In collaboration with Documentary Monday at Kino Světozor and visual artist Dominik Gajarský, Fresh Eye presents a special edition held at the Small Hall at Kino Světozor.
Combining video art screenings and theoretical presentations of acclaimed critics, the program will use the film image and the spoken word to reflect on the position of animals in contemporary society. Since the dawn of western philosophy, animal figures have served as an opposite category which gave humans, their thinking and social organization their privileged and superior position. While the world of animals is linked to the meanings of the primitive and instinctive, human culture is credited with attributes such as sophisticated and spiritual. In this perspective, the world of fables constitutes a unique field in which the animal is rid of its subordinate position towards man, even assuming human visual and character traits to expose the imperfections of the world created by man.
The arrival of new philosophical feminist and environmental movements in the second half of the past century, which gave rise to human-animal studies, or the discipline of anthrozoology, brings new perspectives on the mutual position of human and animal which defy the traditional categories of servant and master or nature versus culture. Intensive human interventions in nature which can be observed around the world at the time of the Anthropocene rank among the most burning themes of today. As a result, animals are often perceived within new contexts originally inhabited by man in urban environments. Do we witness literary fables coming to life as wild beasts and exotic amphibians become our urban neighbors?
The program includes the screening of the art films Equilibrium (Dominik Gajarský, CZ, 2017) and Wild Beasts (Éléonore Saintagnan & Grégoire Motte, FR/BE, 2015). The films will be screened in an English version with Czech subtitles / in a French version with English subtitles.
The program will be held in Czech and English, there will be no interpretation.
Guests:
DOMINIK GAJARSKÝ, visual artist (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague)
IVÁN ZATZ-DÍAZ, philosopher (Pratt Institute, NYC, USA)
KAREL CÍSAŘ, philosopher (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague)
Follow the latest news about the program via FB event!
