Books by Tereza Stejskalova
Come Closer: The Biennale Reader, 2020
Come Closer: The Biennale Reader was published on the occasion of the first Biennale Matter of Ar... more Come Closer: The Biennale Reader was published on the occasion of the first Biennale Matter of Art and presents various perspectives on class, race, and gender differences as they manifest themselves in the specific contexts of post-socialist states—in their histories as well as in the present day. The focus is on art as a specific language that can mediate various experiences, while centering on emotions, intimacy, and care. This reader includes republished texts as well as newly commissioned contributions from both emerging and established artists, social and political scientists, and art historians from Eastern Europe, Asia, and the United States. The anthology was edited by Tereza Stejskalová and Vít Havránek, curators of the Biennale Matter of Art 2020. The book is available for purchase at the Biennale Center and at the GHMP as well as online via Sternberg Press.
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
Featured authors:
Jérôme Bazin, Heather Berg, Pavel Berky, Anna Daučíková, Patrick D. Flores , Isabela Grosseová, Vít Havránek, Marie Iljašenko, Rado Ištok, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Eva Koťátková, Kateřina Lišková, Ewa Majewska, Tuan Mami, Alice Nikitinová, Alma Lily Rayner, Sarah Sharma, Jiří Skála, Adéla Souralová, Edita Stejskalová, Tereza Stejskalová, Matěj Spurný, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Simone Wille
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The Algerian director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (1934) and the recently deceased Syrian director Na... more The Algerian director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (1934) and the recently deceased Syrian director Nabil Maleh (1936–2016) are considered founding fathers of their national cinematography and key figures in Arab cinematography. Due to their politically engaged and aesthetically unique work, they are also read and recognised on an international level. However, there is little acknowledgement of the fact that in the 1960s both studied at FAMU in Prague, a fact that definitely influenced their work. Other distinguished Asian and African directors who studied at FAMU include the Sri Lankan director Piyasiri Gunaratna (1939) and the Tunisian documentarist Hafed Bouassida (1947), as well as dozens of other directors, cameramen and scriptwriters from various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The bi-lingual publication includes interviews with some of the directors (Hafed Bouassida, Pyasiri Gunaratna) as well as studies on the work of Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (by Olivier Hadouchi) or Nabil Maleh (by Kay Dickinson). A more general cultural context is provided via an essay by the Czech researcher Daniela Hannová on Arab students in Czechoslovakia. Included is also the text by Alice Lovejoy mapping the trip of the Czech New Wave director František Vláčil to China.
Czech-English Edition
Editor: Tereza Stejskalová
Authors: Tereza Stejskalová, Kay Dickinson, Oliver Hadouchi, Daniela Hannová, Alice Lovejoy
Interviews: Tereza Stejskalová, Hafed Bouassida, Piyasiri Gunaratna
Redaction: Věra Janíčková
Language corrector: Dana Mikulejská, Phil Jones
Translation: Phil Jones
Graphic design: Tereza Hejmová, Kristýna Žáčková
Illustration č/b: 30
Pages: 237
Print run: 400
Publisher: tranzit.cz
Distribution: Kosmas
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Kým je dnes umělec? Jaká je role umělce či intelektuála ve společnosti? Jaký je vztah mezi teorií... more Kým je dnes umělec? Jaká je role umělce či intelektuála ve společnosti? Jaký je vztah mezi teorií a praxí? Takové otázky si klade kniha umělkyně Barbory Kleinhamplové a kritičky umění Terezy Stejskalové. Jedná se o soubor rozhovorů se společensky angažovanými umělci či teoretiky, kteří zároveň konkrétní historický moment, v němž žijí a působí, nějak kriticky a inspirativně myšlenkově pojímají.
Kniha představuje mimo jiné úvahy umělkyně a teoretičky Hito Steyerl, filozofů Franca „Bifo“ Berardiho, Borise Groyse a Borise Budena, umělce a kurátora Artura Żmijewského, feministické teoretičky Silvie Federici či uměleckých skupin Bureau of Melodramatic Research a Čto dělať? S texty vedou dialog ilustrace Alexeye Klyuykova a Ladi Gažiové.
Texty: Barbora Kleinhamplová, Tereza Stejskalová
Ilustrace: Ladislava Gažiová, Alexey Klyuykov
Sazba: Tereza Hejmová
Vydala Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze v roce 2014
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Book Chapters by Tereza Stejskalova
New Ways of Doing Nothing, 2016
A reading of George Perec's Life: A User's Manual, Enrique Vila Matas' Bartleby and co., and Etie... more A reading of George Perec's Life: A User's Manual, Enrique Vila Matas' Bartleby and co., and Etienne Chambaud's Disclaimer through the story of Bartleby the Scrivener and vice versa.
