Katedra teorií a dějin umění

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    Techniky a technologie na kompenzaci bezmoci
    (Národní filmový archiv, 2024-11-08) Pavlík, Matěj
    The video essay Techniques and Technologies to Compensate for Powerlessness is an artistic research output that exemplifies Matěj Pavlík’s approach to historiography, developed through individual projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. Pavlík’s work often focuses on a reflexive approach to fiction, speculation, or myth-making. In this essay, the artist examines the role of borderline science technologies invented in late socialist Czechoslovakia. These technologies (e.g., telesthesia, healing, and locating geopathogenic zones) were linked to research in borderline scientific fields like psychotronics and psychoenergetics. The artist critically analyzes these technologies, highlighting their socio- political and economic contexts. Pavlík suggests that these technologies were responses to the specific crises of high modernity, compensating for feelings of alienation or powerlessness. How can we grasp these techniques and technologies in the present? He hypothesizes that the emergence and proliferation of these borderline scientific practices, particularly healing, in late socialist Czechoslovakia might reflect the era’s disillusionment and the failure of Marxist ideals of emancipation. The attempt to treat individuals and the public space at the hands of the late socialist healer may thus have been a way to individualize social risks and harms. Throughout the video essay, Pavlík argues that the institutionalization of these „wondrous“ techniques and technologies was an attempt to inhabit and adapt to the so-called pharmakon of late modernity: the poison and cure called the Scientific and Technological Revolution.
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    Art-Historical Empiricism and Digital Visualization of Cultural Heritage
    (Springer Nature, 2025-03-12) Bulvas Stejskal, Jakub
    Digital visualizations of cultural heritage (DVCs) are typically used to re-create or re-imagine artworks in their original state. Their apparent efficiency raises questions about their relation to the historical artefacts: What is the visualizations’ status vis vis the originals? Can they replace them? And if so, in what capacity? This paper explores these questions from the point of view of the DVCs’ potential epistemic yield. It argues that the knowledge they are supposed to provide amounts to mediating past experiences the artefacts they model occasioned and that in this role they serve an agenda with a long pedigree labelled ‘art-historical empiricism’ (AHE). However, historicism about perception can saw doubt into the AHE enterprise, including the use of DVCs. The paper maintains that if AHE is to justify or guide the DVCs’ proliferation in museums and historical scholarship, its proponents better be equipped with means of assuaging the doubt. The paper closes by discussing a general strategy of testing the soundness of epistemic uses of DVCs.
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    Presence/Absence: Constructing Queer Histories
    (University of Hawai'i at Mnoa, Department of Art and Art History, 9. 2. 2021, 2021-02-09) Jackson, Ladislav
    Art historian Ladislav Zikmund-Lender will discuss qriting and performing queer art history in Central European context, providing insight into how the history of queer lives and experiences is being documented and presented in the Czech Republic. His talk will compare and contrast the ways that the path to queer emancipation in Central Europe has been distinct from the United States.
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    Kalifornská story: Queer malíř Orrin Peck a jeho „druhá máma“ Phoebe Hearst
    (Společnost pro queer paměť, 2020-10-15) Jackson, Ladislav
    Phoebe Apperson Hearst měla velmi úspěšného vlastního syna Williama, který byl ale více jako jeho otec: tvrdý obchodník. Našla však jemnou, uměleckou duši v malíři Orrinu Peckovi (1860–1921), který byl údajně gay a který ji, ještě za života své vlastní matky, začal oslovovat „má druhá mámo.“ Na základě podrobného výzkumu jejich vzájemné korespondence v Peckově pozůstalosti se můžeme ptát, jak moc si byla progresivní, bohatá žena 19. století, jakou byla Phoebe Hearst, vědoma Peckovy sexuality a pokud ano, jestli s tím neměla problém, nebo šlo o nevyřčené tajemství mezi nimi? Jejich příběh představí historik umění Ladislav Zikmund-Lender.
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    Bohemian Rhapsody? Writing and Collecting Queer Cultural History in the Czech Republic
    (GLBT Historical Society, 2020-01-23) Jackson, Ladislav
    In autumn 2019, the Czech Republic celebrated the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which ended four decades of communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia. New freedoms have made it easier for LGBTQ people to live their lives more openly in this Central European country, yet they still face significant challenges. Established in 2014, the Society for Queer Memory is the first Czech queer archives and museum. It now holds more than 1,000 objects. Art historian Ladislav Zikmund-Lender will discuss the work of the organization, providing insight into how the history of queer lives and experiences is being documented and presented in the Czech Republic. His talk will compare and contrast the ways that the path to queer emancipation in Central Europe has been distinct from the United States.