A project called “Modernism Already Was” is trying to give the general public a sense of Brno’s modernistic buildings. One of the target groups are selected buildings’ residents. Those will receive a letter containing information about a fictitious company being interested in buying the building, while the building’s qualities and historical value will be emphasised. Money then become a motive for recipient’s attention and can excite one’s interest in the house where
he or she lives and therefore one’s interest in an education in the field of modernism. Later, the residents will receive another letter, which will already introduce them into the campaign and ask them for further cooperation referring predominantly to a notification of what is the living in the particular house like. A website corresponding with content of both letters will be also integral to that.

Second target group is the general public that will come across “book points” in the streets, situated in front of several selected buildings. These points will try to catch passer-by’s attention and involve them into happening along with a short introduction to the project and the building. They will then be asked for writing their own reflections related to the particular building to the book. The points will also refer to a Facebook group, in which another Brno’s modernistic buildings will be introduced to the visitors. Thanks to being active on social media, it is possible to approach higher number of people and so reach wider field of education. For the end of the whole project, an event is planned; event, which will provide another interesting information via public lectures to people interested in a topic of Brno’s modernistic architecture. However, the main output will be publication summarizing primarily reflections on selected buildings and the campaign given by the public and residents themselves.

Modernism already was. But let’s not forget, that its heritage is still alive.

Photos from the creators’ personal archive.

Lviv is a special phenomenon of different memories where modernism got its unique sound. The multiculturalism of the city at that time contributed to the formation of a special heritage with intertwined religious and ethnic motives. Working with artifacts of material culture makes it possible to understand what objects transformed into historical objects can mean if we consider them as symptoms of the past. Тenement on 16 Kniazha Street has preserved the history of its owners, a Jewish family that tragically ended, as well as the fate of tens of thousands in Lviv. The apartment itself, its material preservation, is present in its absence, it reveals it too much. Here the absence is such a concentrated substance that it occupies its own space.

In the material embodiment of my project, called “Uncreated recollection. Act of Remembrance”, I intend to highlight the dialogue of details. The details dictated by the style of the time, those that were the daily visual routine of the owners. In Jewish culture, for many centuries, aesthetic experience has been an integral part of religious experience. In my work, I intend to turn to the ancient art of reisele. But not in the literal reproduction of the technique of cutting paper, but in the semantic selection of the composition that reveals the most important symbols physically intertwined. Paper installations will be located in the apartment during the residence. “With the help of paper, I intend to take prints, to form posthumous masks of layered energy from material objects. These are interior elements, fragments provided by the people involved. The installation should be an accumulation of different past worlds and their artifacts in the realm of simultaneity. Working with archival materials and residents will allow you to recreate in paper prints lost motifs, details of the apartment, and the rest of the house. It is the associative series formed due to the involvement of others that will reflect the changes over time in the forms of human worldview. The formed material series within the framework of understanding modernism and the interethnic context can be a step towards the transformation of models of historical memory.”

Photos from the author’s personal archive.

In this project called “Membrane” I want to investigate spaces, architecture and personal history of Villa Gaverzicht and translate them into autonomous sculptures. This can be done in scale models or in space-filling installations. My focus is mainly on the typical architectural elements of the building. But always in relation to the made-up interior and references to the personal elements of the residents or former residents. The sculptures therefore consist of 3 experience layers. 1 – global architecture, form / material use, 2 – interior form /material use and 3 – the personal references and story of the residents. Sculptures / installations thus form a new hybrid form that pays homage to both formal and substantive facets of the Villa and modern architecture.

The title “Membrane” comes from my belief that the house / home or by extension buildings or environment function as a second skin for humans. In theoretical physics and M-theory in particular, the term membrane refers to a spatially extended object. Membranes are the basic building blocks of particles and forces. My goal in this project is to analyze and show the DNA, the language of this building, its architect and residents as a formal vocabulary. I am particularly touched by the shapes of the house and the rhythms and textures. My work will therefore be an attempt to pay homage. The relationship with the house and our built environment is central to my research as an artist. We can read architecture purely as a function, but often it also betrays something about the life of the resident. Because of this I experience that the architecture around us works like a second skin that sometimes pinches, sometimes is too big for us as a searching person. We see that architecture as an extension of ours, so that it can be read both personally and universally. In this way architecture is a trigger to activate our memories and feelings or to stimulate our thinking about our being

I want to pay homage, but maybe also that the “viewer” could work physically and mentally with the language of this house and make new creations compositions. Then the house is the vocabulary and you can use it to create both a novel and poetry, something functional and something lyrical. I decided to develop one or more drawing templates that contain the language of the villa. That we can use this language and thus pay tribute time and again to this architecture and its maker & inhabitant.

