Author: Gabriela Prochazka

Stranger than Paradise

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

experimental documentary (in develepment)
Directed by: Gabriela Procházka
Produced by: Alžběta Janáčková (Silk films)

An audiovisual essay with a particular focus on ecology, climate change, and poetry. It moves between an audiovisual essay and a hybrid document, with its images overlaid and polluted by commonly unseen or unrepresented phenomena. This interplay between footage and abstract visualization produces the effect of describing, distorting, morphing, and visualizing what we may otherwise be unable to fully grasp in our complex, contemporary world. Additionally, this mediation is achieved not only through the image but also with the help of sound artists. The film is divided into 5 chapters, each dedicated to a particular aspect of the “natural world” as we know it now – in the context of the emerging Anthropocene and climate change

Sensory Test

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

Sensory Test
13min
audiovisual intervention
projection, RGB led lights, hazer

Project by: Gabriela Prochazka & Lunchmeat studio

concept / creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
animation: Pavel Žáček
sound design: Ondra Mikula
typography: Anymade studio
voiceover: Justin Lavash

photography: Lukáš Havlena, Filip Kustka, Jakub Doležal

Opening performance: Ponec – dance theatre

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photos: Martin Kubalec, Gabriela Prochazka

13min, multimedia performance
laser, video projection, prismatic foil, 2 channel sound, 9 performers

For the special opening of the dance theatre Ponec’s 20th season I created a space that started out as a light installation and gradually turned into a proper dance party. The idea was to give the dancers a chance to work themselves into the ecstatic or almost trance-like state that can sometimes occur at rave parties and which embodies total freedom of body and mind – that moment when nothing else in the world exists except for the music and the body moving with it.

A laser drawing was projected onto the building’s facade and into a special prismatic circle that was hung above the entrance. The wind interacted with the circle, and so sometimes the projection mapping worked precisely, but at other times it was more up to luck. This created a sense of playful chance, which was dependent on the weather conditions at the time.

Concept, creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
Laser, light installation: Gabriela Prochazka
Support: Lunchmeat studio
Sound: Oliver Torr
Choreography: Jindřiška Křivánková

Performers:
Viktor Černický
Cecile Da Costa
Markéta Jandová
David Králík
Tereza Lenerová Hradílková
Žaneta Musilová
Jaroslav Ondruš
Jazmína Piktorová
Ester Trčková

Special thanks to:
Václav Kovář
Ondra Eliášek
David Vrbík
Eliška Kociánová
Jan Slanina

Light Messages III.

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

Laser intervention at the Počerady coal-fired power plant, the largest polluter and producer of greenhouse gases in the Czech Republic. It emits 5.5 million tons of CO2 and 223 kg of Mercury into the surrounding landscape every year, yet is only able to make use of 1/3 of the energy it produces.

“We act locally, but our activity is global. Similar artistic interventions are taking place around the world. We don’t have a second planet. Humankind must unite to save it. We are not activists, we are nature protecting itself.”

Inspired by global activist movements, post-internet culture, and claims, the projections on cooling towers included messages including, “Shit is fucked up and bullshit,‘‘ “#nofilter,” “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit,” “We’re losing time,” as well as information on the toxic waste it produces, and, of course, classical ‘‘Stop coal.”

Made by Czech light artist collective to support local and global climate movement.


Photos: racek
Supported by: Lunchmeat studio, Greenpeace Česká republika , Limity jsme my Extinction Rebellion, Hnutí Duha, Fridays for Future & many more …

Good Citizen (video art)

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka
opening January 2021
www.goodcitizens.info

sound design: Jesse Osborne Lanthier, Ondra Mikula (AID KID)
graphic design: Matej Moravec
technical support: Lunchmeat studio

The project takes us into a dystopian news channel where a synthetic avatar presents us in a confident voice with the dos and don‘ts of our era.

What is the relationship between media and politics? 

