[spectre] CONF: Symposium Vasulkas Reloaded, Brno/CZ, 22-23 Oct 2024

[Andreas Broeckmann]

https://www.vasulkakitchen.org/en/event/symposium-vasulkas-reloaded

22.10.—23.10.2024

SYMPOSIUM VASULKAS RELOADED

The VASULKAS RELOADED international symposium is taking place at Vašulka 
Kitchen Brno located at the Brno House of Arts (House of the Lords of 
Kunštat) in Brno, Czech Republic on 22 and 23 October 2024.

It will be devoted to the critical evaluation of the work of Steina and 
Woody Vasulkas and their significant contribution to the art world 
including the subject of open archives.

Steina and Woody Vasulkas have always encouraged the idea of an open 
archive, one that is freely accessible and that can be transformed into 
a site of collaboration for a wide range of interested parties. They 
conceived their own archive (vasulka.org) containing contextual material 
from early video art on an unprecedented scale including personal 
letters, photographs, grant applications, exhibition costs, technical 
descriptions, and more. They gradually donated their digitized materials 
to various institutions and individuals with the hope that they would 
not only preserve but also disseminate and continue to work with them. 
These archives are now scattered in several international locations. In 
doing so, they also explored avenues that turned out to be less fruitful 
endeavors, such as the creation of a living archive in Second Life. 
Vašulka Kitchen Brno is also one of the sites where the Vašulka's 
archive is being processed, where the digitized materials are accessible 
to all those interested in research related studies.

Recently, several major exhibitions took place in Iceland and Czech 
Republic that attempted to work with the Vasulkas' artefacts in a new 
way, and others are coming soon in USA and Iceland. The talks will 
critically discuss the role of Vasulkas in European and American new 
media context, their ways of (co)working with other artists and 
institutions, their approach towards sharing resources, as well as 
current possibilities of exhibiting and archiving their works.

PROGRAM

Open legacy of Steina and Woody Vasulkas

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024

10 am - 13 pm Vašulkovi Locally / The Vasulkas Globally

10:00 am introduction Lenka Dolanová and Barbora Šedivá (Vašulka Kitchen 
Brno)

10:30 Tomáš Ruller (CZ, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - Performativity of The 
Vasulkas work

11:00 Pavel Smetana (CZ) - The Vasulkas revisited: collaborations and 
reinventions

11:30 Miloš Vojtěchovský (CZ, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - The Idler or 
Vasulkas Dream about Bohemian Institute

12:00 pm Jennifer DeFelice (CZ, USA, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - Sums & 
Differences: Gary Hill, Steina, and Woody Vašulka and the Development of 
an Approach to Presenting Audiovisual Work in Specific Gallery Environments

12:30 pm Petr Vrána - PARTICIPATION 2.0

1 - 2 pm LUNCH

2 - 5:30 pm Open Archives

14:00 Gaby Wijers (NL, LI-MA) - Violin Power reloaded

14:30 Larisa Dryansky (FR, Sorbonne Université) - Video Image as Object: 
3D in the Work of Steina and Woody Vasulka

15:00 pm Zach Ngin (ONLINE) (USA, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 
Cambridge) - Constantly Moving Images: Exhibiting Steina in the 21st 
Century

15:30 PAUZA

16:00 Chris Hill (ONLINE) (USA, School of Film/Video, CalArts) - A Walk 
through the Vašulka Mediascape with Reflections on a Recent Interview 
with Artist Arnold Dreyblatt

16:30 Joost Rekveld (NL) - A Palimpsest on the Electronic Analog Art

17:30 Dušan Barok (SK/NO, Monoskop) / Barbora Šedivá (Vašulka Kitchen 
Brno) - Working with Vašulka Kitchen Brno archive: methodology, outputs 
and other possibilities of its development

18:00 pm DINNER

19:30 SCREENING PROGRAM

Steina and Woody Vasulkas: In Search of the Castle (9:29 min.)

Joost Rekveld: Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59 (78 min.)
Open Archives - moderated discussion


Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024

10 am - 1 pm

The discussion focused on the possibilities of cooperation across the 
media art archives.

With the participation of: Dušan Barok (SK/NO, Monoskop), Barbora Šedivá 
(Vašulka Kitchen Brno), Jakub Frank (Muzeum umění Olomouc, CEAD), Larisa 
Dryansky (FR, Sorbonne Université), Matěj Strnad (National Film Archive 
in Prague), Gaby Wijers (NL, LI-MA).