People in Generations Together
Dominika Belanská – curator, coordinator and artist
Social architect and artist from Prievidza. She uses voice, music and movement to connect people with each other, with themselves and with the places where they live. Since 2011 she has been working on participation, creating collaborations and overlaps between different groups, disciplines, sectors, and art forms. After completing her Master’s degree in Architectural Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, she specialized in participatory urban planning and the regeneration of public spaces with community involvement (placemaking). After years of working in Bratislava, Prague and elsewhere abroad, she is currently applying her experience in environmental and cultural regeneration, especially in the Upper Nitra / Trenčín region.
Rokko Juhász – curator and artist
Multimedia artist, poet, cultural and arts organiser, founder and director of the Kassak Centre. Since the late 1980s he has been actively involved in the artistic and cultural life of Czechoslovakia. Since 1989 he has been the editor of the Hungarian Workshop in Paris. In 1991 co-founder of the Kalligram publishing house and since 1994 freelance artist. He is associated with the first mail-art events in Czechoslovakia, the Bridging Central European Art Symposium (1997), which called for the restoration of the Maria Valerie Bridge connecting Esztergom and Štúrovo, and has also made an invaluable contribution to the cultivation and promotion of Lajos Kassák’s artistic legacy in Slovakia and Central Europe. In 1987, he and his colleagues organised the first forum of alternative and experimental art in Czechoslovakia, Stúdió erté, in Nové Zámky. After the regime change in 1989, it became the most important festival of its kind in the Central European region, with nearly 500 artists from 50 countries on four continents. The festival is still held annually under the name Transart Communication. He is the founder and, until 2012, the president of KultúrKorzo Nové Zámky. His action art, visual and literary activities are documented in the PARAF monograph with contributions from Slovak and Hungarian authors. His works have been presented at all major action art festivals in the world. He currently lives in Budapest.
Viktor Fuček – curator and artist
Viktor Fuček is an urban shaman and healer, visual artist, researcher and educator who uses rituals to explore the consciousness of space. He studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the Australian National University in Canberra, the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. In 2022 he successfully completed his PhD studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica with his dissertation research “Architecture of Internal Relations” focused on the interconnection of performance and architecture. He has realized and participated in several solo and collective exhibitions, for example “The Door Through Whose Slit the Moonlight Looks” at the Slovak National Gallery (Bratislava, 2024), “Xenorhizomatic Geologies” (New York, 2024), “Perceiving (Com)position” (Taiwan, 2022), Prague Biennale (Prague, 2021). He has also been a finalist for several awards, such as the Oskar Čepan Prize (2015). He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Intermedia and Digital Media at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, an external lecturer at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, and a member of the Prague Public Space Lab.
Mads Floor Andersen – curator and artist
For more than a decade, Danish artist Mads Floor Andersen has been developing his own language of performance art, made up of recycling, risk, breaking, destruction, ruins and responsibility as an ability to respond to the environment. He is specifically interested in the intimate relationship between the body and its environment, how they shape and influence each other. He is primarily concerned with the local and personal processes in which he works and lives. Therefore, each work is an open-ended experiment – a constantly unfolding dialogue between his body and his environment. Each work has its own specific constellation, while at the same time touching on social and ecological themes, theory and practice. Mads Floor Andersen performs internationally, appearing at Belfast International Festival of Performance Art (BIFPA), Macau International Performance Art Festival, 20th Open Festival for Performance Art (China), Transart Communication (Hungary), Kolkata International Performance Art Festival (KIPAF), LAPSody Helsinki (Finland), Month of Performance Art Berlin (Germany), International Festival of Performance Arts Copenhagen (Denmark) and many others.
Lucia Kotvanová – artist
Lucia Kotvanová comes from Ziar nad Hronom and works in a gallery pedagogy and as a visual artist and curator. She has participated in several joint exhibitions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic and in 2014 she exhibited at the Young Art Biennial in Moscow. She is dedicated to communicating visual art to different target groups. Together with Daniela Čarna, she is the author of the book Draw Your Sheep and received the award of the Council of Slovak Galleries – White Cube in the category of Educational Project for the project Children’s Mediator (2017) and for the project Mediators at the exhibition Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (2018). She also curates and co-organizes exhibitions.
