralism.
15:00 Nomadic Shepherds in Wonderland: behind the mirrors of texts: Gabriela Fatková, anthropologist (CZ + EN translation)
The nomad, wandering from place to place, having no permanent home, living from day to day beyond the reach of urban customs and the law, is a particularly powerful and popular literary image. This representation of the nomad pervades not only in fictional texts but also in academic ones, and these two sets of texts, moreover, influence and permeate one another, and are in places inseparable. The very conceptualisation of nomadic pastoralism from the position of European scholars is wrapped in many layers of value-laden concepts that make it difficult for us to see nomadic pastoralists as an integral part of ‘our world’ and ‘our historical time’.
17:00 Reading from the book Shepherd, to the banditry! : selected by Edith Jeřábková and Denisa Langrová (CZ + EN translation)
The International Confederation of Shepherds, based in the Czech Republic near Znojmo, has devoted itself to shepherding and publishing consistently without any support from the government, other subsidies or wealthy patrons. They publish the zine Čoban and have also previously published three sequels of the Pastoralist Almanac. Pastevče, do zboje! (Shepherd, to the banditry!) is the third book in the series: Jeremiah Havran & Banda autonomních ovčáků, Pastevče, do zboje! Current Possibilities of Pastoral Subversion, International Confederation of Pastoralists (publisher Santa Teresa – Kraví hora, 2021, pp. 32-41 and 48-51. English translation by Guy Tabachnick).
19:00 Pastoral poetry: Mariana Serranová, curator and critic (multi)
“If a bear attacks a herd, it will huddle together. Oxen with their backs to each other, horses with their heads. So that the weapons are ready.” (From shepherds’ tales) / The land passes through the body and the body through the land. Crossbreeds of animals and humans at the interface of nature and the gods.
Pink Whale boat, Dvořákovo nábrežie, Bratislava
21:00 Pastoral Twilight: Tereza Porybná, curator (CZ + EN)
cinema + curatorial introduction, (CZ + EN)
A ninety-minute series of short documentary and experimental videos reflecting on the theme of pastoralism on various temporal, contextual and symbolic levels will be opened with a curatorial introduction. Romanticised, strongly cinematic visions focused primarily on the symbol of the pastoralist as a human being wandering freely between civilisation and nature are interwoven with the documentation of contemporary pastoral societies in Europe and Africa, which are affected by global agrarian politics, climate change and generational differences.
Films:
Bedding Down, directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 8′, 2012.
Bouquets 28, 29, 30, directed by Rose Lowder, 4′, 2001-2005.
Red, directed by Maddi Barber, 20′, 2020.
Lick in The Past, directed by Laure Provost, 8′, 2016.
Seasons, directed by Artavazd Peleshyan, 27′, 1972.
Pastoralism in the Future, directed by CELEP, 2′, 2021.
Bayandalai: Lord of the Taiga, directed by Aner Etxebarria Moral, Pablo Vidal Santos, 11′, 2018.
22:30 Afterparty with elastix (CZ, Radio Punctum), schaumstoff (CZ, Planeta Za) and others…
PARTICIPANTS:
Students from the University of Applied Arts (Department of Site-Specific Art), Vienna,; Academy of Art, Architecture and Design (Studio of Fine Arts I (Sculpture)), Prague,; Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Studio of Intermedia), Bratislava; Faculty of Fine Arts (Body Design Studio), Brno.
How to get to the Geological Museum:
Take bus No.29 to Devín, get off at the Devín Castle stop and walk 350 m from there towards Devínska Nová Ves The Geological Museum has no descriptive number, but the next house is No. 224, Kremeľská Street. GPS: 48.183228189620024, 16.978948120919092