Parallels — European Festival of Art in the Public Space

Art is just getting from point A to point B. Traveling by train is an experience in itself. Our task is to bring passengers to the opening of the festival in Bratislava so that nothing happens to them. However, we do not prevent them from having fun and learning something along the way. We will try three times to change their perspective on why they are on the train and why they couldn't actually go alone. After arriving in Bratislava, another interesting program for the whole weekend awaits the participants. More information at parallelsfestival.eu, ticket sales at GoOut.

Partner: Kladenská dopravní a strojní s. r. o.

The expected arrival of the Experience Train at the Main Station in Bratislava is between 3 - 4 p.m. This will be followed by several variants of the accompanying program for conservative and adventurous audiences. The day culminates with the opening ceremony of the Parallels festival at the Transport Museum.

Petra Hudcová, in cooperation with Slovak performers (Jakub Cerulík, Anja Naňová, Adka Tusimová, Juraj Bílený, Natália Plesníková), has prepared an artistic performance in the vicinity of the Main Station, which she wants to respond to the planned reconstruction of the railway station. The whole event is a play around the station, a spectacle that can be joined or ignored.

The festival train will leave Prague on September 30, and should arrive at Bratislava’s Main Station between 3-4PM. The participants can check in to the hotel, or leave their luggage in the station and join us in the informal program. There are two possibilities: conservative visitors are welcome to the tour through the main sights of Bratislava, while the adventurous ones may enjoy a guided trip to a unique technical monument using the public transport. The whole group will meet again at 7 PM in the Transport Museum, on a ceremonial opening of the festival and the start of the exhibition “Outside the Gallery”. Also featured will be a show of the Přeskopec band.

How well do you know Bratislava and its architecture? And what about artistic realizations in public space from different periods? Curator Zoja Droppová from the Bratislava City Gallery knows every corner of the city and can talk about it in an engaging way. We recommend comfortable shoes.

How well do you know Bratislava and its architecture? And what about artistic realizations in public space from different periods? Curator Zoja Droppová from the Bratislava City Gallery knows every corner of the city and can talk about it in an engaging way. Meeting point is by the SNP bridge. We recommend comfortable shoes.

The Education department of the Gallery of the City of Prague prepared activities for young visitors to the Transport Museum.

Petra Hudcová, in cooperation with Slovak performers (Jakub Cerulík, Anja Naňová, Adka Tusimová, Juraj Bílený, Natália Plesníková), has prepared an artistic performance in the vicinity of the Main Station, which she wants to respond to the planned reconstruction of the railway station. The whole event is a play around the station, a spectacle that can be joined or ignored.

Representatives of organizations and festivals that have been engaged in the implementation of artistic interventions in public space for a long time will share their experiences, examples of good practice, but also the challenges they encounter.

The documentary movie Z galerie VEN! (Outside the Gallery), directed by Jan Strejcovský, accompanies the eponymous exhibition in the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery. As the director puts it: “I went to the open landscape to look for the borders of space, public and art together with artists, curators, historians and people passing by.” The mobile version of the exhibition and the documentary movie are part of the international festival of art in the public space “Parallels”, and both will be featured in the five European cities the touring festival will visit this autumn – Bratislava, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, and Lodz.

“The public space and art have a thing in common – their point is communication. The city provides the public space for the physical movement, walking, traffic, and also meetings and social contacts; it’s the place of communication, both loud and silent. Artworks exhibited in the open air play an important role in the forming of this public space of communication. They speak to people passing by, reminding them of something rooted in the shared past of the community, and thus strengthening the identity of the place. Or else they can start a public debate subversively, by raising new topics. They, however, communicate not only with people but also with nearby buildings, and the physical urban space, enhancing it with important accents and raising the bar of its aesthetics. We want to know how artworks bring topics of the public interest into the public space, and how they contribute to the physical view of the city, may they be permanent installations, temporary interventions, outdoor galleries or sculpture festivals,” says one of the curators, architecture theoretician Petr Kratochvíl.

We will conclude the discussion about art in public space and the first day of the festival with an informal party in the Czech Center. DJ Pierre Urban will take care of the music.

Petra Hudcová, in cooperation with Slovak performers (Jakub Cerulík, Anja Naňová, Adka Tusimová, Juraj Bílený, Natália Plesníková), has prepared an artistic performance in the vicinity of the Main Station, which she wants to respond to the planned reconstruction of the railway station. The whole event is a play around the station, a spectacle that can be joined or ignored.