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Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice
Airi: At the time when the art workers' organising process in Tallinn took place in 2010 and 2011... more Airi: At the time when the art workers' organising process in Tallinn took place in 2010 and 2011, we were searching contacts with other self-organised initiatives addressing precarious working conditions in the art and cultural sector. We wanted to learn from their practices and strategies, however, it wasn't easy to find such initiatives in Eastern Europe at that particular moment in 2010. We heard of recent cycles of politicisation that had already come to its end in Slovenia, or about networks being formed in Poland and Serbia in order to make interventions into discussions about cultural funding, but we managed to find only one initiative that was explicitly focused on questions around precarious labour conditions – the May Congress in Russia. When I came in contact with the Call Against Zero Wage initiative in Prague in 2012, the art workers' movement in Tallinn had already dissolved. Nevertheless, I found this encounter very intriguing because it felt like looking into a mirror. Not only because the art workers' mobilisation in both contexts had a similar starting point in terms of springing off from issues related to unpaid labour within exhibition practice, but also because I sensed a number of commonalities that originate from the particular socio-political constituencies of Eastern Europe. Some of these commonalities are related to the institutional structures of the local art worlds, shaped by the recent histories of post-socialist transition. Some are more connected to attitudes which are typically attributed to post-socialist subjectivity, such as the almost normative rejection of collective forms of action. Mobilising art workers in a peripheral location in Eastern Europe is thus a somewhat different challenge than in the big metropolises of the Western art world, where people are often already politicised and somewhat skilled in matters of self-organisation. Nevertheless, in addition to the similarities related to the social context in which the art workers' organising in Prague and Tallinn took place, I also find it interesting to reflect on the political and theoretical proximities of these two initiatives. For example, both initiatives share a certain political affinity with post-operaist theory – which, again, is sometimes seen as a Western product, and therefore double problematic, as it is also a Marxist strand of political thought that is very easily dismissed as illegitimate in the post-socialist region. And most of all, it has been interesting to observe the commonalities and differences in relation to the strategies that were adopted in Prague and Tallinn. It is rather thought-provoking to ask which strategies worked well in both contexts, which ones failed, and where did things develop completely differently. Tereza, would you please explain how did the Call Against Zero Wage campaign in Prague start, and how it has transformed over time? Tereza: The campaign started in November 2011 with an article titled Zero Wage in A2 cultural biweekly , a Czech journal covering both culture and politics. It was written by me, the artist Pavel Sterec, and the curator and critic Jiří Ptáček. Inspired by the ArtLeaks initiative, we articulated for the very first time the traumatic fact that artists are not paid for whatever program they provide for art institutions. We also criticised the lack of solidarity among artists, and the need for an initiative that would tackle the problem. The article caused quite an uproar. A number of artists and critics approached us and they suggested we do something collectively about " zero wage " and other problems. So we started to meet from time to time. In the end, we published Call Against Zero Wage, addressed to the directors of art institutions, and signed by over one hundred and fifty artists, curators, critics, writers, art students, etc. In it we asked the state institutions to fully cover the costs of projects they commissioned, and to pay artists fees. It sparked a real debate within the art scene not only about fees but also about the social identity of artists. Some reactions were very hostile. Yet, the directors of two important state institutions, the Moravian Gallery Brno and Gallery of Fine Art in Cheb, sent us their reply indicating they were open to discuss issues voiced in the call. We organised a number of lectures, participated in round tables and discussions, but in
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Drafts by Tereza Stejskalova
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Papers by Tereza Stejskalova
This essay focuses on the role of literary characters in Slavoj Žižek’s political theory. Žižek, ... more This essay focuses on the role of literary characters in Slavoj Žižek’s political theory. Žižek, when theorizing political agency, likes to turn to literary texts such as Sophocles’s Antigone or Herman Melville’sBartleby, The Scrivener, which exemplify his concepts. In his thinking, the truth of theory lies in its exemplification, in its practical demonstration. Thus the literary characters (Bartleby, Antigone) who provide examples register the fatal limits of his theory insofar as they prove to be models of authentic political agency, which one cannot actually follow. At the same time, however, they prove to be decisive in allowing Žižek to manipulate his readers in a more indirect and yet crucial manner.
