Vašulka Kitchen Brno
Vašulka Kitchen Brno (VKB) is a place for research, artistic experiment and informal education in the field of new media art. It consists of the archive of Woody and Steina Vašulkas’ work and a permanent exhibition of their selected works. We organize events aimed at commemorating and developing the artistic and philosophical legacy of the Vašulkas, pioneers in new media art with personal ties to Brno, and we support new media art production.
At the end of 2016, an initiative was established in Brno to found Vašulka Kitchen, an art space referring to the work of the artists Steina Briem Bjarnadottir and Bohuslav Woody Vašulka. In October 2018, in the cooperation with the Vasulkas, we ceremoniously launched the activities of the New Media Art Center in Brno Art House. Our goals are to preserve and mediate the work of the Vasulkas and develop their legacy.
From the end of the 80's and the beginning of the 90's, several (non-profit) artistic initiatives in Czechia dealt with the art of video, electronic media, and later digital art. Today, VKB is one of the few specialized (non-academic) projects in this area. It is important that in the international context it becomes part of a network of institutions focused on the promotion, archiving, research, or distribution of art based on moving images, sound, electronic networks, coding, and performativity as an artistic practice.
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Vasulka Kitchen Brno is a place for study and research. It gives the public access to the digital archive, the Vasulka media library and provides accompanying programmes. In cooperation with the Vasulka Chambre at the National Gallery of Iceland, we take care of he archive and the artworks in our collection. We take care of the acquisition and cataloguing of materials related to the work and life of the Vasulka family. We continue to map and reflect on their work in a broader cultural and international context, and we also research and process works by other artists in the field of new/electronic media art. We provide facilities for Czech and international researchers, students, teachers and curators and initiate research projects and conferences.
The association of Vasulka Kitchen Brno
Founding of The Centre for the New Media art, dedicated to the legacy of Woody and Steina Vašulka‘s was initiated by the association the Centre for New Media Art - Vašulka Kitchen Brno, founded in 2016 by Tomáš Ruller, Jennifer Helia DeFelice and Viktor Pantůček.
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The committee
Mg.A. Jennifer DeFelice, PhD.
She was born in New York, where she graduated in arts at SUNY Empire State College. In 1993, she moved do Brno, where she absolved the Department of Photo-Perfomance at FaVU VUT in the studio of Tomáš Ruller. She works as a lecturer there. She is active as a performer, new media artists, curator, and a musician. She used to play in the band "Sledě, živé sledě", she participated in the project of Cafe9.org. She performed in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, USA. She used to work in the media-archive at FaVU and co-ordinated the exhibition Hi-tech Art in Brno.
Mgr. Marika Svobodová
She is a curator based in Brno Art House and Vasulka Kitchen, in which is also a coordinator. She used to be a lecturer at the Seminar of the history of art at Masaryk University, Brno.
Mgr. Barbora Šedivá, Ph.D.
Barbora is an independent curator and an art manager, the deputy of 4AM/Forum for Architecture and Media, the director of the space PRAHA in Brno and platform Multiplace, and also one of the founding member of the archive Monoskop.org. At the Department of Theory of Interactive Media at MUNI she led a seminar focused on active examining of archives, actual tendencies in new media art. In Vasulka Kitchen Brno, she coordinates the research concerned with the Vasulkas' Archive processing.
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The Chairman of Honour
Prof. Tomáš Ruller (born 1957 in Brno) is a Czech visual artist and performer. He graduated in 1982 from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His work includes multimedia works, performances, installations, videos, architectural realisations and stage design. He was initiator and participant in many unofficial art exhibitions and festivals such as Malechov (1980 and 1981), Malostranské dvorky (Prague, 1981), Meeting in Courts (Prague, 1982) or Chmelnice (Mutějovice, 1983). Co-founded the European International Performance Arts Movement The Western Attraction / Western-East Project (since 1983) and the follow-up Black Market (since 1986), (Open Situation), etc. He exhibited and presented his events in most European countries, in Israel, Canada, Japan, USA, Mexico, China. His activities are connected to artist as Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic, Stelarc or Orlan, as well as to personalities of electronic art such as Steina and Woody Vašulka or Van Gogh TV. Since 1994 prof. Tomáš Ruller is the head of the Department of Video-Multimedia-Performance of the Faculty of Fine Arts - VUT in Brno, where he was a Dean between 1998-2000. He lives and works in Brno and Prague.