Currently I am playing with 4 layers:

1 the building itself (surfaces and lines)

2 rhythm of floors and bricks

3 the stained glass window

4 personal elements of the current occupant and details inside

Currently I am in the phase that I draw these shapes out in contours and lines. Then we will cut these molds and compositions out of plexi with a laser cutter in order to have the thinking / drawing forms.

A creative moment

The White City of Tel Aviv was established in the early 20th century as a garden city, which latter embraced the modern architectural movement. As the Nazi party shut down Bauhaus school, many German Jewish architects moved to Tel Aviv. Trained in Walter Gropius hands these new residents kickstarted the formation of Tel Aviv’s White City. Throughout 20th century, many European decent Jews started their new lives in Tel Aviv, leading to mixed heritage Jews searching for common ground and identity.

In 2003 UNESCO recognized “White City” as an extraordinary example of city planning and architecture in the early 20th century, which to this day remain underappreciated by society. Artwork “Colorful lives of the White City” aim is to bring attention to the modernist heritage, share relevant stories, show that interwar modernist architecture can be seen as part of Jewish identity. Also, to engage local community in meaningful ways, and the process to create audio-visual work of art inspired by Liebling Haus – White City Centre. Final work will consist of LEGO model, historic context, audio stories and photos about the construction, neglect and renovation of the Liebling Haus – White City Centre. Artwork will emphasize the importance of preserving Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture in modern times, using Liebling Haus – White City Center as a an example.

During the creation process local residents will be encouraged to donate unused LEGO bricks for building Liebling Haus – White City Center LEGO model. Moreover, residents will be invited to co-create Liebling Haus – White City Center, symbolizing mixed heritage Jewish community building a common ground to preserve early 20th-century modernist heritage. Meanwhile residents, historians, modernist property owners will be encouraged to share their photos, stories and other media about the Liebling Haus history. Selected stories will be voiced by Tel Aviv’s  residents and incorporated into final artwork with historic photos of Max Liebling house.

Examples of Lego models constructed by Rokas Mikšiūnas.

The project “Arte-Factum” is based on the morphology of the Hardware store building, which has undergone changes over the years. Our goal is to point out the development of the external features of the building (external features), but also the connection with the purpose for which the building was used (internal context). We want to relate the modernist features that the building bears to the ideas of modernity (in general) through contextualization. We choose architecturally interesting parts of the exterior and interior of the building, from which we plan to create scale 3D models from original materials (concrete, glass, etc.). This will create a series of models that act as museum artifacts, and the architecture of our exhibition is also conceived in this style. The artifacts will be supplemented by QR codes, which take over the function of “labels” for the works, similar to what is the case in museums. After displaying the QR code, however, a caption does not appear, but a link to an animation that works with the visual morphology of a particular artifact. Animation acts at first as games (literally referring to them somewhere – tetris), but over time their original meaning, transformation, or more general context to the ideas of modernism that they mediate begins to appear. As an accompanying event, there will be placed interactive posters, which follow the tectonics of the building. The aim of the project will be to draw the viewer’s attention to interesting architectural elements and to place scaled elements in the city space. During the residence we want to create objects made of special polystyrene, which will represent enlarged parts of the building. These objects will be distributed around the city and will be accompanied by posters with photographic representation of objects. Posters will include a link to animations related to the objects. 

Photos from the personal archives of the artists.

The project called “Possibilities of Seeing Modernism” also asks: in what way one can write about architecture? Not science, just authentically human. Our project focuses on Bohuslav Fuchs’s own villa built in Brno in 1927-1928. There are so many architectural studies that discuss the villa from formal or functional standpoint. We feel no need to follow them. We want to observe the emotional aura surrounding the building. What does the owner think about the building? Who still lives from Fuchs’s family? How can you live in house with such an interesting history? And what history it was? How can you react artistically to this building? How do you see this monument, when you are student of art school? And how do you see it when you are teacher? Can you write a poetry about it? Is there a dark moment in history of the villa? What can we find? Who are we and how is architecture defining us? How can we interact with the house in moment of global pandemic? So many questions and no answers. Yet.