Erna Masarovičová is very specific in the Slovak artistic environment. Her intense work spanning half a century is surprising in its scope. The sculptor created monumental works in parallel, became a pioneer in medal making and was a unique jeweler. For passengers on our train, we have therefore prepared a guided tour of her exhibition in the Bratislava City Gallery.

Petra Hudcová will have an art workshop for young visitors to the Transport Museum.

The production manager of the m3 festival / Art in Space, Ivana Vodičková, will focus primarily on the development of the m3 Festival and its interventions and interventions within individual years since its inception in 2017, she will also explain the process of production work in terms of legislative regulations, but also the unwritten rules of public space as they are understood in the Czech environment. Last but not least, he will present the last year of the festival with the subtitle Mezi Meziprostory, which is focused on the Prague and Central Bohemian railway stations and the vague terrain around them.

The eight parts of the series Art on the Periphery represent five locations and a total of 13 artists and architects working at the interface of the city and nature. The aim of the series is, through their work, to bring places on the edge, overlooked or undiscovered, and at the same time to present contemporary forms of artistic realizations, which do not always end in a sculpture or a painting. The project with the original name CirculUM2020 was created within the Gallery of the City of Prague in the Art for the City program, in cooperation with the transdisciplinary platform Neolokator.cz. The documentary series was created by the team: Lucie Klímová, Yvon Teysslerová, Marek Matlovic & Emil Kopta

From Bratislava to Vienna is a stone throw away and you can even go there by boat. Our production team will be moving by train. Anyone who would like to take a look behind the scenes of how the festival is made and what it all entails is welcome. And if you want an all-in-one experience, you can help us install the exhibition in Vienna.

Partner: Kladenská dopravní a strojní s. r. o.

Visit our mobile exhibition Outside the Gallery! and Richard Loskot's site-specific on platform #9.

Tracing Spaces is a group founded in Vienna in 2012 by Michael Hieslmair and Michael Zinganel. As an independent interdisciplinary research platform, Tracing Spaces designs and produces projects, exhibitions, publications and mediation formats on the topics of urban research, mobility, tourism and migration, as well as art and artistic research projects. Together we will see some of their interventions and the Nordwestbahnhof Museum, which documents the location of the disappearing freight station in an interesting and artistic way. This will be followed by a talk about how to make an art in public space.

Representatives of organizations and festivals such as Art for the City, KOER, M3 / Art in Space and Tracing Spaces that have been engaged in the implementation of artistic interventions in public space for a long time will share their experiences, examples of good practice, but also the challenges they encounter. Richard Loskot will add the artist's view.

Vienna is not just the Hofburg, Schönbrunn or St. Stephen's Cathedral. Every contemporary art lover will find something here. But what about contemporary artistic interventions in public space? KÖR (Kunst im öffentlichen Raum) is an institution that has been dedicated to the realization of art projects in public space since 2004 and already has a nice line of projects to its credit. We will take a look at a few of them.

Visit Urbanize!, an independent activist festival dedicated to eco-social transformation

You can go to Vienna on your own to a museum, a gallery, to the opera, or just for a Sachertorte or Wiener schnitzel. We offer you the opportunity to get to know Vienna from a slightly different angle. As a place of inspiration for the realization of art in public space. Plan your trip so that you can see the site-specific Richard Loskot and take a guided tour of KOER's realizations and the local Urbanize festival. And come back with us on our train from Westbahnhof.

Partner: Kladenská dopravní a strojní s. r. o.

The documentary movie Z galerie VEN! (Outside the Gallery), directed by Jan Strejcovský, accompanies the eponymous exhibition in the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery. As the director puts it: “I went to the open landscape to look for the borders of space, public and art together with artists, curators, historians and people passing by.” The mobile version of the exhibition and the documentary movie are part of the international festival of art in the public space “Parallels”, and both will be featured in the five European cities the touring festival will visit this autumn – Bratislava, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, and Lodz.

“The public space and art have a thing in common – their point is communication. The city provides the public space for the physical movement, walking, traffic, and also meetings and social contacts; it’s the place of communication, both loud and silent. Artworks exhibited in the open air play an important role in the forming of this public space of communication. They speak to people passing by, reminding them of something rooted in the shared past of the community, and thus strengthening the identity of the place. Or else they can start a public debate subversively, by raising new topics. They, however, communicate not only with people but also with nearby buildings, and the physical urban space, enhancing it with important accents and raising the bar of its aesthetics. We want to know how artworks bring topics of the public interest into the public space, and how they contribute to the physical view of the city, may they be permanent installations, temporary interventions, outdoor galleries or sculpture festivals,” says one of the curators, architecture theoretician Petr Kratochvíl.

