Participants

Dominik Lukács Zizka documents the expedition to the Most basin in the Czech Republic. He lives and works in Prague. Dominik graduated with a master degree from the Interactive Media Departement at the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústi nad Labem. He also studied in Belgium at the Experimental Studio Volta specializing in installation, performance, video and sound.

Dustin Breitling is an M.A. Student at Charles University studying geopolitics. He organizes the Diffractions lecture series. He will speak on Cognitive Mapping.

Guy van Belle (a.k.a. Gívan Belá) is a media artist and curator living in the Czech Republic. On occasion he would introduce himself as a media data author, on another as a wind time inventor and clockmaker, then at another as a slide and cigar box guitar musician in a skiffle/spasm band. After studying literature and linguistics, philosophy and sculpting, made the switch to computer music at the end of the 1980s.

Ivo Přikryl is a hydrobiologist working at ENKI o.p.s. Třeboň. His research focuses on zooplankton in lakes, dams and ponds mostly in Central Europe. He is currently studying the possibilities for the protection of wetlands , marshes, the management of dams and the recultivation of the landscape after periods of open cast mining, especially in the Ore Mountains.

Jiří Sádlo, RNDr., CSc., is a biologist with a keen interest in botanical sociology, the dynamics of the post-rustic landscape, non-natural biotopes and caenogenesis. Sádlo is the author of numerous essays and, among others, the book Empty Earth.

Jiří Šlajsna, Mgr., is a historian, author of articles on the history of Chomutov and Most, and an archeologist who works in the Most Regional Museum. His main areas of interest are the history of the regions Most, Chomutov, and Kadaň, the military, political and cultural history of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the year 1742 and 1813 in northwestern Bohemia, the marksman societies of northwest Bohemia since the late 18th century, and field fortifications in Bohemia from the 17th to 19th centuries.

Jiří Zemánek PhDr is art historian, ethnographer, curator and journalist. His interests include the overlaps between artistic creation, ecology and spirituality, issues of paradigm shift and the emergence of a new integral culture.

By occasion of the Frontiers of Solitude in Ustí nad Labem JSD and SGS will reveal a section of The Research Hydrobiological Laboratory, operating in the Universal Psychiatric Temple 316a (UPSYCH) institution.

For more than ten years, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) has been bringing together artists and activists in order to co-create new forms of resistance and disobedience.

Martin Říha is a Czech architect, urbanist, active in Czech environmental policy. After graduating from the Architecture Faculty of the Czech Technical University, he worked for the City of Děčín, and later in Ústí nad Labem at the Department of Regional Planning. There, he lobbied against the so-called “large-scale mining” proposed by the Soviet advisors for the North Bohemian coal region.

Martin Škabrahais a Czech philosopher and journalist. He graduated in history and philosophy from the Philosophical Faculty of the Palacký University in Olomouc. Currently, he teaches in the departement of philosophy at the philosophy department of Ostrava University, focusing mainy on contemporary political thinking. His work has been influenced by Jan Patočka, Václav Bělohradský, Jacques Derrida, and theorists of the Frankfurt school. His essays bring together postmodern critique and statements of social engagement, adressing issues such as ecology, the New Left and feminism.

Počátky kritiky socialistického produktivismu na příkladu severních Čech šedesátých let 20. století. V šedesátých letech byla československá veřejnost svědkem obnovení veřejné debaty a tudíž i různých forem kritiky.

Radoslav Schmelzová, Mgr., studied art history and cultural heritage management at the University of Ostrava and the theory and history of design and new media at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

Michal Kindernay is an intermedia artist, curator and performer. His audio-visual installations interconnect art, technology and science. He reflects ecological issues through various technological approaches in relation to nature environment.

Miloš Šejn works in the fields of visual art, performance and study of visual perception. From the beginning of the 1960s he took pictures, drew, collected and described his observations of nature during his wanderings through the Czech landscape. Currently he teaches mixed media and the relationship of nature and art as intrinsic needs of the mind, and focuses on immediate creative possibilities, based upon relations between historical humanized landscapes and intact nature.