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Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2022
The following essay explores the work of art as a site of encounter with human perceptual labor t... more The following essay explores the work of art as a site of encounter with human perceptual labor that plays a role in technical operations. It tackles the way such labor is deemed obsolete, soon to be replaced, and therefore surrogate even if it actually animates and reproduces automated vision systems. It explores how art goes about representing the ways in which such labor is undervalued and unrecognized. The text argues for reading in between the lines and images of Harun Farocki’s films, installations, and writings where the obsolescence of human labor emerges more as an ideological screen than a fact. It focuses on moments in his oeuvre which indicate that human labor, including cognition as automation’s last frontier, is not automated away but persists, changes site, undergoes restructuring, and becomes more hidden. More recent works by the eeefff collective and Elisa Giardina Papa explore the intertwined roles of human affection and vision labor in the necessarily failed attempts to teach machines to see and feel, to “clean” the algorithmic vision and affection from opacity and the queerness of real life. Both artists leave behind Farocki’s self-reflexive, detached spectator to involve the audience in more situated and embodied experiences of perception labor and the particular ways in which such labor has become outsourced and dispersed in semi-peripheries such as Sicily or Belarus. They try to express the price that people pay with their emotions and bodies for such work. Yet, in principle, they follow Farocki’s take on labor’s in/visibility in that they challenge the ruling ideologies that blind human vision to the realities of labor. The essay also pays attention to the ways in which both artistic and technical vision today are pre-determined by the logic of the gig economy.
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Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2021
ABSTRACT The following essay explores a video installation by Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz ... more ABSTRACT The following essay explores a video installation by Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz (b. 1972) titled Labour (2019) which presents us with graphic images of childbirth in reverse viewed from close up. The work casts light on the absence of birthing bodies in photography, moving images or other forms of visual art presented at art institutions, a topic not reflected upon in academic literature. Also, by portraying childbirth simultaneously as dying and killing, Labour starkly differs from mainstream visual culture representations, which tend to evade the more messy and unruly aspect of childbirth. The author situates the work in the context of recent interventions in theory and literature as well as Labour's feminist art precursors. These art works present us with a fearless, uncensored picture of the reality of childbirth in which the possibility that lives are rerouted, and people are damaged both physically and mentally, is palpable. As testaments of traumatic events that resist erasure from memory, these objects of art dissociate themselves from the present dominant ideologies surrounding reproduction to gesture towards an alternative future in which conditions for reproduction would be radically different.
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Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2021
The following essay explores a video installation by Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz (b. 1972)... more The following essay explores a video installation by Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz (b. 1972) titled Labour (2019) which presents us with graphic images of childbirth in reverse viewed from close up. The work casts light on the absence of birthing bodies in photography, moving images or other forms of visual art presented at art institutions, a topic not reflected upon in academic literature. Also, by portraying childbirth simultaneously as dying and killing, Labour starkly differs from mainstream visual culture representations, which tend to evade the more messy and unruly aspect of childbirth. The author situates the work in the context of recent interventions in theory and literature as well as Labour's feminist art precursors. These art works present us with a fearless, uncensored picture of the reality of childbirth in which the possibility that lives are rerouted, and people are damaged both physically and mentally, is palpable. As testaments of traumatic events that resist erasure from memory, these objects of art dissociate themselves from the present dominant ideologies surrounding reproduction to gesture towards an alternative future in which conditions for reproduction would be radically different.
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Art Margins Online, 2021
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This essay offers insight into the recent interest in art dropouts. It considers artists such as ... more This essay offers insight into the recent interest in art dropouts. It considers artists such as Lee Lozano, Charlotte Posenenske, and Laurie Parsons, their work, their rejection of art and the art world, and the recent rediscovery of their lives and oeuvres. It proposes to see such gestures of refusal in the light of the Avant-garde's frustration with art's autonomy and their desire to introduce new forms of social practice by means of art. Inspired by Hal Foster's employment of Freudian Nachträglichkeit (deferred action), it perceives the recent interest in the art dropout as an occurrence in which it is possible to take cognizance of this figure for the first time. Further, the essay describes various projects (exhibitions and theoretical writing) that have undertaken to thematize or conceptualize this phenomenon and to consider it critically. The main thesis of the essay is that they operate through the logic of fetishistic denial (Verleugnung) by which the traumatic paradox of art's autonomy is both recognized and denied.
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The essay focuses on leftist theorists and philosophers who participate in art collectives in ord... more The essay focuses on leftist theorists and philosophers who participate in art collectives in order to pursue the practical dimension of philosophy (the transformation of subjects) through artistic practice. The activities of two art groups – the Paris-based Claire Fontaine and the Russian collective Chto delat? – are examined for that purpose. Employing the written word to highlight the ways in which their art should be understood or acting paternalistically, both groups are considered part of the didactic tradition in art. In their theoretical writings and statements, however, these groups refuse the authority of the author (Claire Fontaine) or call for egalitarian pedagogies (Chto delat?). The conflict between what these collectives explicitly claim and their didactic gesture is taken to reflect a deeper problem in radical-left discourse today.