The eight parts of the series Art on the Periphery represent five locations and a total of 13 artists and architects working at the interface of the city and nature. The aim of the series is, through their work, to bring places on the edge, overlooked or undiscovered, and at the same time to present contemporary forms of artistic realizations, which do not always end in a sculpture or a painting. The project with the original name CirculUM2020 was created within the Gallery of the City of Prague in the Art for the City program, in cooperation with the transdisciplinary platform Neolokator.cz. The documentary series was created by the team: Lucie Klímová, Yvon Teysslerová, Marek Matlovic & Emil Kopta

The experience train to Berlin will be more experimental, together we will explore the layers of the urban landscape, the phenomenon of the so-called new wilderness and especially sound. This will become the link between the experience ride and the subsequent program. The site-specific installation for this location was created by sculptor Dagmar Šubrtová in collaboration with sound artist Peter Cusack. Are you ready for new sensory experiences from the urban landscape? Book your ticket for the sound ride now.

Partner: Kladenská dopravní a strojní s. r. o.

During our experimental sound ride, you will experience a live DJ set by Eva Porating and a sound performance by Martin Janíček. Two realms of the sound world meet in one wagon! The train leaves Prague at 3 p.m. station to Berlin to the Main Station. You can order tickets via GoOut.

Eva Porating is a sonic explorer who combines all her influences into mystical adventures. She currently lives in Prague and is a resident DJ at Ankala, just like her younger sister Planeta Za. Her regular appearances on Radio Punctum, where she also has her own show Anemone, reveal the true extent of her musical knowledge and interest. Her refined selection reflects her life experiences, whether she plays downtempo, breaks, ambient or IDM.

Martin Janíček is a sculptor, sound engineer, musician and builder of new musical instruments, sound installations, graduated from AVU Prague in 1997. He is dedicated (since 1990) to connecting sound and fine art, movement. His activities include the production of his own musical instruments, the design and implementation of sound installations, the creation of sound scores and their interpretation, the sounding of various objects from found, through functional to works of art and architecture.

The program of the Parallels festival continues in the gallery of the Czech Center Berlin, where a gala presentation of the partner project Artmat with an edition of mini art by Czech artists is being prepared. It was created as part of the cooperation between Artmat and Czech Centers on the topic of sustainability on the occasion of the Presidency of the Czech Republic in the Council of the European Union. You will also be treated to the opening of the exhibition Deep River Flows Quietly (Daniel Vlček, Radek Brousil, Petra Janda), which is organized as part of the accompanying program of cooperation between Artmat and Czech Centers. The musical accompaniment of the evening will be provided by the artist Radek Brousil with a playlist linked to his objects presented as part of the exhibition in the Czech Center (indie/emo) and Mimomrtn, DJ from the Parallels train, who prepared a special electro DJ set.

Mimomrtn is a Prague DJ who always serves an adventurous journey across several decades and genres. You may know him from Fluido club nights, where he performed several times.

Park Gleisdreieck is an inspiring example of the revitalization of technical and industrial areas. We will explore some parts of it together. You will learn something about the history and future of the park, the process of its transformation, planning its use, etc. The tour will be conducted in English and is planned for two hours. Meeting point: Möckernstraße / Tempelhofer Ufer, next to the Science Center Spectrum. Free entry.

An experimental performance that materializes sound. The ambient surface and loose synthetic rhythms will take you to the world of lucid dreaming.

Aylak (Aliaksandra Yakubouskaya) is an audiovisual artist from Belarus, living in the Czech Republic. In his artistic practice, he works with matter and the process of "materialization" in both visual and sound form. It explores different ways of perceiving material, immaterial, virtual or physical situations and experiences. Her diverse audio sets combine veiled ambient surfaces together with deconstructed rhythms and dissolute synthetic sounds, which she perceives as a walk through various dream worlds and spaces. She is one of the founders of the artistic collective Outsideinsideoutinsideoutsidein.

