Symposium
Vasulkas Reloaded

The VASULKAS RELOADED international symposium is taking place at Vašulka Kitchen Brno (Dominikánská st. 9, 1st floor of the House of the Lords of Kunštat) in Brno, Czech Republic on 22 and 23 October 2024. It will be devoted to the critical evaluation of the work of Steina and Woody Vasulkas and their significant contribution to the art world including the subject of open archives.

Steina and Woody Vasulkas have always encouraged the idea of an open archive, one that is freely accessible and that can be transformed into a site of collaboration for a wide range of interested parties. They conceived their own archive (vasulka.org) containing contextual material from early video art on an unprecedented scale including personal letters, photographs, grant applications, exhibition costs, technical descriptions, and more. They gradually donated their digitized materials to various institutions and individuals with the hope that they would not only preserve but also disseminate and continue to work with them. These archives are now scattered in several international locations. In doing so, they also explored avenues that turned out to be less fruitful endeavors, such as the creation of a living archive in Second Life. Vašulka Kitchen Brno is also one of the sites where the Vašulka's archive is being processed, where the digitized materials are accessible to all those interested in research related studies.

Recently, several major exhibitions took place in Iceland and Czech Republic that attempted to work with the Vasulkas' artefacts in a new way, and others are coming soon in USA and Iceland. The talks will critically discuss the role of Vasulkas in European and American new media context, their ways of (co)working with other artists and institutions, their approach towards sharing resources, as well as current possibilities of exhibiting and archiving their works. 

PROGRAM

Open legacy of Steina and Woody Vasulkas

October 22nd, 2024 

10 am - 13 pm Vašulkovi Locally / The Vasulkas Globally
10 - 10:30 am introduction Lenka Dolanová and Barbora Šedivá (Vašulka Kitchen Brno)
10:30 - 11 am Tomáš Ruller (CZ, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - Performativity of The Vasulkas work
11 - 11:30 am Pavel Smetana (CZ) - The Vasulkas revisited: collaborations and reinventions
11:30 - 12 Miloš Vojtěchovský (CZ, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - The Idler or Vasulkas Dream about Bohemian Institute 
12 - 12:30 pm Jennifer DeFelice (CZ, USA, Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - Sums & Differences: Gary Hill, Steina, and Woody Vašulka and the Development of an Approach to Presenting Audiovisual Work in Specific Gallery Environments
12:30 - 1 pm Petr Vrána - PARTICIPATION 2.0

1 - 2 pm LUNCH

2 - 5:30 pm Open Archives
2 - 2:30 pm Gaby Wijers (NL, LI-MA) - Violin Power reloaded
2:30 - 3 pm Larisa Dryansky (FR, Sorbonne Université) - Video Image as Object: 3D in the Work of Steina and Woody Vasulka
3 - 3:30 pm Zach Ngin (ONLINE) (USA, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge) - Constantly Moving Images: Exhibiting Steina in the 21st Century 

3:30 - 4 pm PAUZA

4 - 4:30 pm Chris Hill (ONLINE) (USA, School of Film/Video, CalArts) - A Walk through the Vašulka Mediascape with Reflections on a Recent Interview with Artist Arnold Dreyblatt
4:30 - 5 pm Joost Rekveld (NL) - A Palimpsest on the Electronic Analog Art 
5:30 - 6 pm Dušan Barok (SK/NO, Monoskop) / Barbora Šedivá (Vašulka Kitchen Brno) - Working with Vašulka Kitchen Brno archive: methodology, outputs and other possibilities of its development

6 - 7:30 pm DINNER

7:30 - 9 pm SCREENING PROGRAM 
Steina and Woody Vasulkas: In Search of the Castle (9:29 min.)
Joost Rekveld: Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59 (78 min.)
Open Archives - moderated discussion

October 23rd, 2024 

10 am - 1 pm
The discussion focused on the possibilities of cooperation across the media art archives. 
With the participation of: Dušan Barok (SK/NO, Monoskop), Barbora Šedivá (Vašulka Kitchen Brno), Jakub Frank (Muzeum umění Olomouc, CEAD), Larisa Dryansky (FR, Sorbonne Université), National Film Archive in Prague and others. 

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM: PROJECTION IN VAŠULKA KITCHEN BRNO GALLERY
During the symposium, there will be screening in Vašulka Kitchen Brno gallery. It will include the video montage from photographs and other archive material related to Woody Vašulka which has recently enriched the VKB collection (edited by: Vít Janeček), and also video pieces inspired by Steina and Woody Vasulkas. 

David Stout: Contours and Coincidence (2021, 10 min.)
Sara Bonaventura: The left hand of darkness. Rutt Etra Scan Processor Didactic Videos Homage (4’ 10’’, color, 4/3, SD, 2019)