With the rise of deep and neural networks, a new question arrives, who are these people and what the f*ck are they smiling at?

Hermetic understanding of technology might account for it’s perceived errors by pointing out that reality is never that simple but/that there’s always a meaning beyond the meaning, that answers can be multiple, contested, and potentially infinite.



The project was created during the artist’s residency at Instrument Inventors, Hague, NL. Preview during No Patent Pending, Rewire festival 2020.

Forbidden

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka
photos: Lukas Havlena



𝙁𝙊𝙍𝘽𝙄𝘿𝘿𝙀𝙉 /45min/
CGI movie x concert x performance
 
The end of the world was never this fruitful 🍎
 
What can have a movie screening, concert, clubbing, and performance art in common? In this project we’re testing the borders: join us on the journey of our danse macabre where the audience, performers, and art forms melt together.
From neo-Tarkovsky footage about anthropocene to a techno party.
 
Please note: It is not required for the audience to just sit on their seats.
 
creative direction: Gabriela Procházka
concept: Gabriela Procházka, Anna Ribanská, Jindřiška Křivánková
music: LOFN
choreography & performance: Jindřiška Křivánková, Anna Ribanská, Václav Kovář
set design, light design: Gabriela Prochazka
video art: Michal Žilinský
costumes & make-up: Andrijana Trpkovič
typography: Petr Fašianok
technical support: Gomi Fernandéz (Lunchmeat studio)
 
The project is realized with financial support by Ministery of Culture of the Czech Republic.

Dates:
6.12.2019 Lunchmeat Festival National Gallery, Convent of St.Agnes, Prague, CZ
17.7.2020 Festival Nultý bod, Studio Alta, Prague, CZ

Light messages II.

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

concept, creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
photos: Petr Zewlak Vrabec, Martin Janousek

The aim of the art intervention was at one hand to focus on the local problem but also to point out its global outreach. The projected claims were linked to some of the famous pop-culture memes as well as to similar art initiatives happening all around the world. The other aim of the art intervention was to try to answer the question if and how art in public spaces can help to accent the problems of the global society.

According to ecologists, the Chvaletice power plant has a huge impact on climate change, burning brown coal from the North Bohemian mines, thus emitting a large number of toxic substances such as mercury and carbon oxides into the air.

The actions of ecological activists draw attention to the fact that if the Czech Republic does not cease to burn coal by 2030, it would not meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement from 2015. The Czech government is far from setting any detailed plan for phasing out coal power plants. On the contrary, it was just recently that the Chvaletice power plant was provided an exception from the European limits for the carbon oxides and mercury which are going to be implemented in 2021.

Many thanks for support:
Lunchmeat studio
Limity jsme my
Greenpeace CZ

NEON CHAMBERS

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Kanding Ray & James Sigha
Veletrzni Palac, Lunchmeat Festival 2018

3CZ 1234

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Signal Festival of Lights 2018, Prague, CZ
cages, incandescent light bulbs, 8 channel sound

sound design: Robert Lippok
technical sketch: Filip Mirbauer
production: Vojtech Loskot
technical support: David Fernandez

The name of the projects paraphrases the code labeling of eggs from battery cage breeding. The objective of the installation is to bring awareness of the life of laying hens.
In some cages were hidden facts from industrial farming:

The hens live their whole life on a surface which is not much bigger than an A4-sized sheet of paper.

Factory farms often use light intensity to influence the animals behavior and biorhythm.

There are more chickens in the world than there are any other species of bird: more than 20 billion of them are reared annually for food.

Battery cages are the least respectful form of housing hens.

Factory farmed animals never get out to fresh air, nor do they ever see the Sun in their entire lives.

Made as a supporting installation for a campaign of non-profit organization Obraz-Obranci zvirat.
www.obrancizvirat.cz

In Rainbows

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka




 

photo prints, 420 x 594 / 297 x 420
Galerie Cella, Bludny Kamen, Opava, CZ, 2018

This photographic collection explores the light bending phenomenon and it’s correlation between science and art. Visual dynamic structures suggest that light is a potent medium, able to create ephemeral scenes reminiscent of abstract art movements. When darkness is a canvas, and light is a paint.

