13. 3. 2024 seminar of accidental wisdom: Vojtěch Märc, Matěj Pavlík
seminar of accidental wisdom: Vojtěch Märc, Matěj Pavlík
13.3.2024
How to reason with the irrational? And how to imagine something extrasensory? Indeed, we don’t know. But we’ll look for some hints in research on research, i.e. in our both-theory-and-practice-based research on the histories of psychical research. In particular, we’ll attempt to sketch an economy of images in parapsychology. While it might seem paradoxical to tie images with extrasensory perception, we assume that images play a central role in psychical reasoning. We won’t try to reconstruct the “haunted-media” history of modern technical images, but rather focus on some specific uses of images, whose spectral agency mediates between distant places and times, synthesizes facts and fiction, and stimulates various effects and affects.
Vojtěch Märc works as a researcher and a lecturer of contemporary art history and theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Occasionally he also works as an independent curator and an art critic. He has been published in several art journals and magazines. His research broadly focuses on conditions and varieties of art experience, on art practice at the disciplinary margins, and the limits of specialization.
Matěj Pavlík studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague in the photography studio under the guidance of Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt, later Martin Kohout, where he graduated in 2017. During his artistic practice, Matěj Pavlík has been involved in several artistic collectives and initiatives (such as the Studio Without a Master and the Working Group for the Exploration of Extra-Sensory Aesthetics), which critically addressed the higher education system and attempted to establish suitable alternative frameworks to prevailing artistic practices. Pavlík's artistic practice includes a range of authorial and interdisciplinary collaborations, notably with Lucie Rosenfeldová at the Jelení Gallery, co-curatorial work at the etc. gallery, and participation in several editions of the Fotograf Festival. He has also exhibited solo at the A.M.180 Gallery and the TIC. Gallery. Pavlík is one of the initiators of the Working Group for the Exploration of Extra-Sensory Aesthetics, which became one of the laureates of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2020. Currently, he is in his third year of doctoral studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno.