4+4 Days in Motion to seize the empty Desfours Palace in October
Press release 20th August 2018
The 23rd international festival of contemporary art 4+4 Days in Motion takes place from 5th to 13th October 2018 at several places in Prague. It has been a tradition that the main focus is the abandoned building in the center of the capital: it is the Desfours Palace at Florenc this year. The neo-classicist house falling into ruins will be revived for nine days by the main exhibition Uncertainty Principle. The 4+4 Days in Motion festival offers probably the last possibility to experience unique atmosphere of the palace before the scheduled reconstruction. Visitors can also enjoy contemporary, provocative and innovative theatre and dance projects from Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Canada, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Lebanon, Syria and Great Britain. The complete program will be available in September 2018.
Desfours Palace was built in 1846 close to the Těšnov railway station. Once it had a garden, glasshouse and a western wing, which was pulled down due to the construction of the Rudé právo building. Paintings in the palace rank among the most important pieces of Czech wall paintings in the mid-19th century. The festival 4+4 Days in Motion will make the building accessible for the public and will offer several curated exhibitions of contemporary visual art. The curators of the main exhibition called Uncertainty Principle are Tomáš Knoflíček and Libor Novotný from the Ostrava project The Cuckoo – Art in Public Space, Nina Michlovská, Radek Váňa, and Ondřej Horák. Pavel Vančát will present the best of the Start Point exhibition – the showcase of European art schools. The accompanying program for schools and children visitors is called Do You Have a Knack for Art?. The program features a conference Processes of Progress and there will be a festival school for art professionals as well. Lebanese artists Tania El Khoury will present an intimate encounter of a performer and a viewer called As Far as My Fingertips Take Me. The gallery project will provide the visitors with the opportunity to have a first-hand experience with refugee stories they can retain or wash away. Another project for one visitor at a time only is a video installation Guilty Landscapes by Dutch theatremaker and visual artist Dries Verhoven. It is a response to the fact that availability of information makes us permanent witnesses of complicated situations all around the world.
The theatre and dance program will take place in the Archa Theatre, Ponec Theatre and DOX Centre for Contemporary Art this year. Dramaturgy of the foreign program will substantially reflect complexity of contemporary Europe and the world. The 23rd edition of the festival will open with the production of the Italian company Motus called MDLSX, a psychedelic one-woman show by the award-winning theatre and film actress Silvia Calderoni. Syrian dancer and choreographer Mithkal Alzghair will present the Czech premiere of his performance Displacement about running away as saving the life as well as losing the possibility to return. In her documentary production History History History, British artist Deborah Pearson will have a look at one of the biggest 20th century refugee crises: the year of 1956, when up to 300,000 people fled from Hungary – including the grandfather of the author of the production. In her performance Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster, Australian performer Nicola Gunn analyzes unbearable traits of human behavior from both critical and comical points of view. The production HELLO USELESS – FOR W AND FRIENDS performed by famous Belgian actor and performer Benny Claessens will provide relief for those who need to stop, breathe and break free from public control. The festival will present four Czech premieres: new productions by Wariot Ideal company, SecondHand Women company, a site-specific performance Weeping Over a Too Long Life by Barbora Kleinhamplová and Tereza Stejskalová as well as Jan Mocek’s premiere of Fatherland. The complete program of the festival will be available in September 2018.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The festival 4+4 Days in Motion was established in 1996 by four people: Nikola Böhmová, Markéta Černá, Denisa Václavová, and Pavel Štorek, who have been in charge until nowadays. In the course of 22 years, the festival has presented more than 500 foreign and Czech companies representing all genres of contemporary art (theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film, video art). It has implemented cultural projects to revive places like an old sewage treatment plant in Prague Bubeneč, abandoned factory halls of ČKD in Karlín, the former municipal brewery in Holešovice, the former brickworks in the Šárka valley, the hockey stadium HC Hvězda in Vokovice, gyms in the Tyrš House, Nostitz Halls, the former Federal Assembly, Casino in Pařížská street, the former ÚLUV at Národní street as well as U Stýblů Palace at Wenceslas Square and Karlín Barracks. The festival has initiated many premieres of site-specific projects by Czech companies, it presents group exhibitions of contemporary visual artists and curators, and works with top art historians and architects to provide guided tours and lectures. The festival also works with cultural organizations such as Kruh, Jednotka/Unit, AVU Scientific and Research Institute, Start Vršovice and others.
4 + 4 Days in Motion
23Rd International festival of contemporary art
5—13 October 2018
Desfours Palace, Archa Theatre, Ponec – theatre for dance, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Facebook: fb.com/festival4dny/
Event: fb.com/events/1485877834866333/
Partner of the festival: Trade Center Praha a.s.
Festival supporters: Ministry of Culture, Czech Republic, Municipality of Prague, IN SITU, Creative Europe, French Institute in Prague, Representation of the Flemish Community in Prague, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Italian Cultural Institute
Main media partner: Radio 1
Press service and PR:
Eliška Míkovcová
t: +420 606 77 44 35
e: eliska.mikovcova@kulturnipr.cz