The duo timmi & In Abyss invite you on a cosmic journey paved with soothing beats and analog synthesizers. Attention, the layered vocals of the artist timmi have a hypnotic effect!

timmi & In Abyss is a musical duo of musicians who also create independently. After several months of repeated jam sessions, their musical paths connected and the first joint patterns and a joint project were created. Their mutual enthusiasm for synthesizers and harmonies led them to their first concerts (Dvorek in Petrohradský, Řehole pod širákem). "A cosmic journey through hypnosis accompanied by slow soothing beats and patterns, analog synthesizer, layered vocals..." In Abyss as a Prague producer working mainly with hardware and modulator has a successful EP release Patterns (electronic, breakbeat, idm, electro). timmi is a producer creating with her own voice, synthesizer, sampler, keyboard, on which she creates dense drones.

A soundwalk is a route that is planned with the intention to listen while walking. The New Wilderness soundwalks will focus on listening to specific ‘new wilderness’ sites in the Bornholmer/Pankow neighbourhood of Berlin and beside the railway lines that are a significant feature of the area. It also includes a guided tour of the site-specific Dagmar Šubrtová. The meeting point is at the Bornholmerstrasse SBahn station. Free entry, but capacity is limited, so please register in advance at iv@bubec.cz.

Peter Cusack is a sound artist and musician based in London and Berlin. From 1978-1986 he was a member of the avant-garde musical quartet Alterations. He is a member of Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CriSAP); a founding member of the London College of Communication at the University of the Arts London; and a founding member and director of the London Musicians' Collective. He is the author of numerous soundtrack albums, including Where Is the Green Parrot?, 1999; Day for Night, 2000 (with M. Eastley); Baikal Ice, 2003. He is also the author of the Sounds From Dangerous Places project, where he collects sound recordings from places affected by environmental pollution (Chernobyl, oil fields in Azerbaijan, dams in southern Turkey, brown coal mines in the Ruhr, Aral Lake in Kazakhstan). He is the author of the guidebook Berlin Sonic Places.

A soundwalk is a route that is planned with the intention to listen while walking. The New Wilderness soundwalks will focus on listening to specific ‘new wilderness’ sites in the Bornholmer/Pankow neighbourhood of Berlin and beside the railway lines that are a significant feature of the area. It also includes a guided tour of the site-specific Dagmar Šubrtová. The meeting point is at the Bornholmerstrasse SBahn station. Free entry, but capacity is limited, so please register in advance at iv@bubec.cz.

Peter Cusack is a sound artist and musician based in London and Berlin. From 1978-1986 he was a member of the avant-garde musical quartet Alterations. He is a member of Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CriSAP); a founding member of the London College of Communication at the University of the Arts London; and a founding member and director of the London Musicians' Collective. He is the author of numerous soundtrack albums, including Where Is the Green Parrot?, 1999; Day for Night, 2000 (with M. Eastley); Baikal Ice, 2003. He is also the author of the Sounds From Dangerous Places project, where he collects sound recordings from places affected by environmental pollution (Chernobyl, oil fields in Azerbaijan, dams in southern Turkey, brown coal mines in the Ruhr, Aral Lake in Kazakhstan). He is the author of the guidebook Berlin Sonic Places.

You can also take an experimental sound ride with a DJ on the way back from Berlin. Whether you visited our festival or not. It is an opportunity to experience something different and return on a comfortable flight from Berlin to Prague on a Sunday afternoon.

Partner: Kladenská dopravní a strojní s. r. o.

You can take the experimental sound ride also on the way back from Berlin. Whether you visited our festival or not. Cosmodan & Mimomrtn prepared an ambient set for you. Martin Janíček will have a sound performance. It is an opportunity to experience something different and return on a comfortable flight from Berlin to Prague on a Sunday afternoon. We will depart from Berlin Central Station. You can order a ticket at GoOut.

Mimomrtn is a Prague DJ who always serves an adventurous journey across several decades and genres. You may know him from Fluido club nights, where he performed several times.

Mobile version of the exhibition Outside of the Gallery! and the film of the same name will present to foreign audiences a cross-section of the development of art in public space in the Czech Republic after 1989. It also includes a screening of the documentary film of the same name by Jan Strejcovský. Dan Merta, director of the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery, will guide you through the exhibition.

Tomáš Moravec created a site-specific called Emergency radar reflector located in Tour & Taxis park. This work contains of three objects and an AR application. What inspired him, how the work was created and how it works, all this you will learn during a guided tour with the artist.

The youngest generation of fashion designers from the Czech Republic and Belgium. The most innovative views on fashion. The most beautiful space in Brussels. A joint show of the rising stars of the European fashion scene.

Pierre Urban will perform with his DJ set.