Paul Chaney (born U.K. 1974) is a self-taught artist researching through a mix of participatory and durational art practices both local and global in scale. He lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic and in UK. Recent solo shows and projects include: Lizard Exit Plan, The Sun is Black, Museum of Art and Design (Benesov, 2012), and Divus (Prague, 2011); The Lonely Now, Goldfish (Penzance, 2008). Selected Group Shows: TURBOREALISM – Breaking Ground, IZOLYATSIA Center for Cultural Initiatives (Ukraine 2013); FIELDCLUB and Friends – Late at Tate St Ives (2011); In Abundance, Kestle Barton (Cornwall, 2011); Garden Marathon, Serpentine Gallery (London, 2011), Art and War in the Last Resort, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, 2011), and PEER (London). Curatorial work includes delivering a programme of art events and residencies in Falmouth and London for Urbanomic 2009-2010 and in 2012, the establishment of the London HQ of DIVUS – Czech art publishing house.

Peter Cusack works as a field recordist with a special interest in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. His projects have included community arts, research into sound and our sense of place, and documentary recordings in areas of special sonic interest (Lake Baikal, Siberia).

Petr Gibas is interested in the landscape and urban anthropology with an emphasis on the home with regard to its emotional dimensions, homelessness, hybrid landscapes such as the industrial landscape of post-industrial Czech Republic, urban decay, and garden colonies in contemporary (Central) European cities.

Petr Meduna, Ph.D., is an archeologist and historian. He graduated from the Charles University in Prague, and worked at the Archaeological Institute in Most (1986-1996), and later in the Archaeological institute in Prague. He is especially interested in the Middle Ages, and the relationships between the social and natural sciences.

Radek Mikuláš, RNDr., DSc., is a geologist and author specializing in the biogenic formation of rocks, paleobiology, and geomorphology. In addition to the rocks of Greenland, Patagonia and Siberia, he has also studied archaeological artifacts of ancient Egypt. Mikuláš systematically examines not only stones and rocks, but also natural ice, urban plants, old factories, as well as visual arts in the landscape.

Stanislav Komárek is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences at the Faculty of Science, Charles University Prague. He is also a writer and essayist. He also holds a degree in biology from the Faculty of Biological Sciences of Charles University. He was briefly employed at the Institute of Parasitology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice, after which he opted for exile in Austria.

Tereza Stöckelová is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, assistant professor at the Department of General Anthropology, Charles University, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review. Her work is situated in-between sociology, social anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and draws upon actor network theory and related material semiotic methodologies.

Challenging anthropocentric conventions that seek to harness the river for economic, cultural and political purposes, the River School project (2013-2015) led my Maja and Reuben Fowkes, placed the complex ecological materiality of the Danube at the centre of artistic and scholarly attention.

Professor Václav Bělohradský is a contemporary Czech philosopher and sociologist. A graduate in philosophy and Czech language from Charles University, Prague, he has lived in Italy since 1970, where he is currently Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trieste. Cited as one of Václav Havel’s intellectual influences in the mid-1980s, he was one of the first Central European thinkers to examine the consequences of the "post-modern turn" for the region.

Václav Cílek is a Czech geologist, climatologist, writer, philosopher, and popularizer of science who combines a knowledge of the humanities with natural science. He is the author of around 400 scientific articles and several books, including the award-winning Inscapes and Landscapes and Makom Book of Places.

Vít Bohal is a member of the Diffractions collective, focused on accelerationism, posthumanism, Prometheanism, and strands of critical theory. He publishes and translates texts on various topics, most usually those of culture and philosophy. His articles have appeared in VLAK, VICE, Creator's Project, A2, and Word Addict. He studied music at Charles University and majored in Critical and Cultural Theory.