SENSING PLACE
Five day sensory workshop / residency in the beautiful surroundings of South Bohemia, focused on exploring our relationship to landscape/place, in order to inspire creativity, fuel the imagination and ground the body.
Introduction: brief concept
How do we get to know a particular place and how do we learn to experience it fully with all our senses? How can such an immersion in a place, create a space that helps us connect with who we are, in a particular moment in our lives? And how can this experience be used creatively, to feed the imagination, to open up our own habitual way of going about our business, to new ways of approaching challenge, whether artistic, professional or personal.
We will offer 5 days of focused and reflective workshop sessions, centred on exploring the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings through all the senses in a small and focused group (maximum 10 participants), led by experienced artists/educators within the tranquil surroundings of the South Bohemian landscape. The approach is holistic, which means that even meals and their preparation and sharing will be an integral part of the experience.
The last evening will involve a music performance, film screening and a feast in situ with invited guests from Prague, as an occasion to celebrate the coming together of everyone, reflecting on the creative process and sharing the findings of our explorations.
Dates of workshop: Wednesday 20th July 2022 – 24th July 2022 . Please get in touch HERE to register interest or find out more.
Location: Chválkov, Vysočina Region, Czech republic
Nearest town Kamenice Nad Lipou http://www.kamenicenl.cz/
PRICE: 500€ (please scroll down to find out further details of what is included)
About the place and the motivation behind wanting to do this there:
Ever since being fortunate enough to discover the calming beauty of this particular part of South Bohemia, nestled in the Vysočina highlands, I have understood the place has a unique genius loci, which helps to nourish the creative soul. Unlike other more dramatic locations with spectacular nature, where landscape draws all the attention onto itself, this landscape is unassuming, gentle, expansive, while its openness and quality of light invites reflection, introspection and by extension inspires in a number of ways. The fields and rolling hills allow the sky to breathe, while the surrounding spruce forest embodies the unknown, inviting one to get lost. On hot summer days, a walk through the forest can feel like a dive through an ocean, encountering mushrooms of all colours that grow in the moss like corals on the sea bed.
There are fields, small lakes and ponds, which one can swim in (if not too squeamish) as well as wild mushrooms and berries to pick. Because this used to be a relatively poor rural area the landscape is sparsely populated and has so far escaped major waves of tourism.
The area itself has had some notable artists living there, such as: Vitezslav Novak (composer) or Otokar Brezina (poet, writer), who have been inspired by the landscape in their own unique ways.
I personally have been coming to spend my summers (and also some winters) in the area for the past 20 years and the location has already inspired a number of my short films, with the landscape becoming the back drop or even the main protagonist:
From You to Me: https://vimeo.com/136716698
Summer Rituals: https://vimeo.com/93383147
Red Riding Hood: https://vimeo.com/48229619
Winter landscape:
RAILTRACKS with John Berger and Anne Michaels
From: 4 Generations of Women: Water Rituals, (Farmhouse in Chvalkov)
WORKSHOP VENUE:
The venue where the workshop will be hosted (but not confined to) is a countryside farmhouse with an enclosed courtyard, as well as a beautiful barn built as a theatre stage with a large garden at the back. The house is located on the edge of a tiny village with only a post office and a shop which opens for just a few hours on specific days.
The village is surrounded by fields and forests and is itself 7 km from the nearest small town of Kamenice nad Lipou. However, expect to explore surrounding areas on foot as well as on the small local train.
Our dinners will also take place here.
Our workshop base – farmhouse in Chvalkov:
WHO and WHAT is the workshop for:
This workshop idea came to me slowly over the years and extended visits to this tranquil place, because of my own aspirations and needs as a creative city-based person, who equally craves spending time immersed in landscape to counterbalance the fragmented city existence. As an artist whose practice spans over a number of different disciplines, who feels excited by the potential of cross-fertilisation between the unexpected, I decided I wanted to create an opportunity for similar minds to meet, grounded in and inspired by these surroundings.
The concept for this programme comes out of my 15 year artistic research into the importance of touch, in dialogue with all other senses, in giving meaning to our human experience, including the aesthetic. Whether in art or everyday life, the embodied experience through all the senses allows for depth of engagement that is often lacking in our “civilised” lives, where much of every day experience is mediated by technology, hence disembodied.