The concept of each composition was cautiously built from prismatic materials around a source of a light and projected on a flat surface.

Images were photographed as they appeared to the naked eye.

Sky, Snow and Broken Sword

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

Gabriela Prochazka: Herz Performance - Rehearsing with Ichi Go - www.paulhenschel.com

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pics by: Evelin Belincakova, Paul Henschel

Gabriela Prochazka – direction / light design
Ichi Go – dance
Arielle Esther – sound design
Georg Werner – sound and light interface
Eyal Meistel – costume design

contemporary dance performance with elements of butoh
(butoh; also known as a dance of darkness)

In the first state, man and sword become one and each other. Here, even a blade of grass can be used as a lethal weapon. In the next stage, the sword resides not in the hand but in the heart. Even without a weapon, the warrior can slay his enemy from a hundred paces. But the ultimate ideal is when the sword disappears altogether. The warrior embraces all around him. The desire no longer exists. Only peace remains. – King of Qin, Hero

trailer / 2016
supported by Adam Csoka Keller, Eveline Belincakova, Sandro Mosco

Premiere:

18.3. 2017

DARKIDENTITIESDARKBODIES: Spektrum, Berlin, DE

 

Close (Known) Distant Worlds

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

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14. 10.–13. 11. 2016 / solo exhibition
Special 360 degree projection for NoD Video Gallery anniversary, Prague
curator: Veronika Zajačiková
exhibition here

4.11. 2016 / audiovisual performance with Vida Vojic (SWE), Spektrum, Berlin
performance here

installation / self-made visual machine, various liquids, light transmitting materials, ink, brushes / dimensions variable

These macro and microscopic visuals are a result of continuous investigation of pure materiality and what they could possibly tell us about how this universe was made. With the use of various common materials, these abstract organically structures collages emerge.

In daily life, one tends to disregard seemingly ordinary moments of passing natural elements, but when sculpted and captured in time, observation of these structures, might lead us into philosophies such as wabi-sabi which represents Japanese aesthetics and world view. Sometimes described as one of beauty that is ‘imperfect, impermanent and incomplete’. Understanding emptiness and imperfection was honoured as tantamount to the first step to satori, enlightenment. The idea is, that being surrounded by natural, changing, unique objects helps us connect to our real world. In one sense wabi-sabi is a training whereby one might find basic, natural objects interesting, fascinating and beautiful. Wabi-sabi can change our perception of the world to the extent that a chip or crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value.

« To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. »
– William Blake

http://nod.roxy.cz/cs

Schrödinger’s cat

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka
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video of audio set up { heart beat } here: https://vimeo.com/172349786

installation / cat skull, various light sources, black velvet, speakers 

Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. 

The work is Memento mori which has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.

We can see a part of a dead cat, to which a new life is given with light sources – fluorescent tubes ad LEDs, and illusion of a life beat with speaker turning themselves on/off.

Kraken

Posted on by Gabriela Prochazka

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Kraken Signal festival 2014 from Gabriela Prochazka on Vimeo.

audiovisual underwater installation

Vltava River, Prague, CZ
computer, open source softwares, microprocessor, digital LED lights, light transmitting materials
1800 x 500 x 100 cm

,,An uncertain world lies under the water surface.”

Kraken is a cryptid = from the Greek κρύπτω, krypto, meaning “hide” is a creature, whose existence has been suggested, but has not been discovered or documented by the scientific community. Legendary sea animal, gigantic in scale. It is said it lives in the northern seas. This time it arrives in Prague. One can miss it during the day, but not at night time, when it starts its own visual show, putting us in mind of the bioluminescent powers of deep water creatures.

teaser here
video of installation here

www.signalfestival.com