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Books by Tereza Stejskalova
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
Featured authors:
Jérôme Bazin, Heather Berg, Pavel Berky, Anna Daučíková, Patrick D. Flores , Isabela Grosseová, Vít Havránek, Marie Iljašenko, Rado Ištok, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Eva Koťátková, Kateřina Lišková, Ewa Majewska, Tuan Mami, Alice Nikitinová, Alma Lily Rayner, Sarah Sharma, Jiří Skála, Adéla Souralová, Edita Stejskalová, Tereza Stejskalová, Matěj Spurný, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Simone Wille
The bi-lingual publication includes interviews with some of the directors (Hafed Bouassida, Pyasiri Gunaratna) as well as studies on the work of Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (by Olivier Hadouchi) or Nabil Maleh (by Kay Dickinson). A more general cultural context is provided via an essay by the Czech researcher Daniela Hannová on Arab students in Czechoslovakia. Included is also the text by Alice Lovejoy mapping the trip of the Czech New Wave director František Vláčil to China.
Czech-English Edition
Editor: Tereza Stejskalová
Authors: Tereza Stejskalová, Kay Dickinson, Oliver Hadouchi, Daniela Hannová, Alice Lovejoy
Interviews: Tereza Stejskalová, Hafed Bouassida, Piyasiri Gunaratna
Redaction: Věra Janíčková
Language corrector: Dana Mikulejská, Phil Jones
Translation: Phil Jones
Graphic design: Tereza Hejmová, Kristýna Žáčková
Illustration č/b: 30
Pages: 237
Print run: 400
Publisher: tranzit.cz
Distribution: Kosmas
Kniha představuje mimo jiné úvahy umělkyně a teoretičky Hito Steyerl, filozofů Franca „Bifo“ Berardiho, Borise Groyse a Borise Budena, umělce a kurátora Artura Żmijewského, feministické teoretičky Silvie Federici či uměleckých skupin Bureau of Melodramatic Research a Čto dělať? S texty vedou dialog ilustrace Alexeye Klyuykova a Ladi Gažiové.
Texty: Barbora Kleinhamplová, Tereza Stejskalová
Ilustrace: Ladislava Gažiová, Alexey Klyuykov
Sazba: Tereza Hejmová
Vydala Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze v roce 2014
Book Chapters by Tereza Stejskalova
Drafts by Tereza Stejskalova
Papers by Tereza Stejskalova
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
Featured authors:
Jérôme Bazin, Heather Berg, Pavel Berky, Anna Daučíková, Patrick D. Flores , Isabela Grosseová, Vít Havránek, Marie Iljašenko, Rado Ištok, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Eva Koťátková, Kateřina Lišková, Ewa Majewska, Tuan Mami, Alice Nikitinová, Alma Lily Rayner, Sarah Sharma, Jiří Skála, Adéla Souralová, Edita Stejskalová, Tereza Stejskalová, Matěj Spurný, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Simone Wille
The bi-lingual publication includes interviews with some of the directors (Hafed Bouassida, Pyasiri Gunaratna) as well as studies on the work of Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (by Olivier Hadouchi) or Nabil Maleh (by Kay Dickinson). A more general cultural context is provided via an essay by the Czech researcher Daniela Hannová on Arab students in Czechoslovakia. Included is also the text by Alice Lovejoy mapping the trip of the Czech New Wave director František Vláčil to China.
Czech-English Edition
Editor: Tereza Stejskalová
Authors: Tereza Stejskalová, Kay Dickinson, Oliver Hadouchi, Daniela Hannová, Alice Lovejoy
Interviews: Tereza Stejskalová, Hafed Bouassida, Piyasiri Gunaratna
Redaction: Věra Janíčková
Language corrector: Dana Mikulejská, Phil Jones
Translation: Phil Jones
Graphic design: Tereza Hejmová, Kristýna Žáčková
Illustration č/b: 30
Pages: 237
Print run: 400
Publisher: tranzit.cz
Distribution: Kosmas
Kniha představuje mimo jiné úvahy umělkyně a teoretičky Hito Steyerl, filozofů Franca „Bifo“ Berardiho, Borise Groyse a Borise Budena, umělce a kurátora Artura Żmijewského, feministické teoretičky Silvie Federici či uměleckých skupin Bureau of Melodramatic Research a Čto dělať? S texty vedou dialog ilustrace Alexeye Klyuykova a Ladi Gažiové.
Texty: Barbora Kleinhamplová, Tereza Stejskalová
Ilustrace: Ladislava Gažiová, Alexey Klyuykov
Sazba: Tereza Hejmová
Vydala Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze v roce 2014