This workshop is open to all existing as well aspiring “inbetweeners” (term coined by the wonderful Sissel Tolaas), those who refuse to fit in a box (or are unable to decide which box they prefer, being excited by many). You may be an artist, curator, writer, scientist, chef, or work in a completely unrelated field. There is no need for prior experience of anything mentioned in the programme, all you need to bring is an open mind, curiosity and the spirit of sharing.
The programme is designed to provide you with the space and structure to explore ideas without a fixed outcome, a space removed from your everyday reality, but grounded in a rural landscape, so as to allow for new (multi-sensory) experience and insight.
You may also wish to use the opportunity to explore an existing project, working on it from different, unexpected perspectives, with the intention of gaining new understanding, or even to find other potential collaborators to bring something surprising to your established approach.
Or perhaps your goal is more general, you are keen to try and shift your professional life in a new, more creative direction, by opening up to unique experiences, without knowing where exactly this might take you.
The key is openness and no fixed expectation on the outcome: simply allowing oneself to be surprised! Additionally, the programme can grow and adjust based on the particular needs of its participants, so that there is a fluidity of form and intention.
Dates of workshop: Wednesday 20th July – Sunday 24th July (arriving Tuesday 19th July 2022 – leaving Monday 25th July)
Location: Chválkov, Vysočina Region, Czech republic
Nearest town: Kamenice Nad Lipou http://www.kamenicenl.cz/
Price: 500€ – please email: Tereza Stehlikova if you would like more details on how to reserve a place.
Note: we ask for a deposit of 150€ to reserve your place. This is fully refundable till 30th June 2022. This is also the date when we ask you to pay the remaining 350€ for the final confirmation of your place.
Price includes:
- Transport to and from the location of workshops by a minibus (10 min drive)
- Wednesday – Sunday: Light lunch and evening dinner (alcoholic beverage can be purchased additionally)
- Workshop programme
Price does not include:
- Transport to and from Prague (i.e. your flight/train)
- Accommodation
- Breakfasts
Details of accommodation:
You can chose from a selection of places listed here. We can help and advice also.
https://boretinskystatek.cz/index.html
Hotel Berger
Apartmány Pokorná Kamenice nad Lipou
http://www.apartmany-kamenice.cz/index.php?page=ubytovani
Pernštejnův statek Dívčí Kopy u Kamenice nad Lipou
https://www.pernstejnuvstatek.cz/
Getting there
We will expect you to arrive in Prague by Tuesday 16sth August, midday. There are a number of budget airlines flying to Prague, as well as trains and coaches, depending on where you are coming from of course. If booked in advance, this can be a very reasonable price.
Transport between Prague and the workshop location
We will meet on Tuesday 19th July, at 1pm, in Prague Main Train station (Praha hlavni nadrazi)
From there we will travel together to the location (142km), taking three different trains. The whole journey takes 2 hours 41 minutes. The last section of the journey is a 15 min walk to the workshop venue.
We can also help advise on transport back to Prague on Monday 25th July.
The train tickets don’t need to be purchased in advance and only cost about 200 CZK (i.e. £7) one way.
More travel information on request, as well as nearer the time.
