Anna Chrtková & Natálie Rajnišová: 1, two, 3

Opening hours:  Středa – sobota / Wednesday – Saturday, 13.00 – 19.00

SYMPOSIUM: 10. 12. 2025, 9:00 – 18:00

Zine launch: 7. 1. 2026, 18:00

FB event: https://fb.me/e/8Y5ttRHFs

Dramaturgy:  Roman Poliak

Technical support: Ondřej Konrád

Překlad / Translations: Vít Bohal

One – as in an individual. Two – as in Natálie Rajnišová and Anna Chrtková, two artistic research projects, mutual support and consultation. Three – as the smallest unit of a collective, fostering new relationships and perspectives, providing feedback.

We have been studying a PhD program together, both of us graduated with an MA in scenography, and we consider ourselves scenographers. We help each other out, yet we are still lacking something. Although both our fields (Natálie Rajnišová – Collective Costume, and Anna Chrtková on the Performability of a Scenographer) prototype and test a collective engagement with the world, with ourselves and each other by means of research in scenography, we feel alone in the academic field. Our work builds on Bruno Latour’s relation networks, and we are conscious of more-than-human assemblages, exploring methods for conscious experiencing of human and more-than-human forms of collectivity.

We observe our outcomes through the prism of science. And just like other academics, we move through a temporality structured by research grants whose rhythm follows the logging of outcomes into the Registry of Information on Results (RIV) and, in our case, the Register of Artistic Outcomes (RUV). The quality of our outcomes is measured and evaluated through a point-based system and then cast onto the open market where the number of publications and citations determines the value and significance of the creators-researchers who produced it. And throughout all this, we are plagued by doubt – who is going to read our work, really? Is there a specific audience for artistic research?

The exhibition 1, two, 3 is our highly practical answer to the problem of the intersection of art and academia. In the world of academia, we will always be the actors who are difficult to measure, categorize, and whose modus operandi perhaps remains too open. We present the exhibition as a sort of fissure which allows us to set our own rules in the world of indexing tables and citation impact. We are formulating the very support base we are currently lacking. GAMU thus becomes a space for creating temporary installations, expert encounters, a studio and laboratory, a place for generating feedback, exchanging knowledge, sharing, exercising mutual influence, being together, and maybe even “just” relaxing. We are able to orient ourselves here much better than in the world of academia.

In contrast to performances or theatre shows, the exhibition is defined in the Methodology of Evaluating Research Organizations as a relevant academic outcome. We have repurposed the first part of the gallery as a particular study room where we present our research method. The methods for learning – dialog, meeting, sketching, mapping and touching, sensing and materials – function as access points for reading the individual research projects presented in two separate rooms in the gallery’s second space. The research of Collective Costume is represented by a textile object (Naše kůže dýchá stejný vzduch / Our Skin Breathes the Same Air, 2024), an installation (Opakování 1–7 / Repetition 1–7, 2025) and a series of photographs (1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 2025), while the Performability of a Scenographer is represented by numerous schemas (Uživatelské manuály Y Events / Y Events User Manuals, 2019–2025, Anna Chrtková) and three situational models (My tři: situace, and Bitva o libidinální prostor I and II / Us Three: Situation, Battle for Libidinal Space I and II, 2023-2025).

The exhibition 1, two, 3, presents the audience with an opportunity to engage with those methods which allow us to better understand the world and experience it more consciously.

Anna Chrtková (1994) is a scenographer, curator and artist. She graduated with a scenography degree from Brno’s Janáček Academy of Performing Arts and the Theory of Interactive Media at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University. She works as a scenographer for various theaters in Czechia and Slovakia (e.g. West Bohemian Theater in Cheb, Goose on a String, HaDivadlo, Ludus Theater). She collaborated with the Intelektrurálně collective on the acclaimed student project Praha není Česko (Prague Is not Czech, 2019). In the same year, she became curator of the Y Events series of events which took place in Prague’s X10 Theater. She is a member of the Monika tired artist collective (Logika růstu / Logic of Growth, MUD Benešov, 2023; The Great Burnout, TIC Gallery, Brno, 2025), and she has been active as a PhD student and external teacher at DAMU in Prague. Her artistic research titled The Performability of a Scenographer: Scheme, Model, and Meeting as Tools of Curatorial Action focuses on the methodological potential of scenography as a practice for creating events and presenting visual art by scenographic means (schema, model, meeting).

Natálie Rajnišová (1994) is a scenographer, costume artist and musician. In 2020, she finished her MA studies at KALD DAMU, and she is now a PhD student focusing on the art research of Collective Costume – i.e. the role of fabrics as a connecting material in performance. She focuses on the scenographic and dramaturgical approaches to textiles, their materiality and their potential to create collective situations. She has also been teaching externally at DAMU. Her work engages with theater bordering on fine art and installation. In 2022, she co-founded the Laguna Resort performative platform which explores theater renditions of ecological topics, as well as the potential of fabrics and costume. Over the last years, she has collaborated on exhibitions and performances for MUD Benešov, Umakart, Fait Gallery, INI Gallery and Fotograf Gallery. She has also been involved with theater projects in the spaces of the National Theater’s New Scene, Alta, Alfred ve Dvoře, Malé Divadlo, Minor theater, Dejvice Theater, Venuše ve Švehlovce, Palác Akropolis, and others. She is also member of the TAMARA music group which in 2022 was nominated for the Anděl, Vinyla and Apollo Awards for their debut album Anderson.

The symposium EXPERIENCE, ENCOUNTER, KNOW: Artistic Research Between Material, Body and Space.

Accompanying program for the 1, two, 3 exhibition. An experimental conference format focused on embedded and embodied knowledge transmission. The symposium will feature PhD students and artists of Czech universities, as well as invited international guests.

Presenters: Ricardo Basbaum (BR), Martina Hajdyla Lacová, Lukáš Hoffmann, Hana Chmelíková, Anna Chrtková, Valentýna Janů, Kryštof Kočtář, Tomáš Moravanský, Natálie Rajnišová, Judith Seng (DE)