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Members
Jana Horáková
She works as an associate professor at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, and is the guarantor of the art study program Theory of Interactive Media. In recent years, he has focused on exploring the potential of new media in the context of historiographic research into the art of new media: see the virtual reconstruction of the computer graphics exhibition of 1968 / Computer Graphic Re-visited; or a current project focused on the use of artificial neural networks and interactive interfaces in the analysis and mediation of Vašulková's work / Media Art Live Archive).
Lenka Dolanová
Art historian and curator. She used to work at the Vysočina Regional Gallery in Jihlava (OGV), where, among other things, she has founded the IGLOO sound gallery and the O_kraj cultural newspaper. She is a member of the associations yo-yo, KRA - Kravín Rural Arts and Vašulka Kitchen Brno. Her dissertation was published in a book entitled Dialogue with the Demons of Instruments: Stein and Woody Vasulka (2011, NAMU and JSFA). She currently works at the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice (VČG), and as a curator she collaborates with a number of other institutions.
Ondřej Merta
Musician and founder of the Brno music initiative Bastl Instruments, where he creates and invents synthesizers for electronic music in the spirit of sustainability.
Mgr. Viktor Pantůček, Ph.D.
Musicologist and playwright, lives and works in Brno. He graduated in musicology from Masaryk University in Brno in 2003 and has been working as a teacher at the Institute of Musicology since then. He is the dramaturg of the Exposition of New Music festival and since 2015 the dramaturg of the Brno Contemporary Orchestra.
Terezie Petišková
Director of the Brno House of Arts. She lectured at the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, where she explained the history of visual art in the second half of the 20th century. She also worked as an assistant at the detached Department of Design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in Zlín, then led the Galerie Mladých ("The Youth Gallery") and the U Dobrého pastýře Gallery at the Brno Cultural Center. Since 1997 she has participated in the preparation of V. and VI. part of the History of Czech Fine Arts edition at the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences in Prague. For example, the exhibition "Czechoslovak Socialist Realism 1948–1958" (Galerie Rudolfinum, 2002) or "The Field of Creative and War" drew on this art-historical research. Fine art from the collections of the VHÚ Prague ”(Moravian Gallery in Brno, 2008). (Artlist)
Miloš Vojtěchovský
He graduated from aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Active in the field of folk music and fine arts in Prague and elsewhere since the mid-1970s. Pedagogical and professional activities: cooperation on Imaginary Museum Projects in Amsterdam, a lecturer at the Department of Theory and History of Art at FaVU VUT and at the Department of the FAMU Center for Audiovisual Studies, a curator of the Školská 28 gallery, psychicity geology project sonicity.cz, symposium and festival vs. Interpretation, an initiator of the project On the Boundary of Solitude 2015-2016. He lives and works in Prague.
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Former members
Matěj Kotouček
Musician, promoter, member of the Brno AVA collective and founder of the audiovisual project Sky To Speak. At Bastl Instruments, he is involved in community activities and music publishing at Nona Records. He is active in the electroacoustic duo Thistle, which participates in the workshops Vlnobytí, connecting movement exercises, dance and improvised music. In addition to his own work, he composed music for several plays (Feste Theater) or for video games.
Nikol Štrobachová
A Lecturer, activist and a musician associated with Synth Library Prague. She also co-founded the team of musicians Pink Noise, creates tutorials Patchení with Nikol, organizes educational workshops and experiments with connecting live plants and synthesizers. She performs under the stage name Kukla.
