Tuesday–Saturday / 10:00–18:00
Sunday / 10:00–14:00
 
Booking at info@elbedock.cz
 
Silence, darkness, calmness, uneasiness, nervousness, fear. Bunkr is all of it. This nuclear shelter of civil defence, built during the Cold War in the centre of Ústí nad Labem, will come alive with the 4th edition of the ELBE DOCK Film Festival, its insides lit and resonated with an exclusive exhibition.
 
The exhibition will offer eight site-specific installations by renowned and emerging artists who explore light design, audio-visual art, stage design and sound art. The individual works of art use the unique space of underground passageways, an itinerary of the bunker, different materials as well as light and sound to make it a powerful sensory experience for the audience.
 
BUNKR is a labyrinth of underground passageways, unique thanks to its vastness: it covers an area of roughly three kilometres. It was to be an emergency station of civil defence to shelter the general staff in case of a nuclear attack. After 1989, it stopped being maintained and most of its furnishings were stolen. Still, the strong genius loci, hidden in the original furniture, instruction signboards and other surviving objects, lingers on. The network of tunnels bored into the Marian Rock housed infirmaries, bedrooms, dining rooms and storage units of anti-chemical material.
 
EXHIBITORS
 
Oliver Torr: Dislocation Study – REZO
 
TThe audible life is one that a lot of us don’t notice. Displacing acoustic territories grants an access point to a more active listening environment. When we see a train pass and hear it, our visual and auditory senses are connected and we don’t pay attention to the sound that is emitted, since it is a side product of a physical motion. Sound displacement, or hearing sound out of its natural context encourages us to appreciate its existence. More-so if the sound emitter is ourselves, encourages us to realise our body and our movements in space and time.
 
The sound installation at Bunkr also creates a transgression of two realities. A sound source is forced into a new context, and into a new time. The resonating body symbolised and manifested by sound is transported to a new resonant space, creating a new meta reality which manifested itself in the past, and is now manifesting in the present, ready to be heard, and/or interacted with. A potential timeloop presents itself.
 
Oliver Torr is a Prague based sound artist and composer. His sound revolves around heavy sound design textures, mangled field recordings, new age melodics and processed vocal work. In installation works he mainly focuses on concepts of sound/time, time travel appreciation and multichannel surround sound.
 
—
 
Eliška Kociánová: Compositions of Chemical Compounds I
 
Life on Earth might no longer be taken for granted. Living resources are becoming exhausted and are starting to transform. I want to shine a spotlight on this issue and think about possible alternatives, about active development of the last decade and an opportunity to choose, which starts with an individual, but needs to move up to both national and transnational levels. I do not mean to put any pressure on anyone, but I am worried that while all of us might fit in the bunker, not everyone will fit in a spaceship.
 
Eliška Kociánová is a light designer, stage designer and VJ. She started her carrier exploring animation, but soon felt constrained by its limits of microscopic examination of movements. She focuses on light, projection and video mapping. She senses movements with her eyes wide open and is intrigued by its psychological impact on audience. As a light designer, she was part of many theatre and dance performances; she has worked for Lunchmeat studio and helps organize Lunchmeat Festival focused on new media and their connection with progressive electronic music.
 
—
 
Marek Šilpoch: The Remainder of Time
 
It can’t have been long since it happened.
The room was almost empty, filled with red light.
Only two fading lights were dying at the ceiling.
 
Marek Šilpoch is a visual artist with a special appreciation for light. A graduate of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), he makes large-scale objects, using the beauty of glass and his penchant for recycling and reincarnation of old lights. Since 2020, he has explored the issues connected with light in his capacity of a PhD student at Time Based Media Studio (Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem) under Pavel Mrkus. Apart from his own creative output of light installations and objects, which have been displayed at different galleries in Prague, he worked as a curator at Signal Festival, a festival of digital and creative culture in Prague, and created light installations for music events within an audio-visual collective called XYZ project.
 
—
 
Lukáš Frequency: Frekvence
 
A light installation made of three stroboscopes with smoothly changing frequencies examines principles of synchronization, disparateness and the moment on the edge of these two levels. A relationship between light and darkness and the interval between them. It uses generative principles to achieve previously undefined and unexpected combinations. The minimalistic set-up is based on the raw aesthetics of stage light technology.
 
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING INSTALLATION USES STRONG STROBOSCOPES! DO NOT STARE STRAIGHT IN THE SOURCES OF LIGHT
 
Lukáš Dřevjaný aka oxoo is a visual artist. His installations, live performances and theatre productions combine visual media from light design and video to virtual reality. Light is to him a means to manipulate senses and evoke intense (audio)visual experiences. As a light designer and live video performer, he takes part in different events focused on club electronic music, such as Lunchmeat Festival or Addict Rave, and works for Signal Festival. He is a co-founder of Mlha.studio focused on new media and currently works as a technological mentor in a creative incubator called Art&Digital Lab.
 
—
 
Sára Hohlová: Observatory
 
An observatory is a place used to observe outer phenomena and conditions. Through an observatory you can peep inside the complex outside world while staying unseen and without having to participate in its creation and operation. An observatory is a safe and comfortable zone; it is a wall between the observer and the observed. An infinite mix of different fragments of being.
 
Sára Hohlová studies interactive design at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Pilsen. She currently focuses on animation, motion design and video and often searches for the line between reality and its digital image. Her latest exhibition, A Forest, held in H40 building at Prague’s Holešovice Market Hall in May 2021, relied on an artistic way of using 3D scanning and 3D print.
 
—
 
Lukáš Šmejkal: “000”
 
“Sun dogs are the result of a circular halo around the sun. They are produced by refraction of sunlight as it passes through a thin veil of ice crystal clouds (usually cirrus or cirrostratus). The term “sun dog” (or mock sun) originates from Greek mythology. It was believed that the god Zeus walked his dogs across the sky and that the bright “false suns” in the sky on either side of the sun’s disk were the dogs.” This paragraph from the Chicago Tribune article serves as an inspiration for this installation.
 
Lukáš Šmejkal studies painting at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). His work focuses on merging different media, such as painting, photography and objects. He uses an X sign as his artistic expression that he considers to be an imaginary link between these media. His artwork is based on such notions as backlight, obstructions and expansion, which are the essential cornerstones of his art production.
 
—
 
Jan Slanina: TBA
 
Jan Slanina is one of the major figures of contemporary light art in the Czech Republic. As a student of Time Based Media Studio (Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem), he focuses on light installations, video and sound. Through time, he develops the traditional techniques of easel painting, objects or space installations, and merges them with current visual art media, such as experimental film, sound art and the idea of synthesis. He works as a light designer for contemporary club and film scene and, together with Marek Šilpoch, made the installations for Navzdory (In Defiance), an acclaimed exhibition organized by Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague.
 
—
 
Petr Cuker: TBA
 
Petr Cuker is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology. He is a stage designer and light designer and his visual art has been used in different music projects. Outside club scene, he creates light design for gallery spaces, his latest project being Disclimatic Territory, an exhibition in Norma Space Gallery in cooperation with the Architecture Studio II at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). He often works together with other artists, such as Jan Slanina and Tereza Bartůňková.