Czech artist Alžběta Bačíková is in New York at the beginning of August for a short-term residency program at the Czech Center. Bačíková has long experimented with the format of video installation and short film.
New York is one of those places where we can leave our origins and reshape our current identities, if we have the means to do so. For me, it is a place of projections of different ideas and desires, which I like to let collide with the tangible reality here when I shoot. The intensity of the metropolis both recharges and exhausts me. It both reflects the nature of contemporary global crises and shows me ways to alleviate them.
Alžběta Bačíková is currently preparing to shoot her new project, Nezadržitelný pohyb / Can't Arrest a Movement, which explores the ritualistic nature of the folk cultural traditions of her native Slovácko and their potential to shape our relationship to the landscape in times of global ecological crisis. Her main collaborator for the New York shoot is musician and composer Lucie Vítková. Together they will create sound and movement performances for cameras and microphones in the city's public spaces. This is a loose continuation of Bačíková's previous residency in New York in 2019, when she documented dance situations and environmental protests in the metropolis.
Bačíková also works as an editor for the artistic audiovisual platform Artyčok.TV at the Academy of Fine Arts. In New York this summer, she is also meeting with her long-time editorial collaborator David Přílučík, with whom she has prepared a screening of her latest works for the Czech Center New York, as well as two other works created as part of the international Regeneration project produced by Artyčok.TV.
The event Artyčok.TV Short Film Selection takes place at the Czech Center on August 8th.
The residency takes place through the ongoing cooperation between the Czech Centres and the Jindřich Chalupecký Society. Alžběta Bačíková is a finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award (2018) and a laureate of the Audience Award, which the Czech Centres supported and awarded.
ALŽBĚTA BAČÍKOVÁ
Alžběta Bačíková (*1988) is an artist based in Prague. She focuses on the medium of the moving image and works primarily with video installation in the context of contemporary art and experimental cinema. In recent years, Bačíková has reflected on documentary tendencies in contemporary art both in theoretical research and in her artistic practice. She has created a series of video portraits of real and fictional characters. In 2018 she completed her PhD studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. From 2017 to 2020 she was curator of the Etc. Gallery project in Prague. Currently, she works as an editor for the online platform Artycok.TV. Since 2018 she has collaborated with protagonists with visual or hearing impairments, which led to the production of Encounter(2018-2020), which won the 2018 Czech Centers Award at the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. Together with deaf actor Mac Henzl, she also created a film project entitled DJ (2020) for the exhibition Hotel Beethoven at the BOZAR Fine Arts Centre. She was a resident of the Art in General program in New York (2019) and the Artist-in-Residence program at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (2018). She is currently developing her new film Can't Arrest a Movement during her artist residency at the Czech Center New York. The central motif of this project is the transformative potential of movement and various performative activities. A similar theme appears in her previous audiovisual work Shine Your Light on Me (2021), which reflects on moments of protest and collective dance activities in New York City in 2019.
Learn more about Alžběta Bačíková here.
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