” Lucia Kotvanová, in collaboration with Gabriela Zigova, prepared for Generations Together a Photography workshop, during which the common theme of the circle will be explored from different perspectives – as a symbol, a cycle, a repetition. They will combine the traditional black and white photographic process with the most contemporary digital media and artificial intelligence. Generations will thus be connected through the medium of photography.
Gabriela Zigová – artist
Gabriela Zigová uses photography, performance, site-specific and interactive installations to explore social situations, cultural contexts and political events. For her, photography is specific in its relationship to reality; it provides a trace, a testimony. In many of her works, photography provides the basis for the work, which she develops into an installation or performance. Gabriela is originally from Trenčín, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava but currently lives in London.
” Together with Gabriela Zigova and Lucie Kotvanova, you can try combining the traditional black and white photographic process with the most contemporary digital media at the Photography Workshop. You will digitize traditionally developed analog photos and further manipulate them while scanning and combining them with AI. We will explore the theme of the circle in the Photography workshop from different perspectives: symbolism, cycle, repetition.
Irene Lucas and Christoph Euler – artists
Irene Lucas and Christoph Euler have been working for more than 10 years on “urban ecology”, food and plants. Through public events they have searched for new strategies for survival in urban environments.
Štefan Straka – FILM / VIDEO
Štefan Straka studied in the studio of documentary filmmaking at the Academy of Performing Arts under Petr Kerekes and subsequently worked on several feature-length documentary films. As a director, he also cooperates with Slovak Television.
Vareha is his feature debut and graduation film. He collaborates with Petr Kerekes as an assistant director on Wishing on a Star and as a second assistant camera on Marathon, the Story of a City. During his master’s studies, he worked externally with the Communications Department of the Office of the President. After graduating in 2023, he joined the SME daily newspaper, where he is in charge of production in the video department and podcasts.
Samuel Alex Jasaň – FILM / VIDEO
Samuel Alex Jasaň studied film editing at the Academy of Performing Arts. In his spare time, he enjoys literature, music and science fiction. He is currently working as a post-production manager at the film company MPhilms, but is also involved in film projects as an editor, assistant editor and data manager. He has collaborated on films such as The Day of the Deceiver (2023) and Power (2023).
In the FILM / VIDEO workshop directed by MPhilms with Mátyás Prikler, Samuel Alex Jasaň and Štefan Straka, we will create a “cross-documentary portrait” – we will create intergenerational pairs who will make a short film portrait about each other. “We will look for circles in the city and explore what a circle means visually, socially, aesthetically.” Collaborate with filmmakers from MPhilms, a company that has been producing feature-length films and documentaries since 2010, as well as smaller film projects with a social overlap.
Mátyás Prikler – FILM / VIDEO
Mátyás Prikler graduated from the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in the class of Stanislav Párnicky. From 2005 to 2006 he studied at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) in Budapest with János Szász and Attila Janisch. He has directed several short and medium-length films, The Life of a Fly, Önarckép – Self-Portrait, They Are Not Your Man, Another Act – Következő Felvonás, as well as documentaries Frank Urban-Cajal and Juraj Kubánka. His medium-length film Thank You Well (2009) was screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in the Cinéfondation section. The film of the same name Thank You Well (2013) is his feature debut. In 2023, he directed the feature film Power. Both of these films premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. In 2005 he founded MPhilms, a company that produces feaature-length films, documentaries and smaller film projects with a social impact, and is also dedicated to organising educational workshops for young people. He has produced and co-produced films such as Slovakia 2.0, Children, Mirage, Paradise on Earth, Another Clamp, Kálmán’s Day, The Ex-Premiers, Power, The Explanation for Everything and others.