Key organisers/workshop hosts:
Tereza Stehlikova is a Czech/UK artist. She is currently head of visual arts department, University of Creative Communication, Prague. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, where she researched the tactile language of moving image. In the past she has been a senior lecturer at University of Westminster, as well as a PhD supervisor at the RCA. Tereza is engaged in a cross-disciplinary research, investigating how moving image can be used to communicate embodied experience, by exploring multi-sensory aesthetics and embodiment. She is a founder of Sensory Sites, an international collective based in London, generating collaborative exhibitions, installations and research projects that explore multi-sensory perception and bodily experience. She also launched an online arts journal Tangible Territory, featuring essays and articles by established artists/authors from the world of arts, science, philosophy, all centred around the role our senses play in creating meaning in art and life. Stehlikova regularly presents her research at international conferences and her films and performances have been shown at a variety of film and art festivals around the world. Stehlikova’s ongoing long-term artist film project, 4 Generations of Women has been Shortlisted for BFI 61st London Film Festival Experimenta pitch, presented at Svetozor Cinema in Prague and exhibited in a solo exhibition at Alchemy Film and Art Festival, in Hawick, 2019. Her other ongoing project, Disappearing Wormwood, explores a disappearing part of north west London, through filmic and written response. It has been premiered at the Whitechapel Gallery in January 2020. Tereza has a long term experience of running sensory workshops. http://cinestheticfeasts.com
Dany Teixeira is a wine sommelier and a wine importer, who recently moved to Czech republic and set his own wine company Vins Purs , specialised in low intervention wines . He grew up in Cahors, a wine region of the South-Western France which some of you might know as the Black-Wine town. He spent the last 20 years working in the wine industry, starting by picking grapes when he was 15 years old. He worked in various top restaurant in different region of France to learn more about their culture, gastronomy and wines. This unique experience made him understand the importance of ‘Terroir’. He spent 10 years of his life in London, where he decided to specialise in small independent producers who use minimum intervention and produce their wine with love and care. He worked and learned in some of the most renowned natural wine places and established one of the best natural wine bars in London.
Guest presenters:
Nitish Jain is an experiential-environments designer from India and currently based in Prague, Czech Republic. He holds an M.A. in Scenography (2018) from the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU), Prague and a Bachelors in Architecture (2012) from Sushant School of Art and Architecture (SSAA) India. Jain’s practice Studio MoreThanThat lays at the intersection of design, performance and architecture. It focuses on creating environments (through a phenomenological approach) that are centered around the sensory spectrum (touch, smell, taste, sound and sight) of the spectator. His projects playfully delve into perception and memory of space, as well as critically question the dominance of “visual” in our surrounding environments, often involve obscuring or de-emphasizing ‘the need to see’ in a performance. He has collaborated with various international artists and on multi-sensory project such as Fine Dining by E. Rosemarijn at Festival of Intimate Theatre (2019) and 4+4 Days in Motion (2018); Tangible Territory (2019) by T. Stehlikova as part of 36Q Blue Hour at PQ 2019; Memory Palace (2018) at Galerie AMU etc. He has previously been an architect at Atelier Anonyme Design, New Delhi (2010- 2015); and a design tutor at SSAA, Ansal University (2013-2015) developing pedagogy on the experience of architecture, which he continues as a design and creative educator in Czech Republic and India. www.studiomorethanthat.com
Haenke was conceived in early 2017 by Julien Antih and Alexandra Strelcova, with the aim to provide a reliable source of information about the uses of plants in medicine and human health. The idea came about as a result of frustration over the lack of evidence-based knowledge being available in formats that wider public, and especially younger generations, could understand. Haenke’s aim is to raise awareness about the roles of plants in our lives, with particular focus on medicine and human health. They do so by designing educational content, public space installations, practical workshops or community outreach, working with people from various social and cultural backgrounds all over the world. By using arts, culture, and digital media as a vehicle for social change, they create impactful projects that result in better understanding of the natural world. https://www.haenke.cz/
Little more information on the workshop structure/content:
There will be 5 days of workshop sessions, with two workshop sessions a day: one morning, one afternoon. A simple lunch will be provided on location.
The workshops will include exploration of the landscape, various exercises/explorations, in order to create an involved relationship with the location, through paying attention to it with different senses, and through different elements (such as plants, geology). This means experiments with particular focus on touch (by employing blindfolded explorations), smell (etc.). There will also be writing/drawing, collecting materials, creating small interventions in the landscape, as well as cooking and eating food and drink made from local produce (ingesting the landscape). The workshops can be altered, to some extent, to suit the requirements of participants and there is no pressure for anyone to participate if they feel like avoiding certain activity for whatever reason. It can also be used to inspire creative dialogue and future collaborative projects. The workshop will be led by Tereza Stehlikova as well as guest workshop leaders (with a variety of expertise, including locals). More examples of sensory workshops in London: https://cinestheticfeasts.com/2017/12/14/sensory-workshop-doc/
The last evening will involve a performance, film screenings and a ‘feast’.
NOTE: We reserve the right for alterations and adjustments to the programme based on circumstances.
For any questions, further information or to share ideas and suggestions, please email:
All images by Tereza Stehlikova