In the end, there will be a book that will hopefully collect all possible perspectives. Interviews with owner, architect, historian, granddaughter of the architect. We’ll include also artworks of our students. We want to be as authentic as possible. There will be the good stuff, our successes. There will be the bad stuff, our fails. Our steps towards this publication are post on social media of the project. YouTube and Facebook: @MOFU Fuchs 2022 ; Instagram: @Mofu_Fuchs_2022 

Radial Archeology of the Place – it is the embodiment a historical, acoustic study of the building and its surroundings in the directions of 16 axes (which are the basis of the architectural solution of the chapel). Sound walks along the axes are aimed at forming acoustic casts from the urban space and the chapel itself, as well as the search and documentation of certain special places, spaces, objects, fragments that will be part of the exhibition.

Based on the study of history, space, stories of people and found objects or photographs from the walks on the axes, an interactive installation object will be created, touching the elements of which will allow you to listen to and layer sound experiences, descriptions and stories. It is also important to understand that being in the instant space of the chapel and talking to citizens can and will affect both the process of creation and the result of the residence, which, in my opinion, will only increase the nature of immersion and quality of the project and reveal the chapel.

The Chapel of the Resurrection of Christ in Kortrijk, despite the obvious visual resemblance and reference to the Church of the St. Louis Abbey, is perceived as a separate, conceptually independent building. Unlike the “original”, the building in Kortrijk, in my humble opinion, has a different architectural sensitivity – not only modernistic, but also medieval, especially – Gothic. Perhaps it is an attempt by an architect to combine the Modernism’s perception of architectural form as a sculpture with Gothic arches, stained glass and light, as in the local Church of Our Lady. Such architectural, spatial, stylistic, and conceptual combination of intertemporallity with sacral architecture is fascinating.

Short film Papagalo, what’s the time? explores the architecture of former Yugoslavian pavilion from Brussels World Expo (1958) in its current function as Sint-Pauluscollege school house. The film follows group of young students playing at the site of the building. Kids take the audience from outdoors to the interior space of the modernist pavilion. The movement of the children emphasize the dynamics, openness and transparency of the space – the main features of the much-praised architecture of the pavilion. Materials like glass, wood, steel will be elevated through the framing of the camera. The socialist banners and photographs of former Yugoslavia originating from the display of the expo will be placed in a dialogue with the contemporary elements of the school building. The aim of the film is to create a poetic exchange between the architecture and the current function of the building, where architecture stands for the utopian history of former Yugoslavia and the children refer to the context of contemporary Flanders. It’s precisely the dialogue between the solid walls and the moving bodies which the film is exploring. It’s the balance, sometimes a friction but always an exchange between the past and present which the author is seeking in her work. The film will be executed in collaboration with students of Sint-Pauluscollege and will be shot on 16mm film.

*Papagalo, what’s the time? is a name of Croatian children’s game and refers to the original nationality of the architect of the pavilion Vjenceslav Richter.

The project called “A White Space in a White House” is a tribute to the emblematic exhibition ‘White Space in a White Space’ 1973 of Stano Filko, Milos Laky, Jan Zavarsky – House of Arts Brno. Installation of an outdoor billboard and indoor interventions in the building, accompanied by the publication of a free journal and an experimental film.
“A WHITE SPACE IN A WHITE SPACE” is the title of one of the most important exhibitions in the history of Modern art in the Czech Republic. This joint initiative of three artists—Stano Filko, Miloš Laky, and Ján Zavarský—left behind the sphere of science and technology in order to reach a spatial experience of the color white, and to equate painting to a mystical experience. White paint was applied, without any personal gesture, onto various objects and materials (i.e., carton tubes, felt)—it considered as a sign of transcendence beyond the the boundaries of the objective world. The exhibition was shown in Brno in 1973. This emblematic art experiment serves as inspiration for the interventions I plan for the the indoor and outdoor space of the White House building of Brno.

My idea is to make minimal white painted interventions in the interior spaces and to install a white billboard on the outside of the cinema space outside. Some of them will be inspired on copyleft instructions by conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. The intervention is also a tribute to Yves Klein’s famous intervention in another emblematic modernist building, Haus Lange/Esters, where he created his ‘Empty’ white room.

It is like a contemporary version of the original exhibition and serves also as a tribute to the building’s architects, who managed to construct a splendid white modernist masterpiece, that is capable to maintain its character and independence under all radical changes in function it suffered in its short history.  The interventions should make the visitors be aware of specific architectural qualities of the space.  As audience I aim to reach casual visitors and users and a public of art- and architecture-lovers.

A kind of manifesto-like journal/flyer will be printed containing images of the interventions and an essay and will be distributed for free to the audience. An experimental documentary film will complete the project.

Moments of the creative process, photos by J. Stonkus and E. Pietarytė, 2021.

Results of artistic residency. Photographers: R. Pranskevičiūtė (Kaunas IX Fort Museum) and R. Ardickas, video operator R. Ardickas, 2021.