27.4. 2026, 19:00 / Lecture and film programme
Lecture by Michaela Davidová
Meeting the landscape: in between the film and the bio lab
During Michaela’s presentation, we will look on the photographic darkroom as an entity with its peculiar tempo – digesting materials, processes and substances inwards and expanding further from its dark walls into the outward worlds. By deconstructing photographic materiality and by experimenting, which is embedded in bodily and organic processes, we can reimagine the images not as flat plains but as living strata. The materials are a feeding ground for the transformation. What remains is revived through the process, captured, or decomposed. The wet film/photo lab comes alongside the bio lab and the landscape. It touches on the concepts such as transcorporeality, material witness, imprints and mapping. The usually undesirable elements in photographic practices such as moulds, fungi, heat, acidity, corrosion, rain, are embraced as part of expanded imagining practice, going beyond the pure visual interpretation of the photographs. Eventually, the matter which accumulates during the photographic processing is envisioned to continue becoming part of the ecosystems forming our artistic practices.
Film programme: Alexandra Moralesova/Georgy Bagdasarov (labodoble)
Encounter_Landscape_Process
As biotechnological material object, medium and organism the photochemical film can, through its physicality, relate directly to its environment and vice versa. This programme presents short films that, through materialist gestures capture and simultaneously participates in encounters with the landscape or the body both as processes within a larger whole. The films presented examine the filmic process outside the protocols of scientific film laboratory and rather turn back to an alchemical conception of transformation and interconnectedness of the world. At times, the attempts to create relationships are intentional, at other times they are matter of chance arising from situation, site and event – that is from a multilayered encounter. The various modes of perception these films offer go beyond visuality and invite the audience to experience film as process open to the intervention of other beings.
Phyytography_collective portrait of Troya (participants of the workshop Cineflowers 2023, 16mm, 2:30 min, BW)
Boiling The Piss (Michaela Davidová 2023/24, 16mm, 2:40 min BW, sound)
Rhus Typhina (labodoble 2014, 16mm, 2:47 min, BW, sound)
Heliotropy (labodoble 2023, 16mm, 5 min, BW, sound)
28. – 30. 4. 2026, 12:00 – 16:30 / Workshop conducted by Michaela Davidová
Meeting the landscape: workshop in experimental photography
During the three-day workshop, we will focus on how photography not only captures, but also activates and interprets the world around us. Through alternative photographic techniques that move on the border between alchemy and bioart, we will experiment and develop our work in the environment of Petřín Garden and the GAMU gallery. We will review the concepts, materials and processes that are commonly used in analog photography or film practice, and gradually break them down to learn how to examine them in their broader ecological context. Instead of gelatine and plastic, we will experiment with boiling plant-based emulsions, and instead of the developing process that uses synthetically prepared phenolic compounds, we will brew developers that rely on the power of substances contained in plants or kitchen ingredients.
The workshop will be conducted in both Czech and English. Reservations: nikola.brabcova@famu.cz
What to bring?
- 35mm analog camera
- Two half-liter mason jars with sealable lids
Bio Michaela Davidova
Michaela Davidová (1988, she/her) is a Czech artist originally from Ostrava, living in the Netherlands. In her work, Davidová deals with the ecology of the photographic process. This does not only mean researching light-sensitive substances and their effect on the environment, but also emphasizing the process and understanding of the thin, permeable layers that exist between humanature. Bio and waste materials, column chromatography, photographic developer infused with herbal tea or urine, peristalsis and stomach rumbling, ingredients, recipes, pinhole cameras, bacteria, fungi or kombucha are included in her works. Through artistic research and experimentation, Davidová reflects on the materials overlapping the photographic practice, with the aim of sharing a different perspective on the photographic medium.
Together with Dutch artist Risk Hazekamp (they/them), Davidová led a photography-focused course for bachelor students at the Minerva Art Academy in Groningen (2024), and continues teaching bachelor and master students at the St. Joost Akademie and Master Institute of Visual Cultures in Noord-Brabant. Since March 2024, she has been leading the DISCO lab at CARADT (Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology). She collaborates with The Sustainable Darkroom collective (UK) and is a member of the film laboratory Filmwerkplaats (NL).
