Curator-led guided tour of the exhibition Reexistence, Resistance, Resilience with Dorota Kenderová and Zuzana Janečková from the East Slovak Gallery in Košice, combined with the unveiling of a painting intervention by Oskar Felber on the staircase of the House of the Lords of Kunštát and followed by a lecture by Robo Švarc Iná voda.

6:00–6:30 PM

This presentation explores the concept of the new permanent exhibition at the East Slovak Gallery in Košice, which is taking shape amid extensive changes affecting the functioning of cultural institutions in Slovakia, and forms another distinct chapter of the exhibition, comprising works from the collections and supplemented by contemporary art interventions. It raises questions about the role of art in times of social tension and crises of values. It draws on the theme of resilience as an immune response and an autonomous system of protection and adaptation through which organisms defend themselves against pressure and adverse environmental conditions. The artworks, plants, and visiting viewers are entities here that can learn from one another about various forms and methods of survival. 

Dorota Kenderová, a Slovak artist and curator, served as an assistant professor in the Intermedia Studio under Ilona Neméth at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She founded and directed the HIT Gallery, which focuses on contemporary art in Bratislava, and since 2016 has served as director of the East Slovak Gallery in Košice. 

Zuzana Janečková, a Slovak curator, artist, and performer who focuses on themes of anthropocentrism, ecology, non-human entities, and interspecies collaboration. From 2012 to 2021, she served as a curator at the TIC Gallery in Brno, led activities at the regional center in the Jan Hála House in Važec, and currently serves as a curator at the East Slovak Gallery in Košice.

6:30–7:30 PM

This site-specific case study will explore a narrative spanning the Little Carpathians, Istrochem, the landfill in Bratislava’s Vrakuňa district, and Žitný ostrov. In the midst of it all stands the Remediation Sculpture by the civic association “Hopelessness and Despair.” In the elementary school’s orchard, artichokes and lemon oyster mushrooms extract toxins from the soil, which is permeated by water from Bratislava’s underground. Movement and time are the themes of this story, in which militarism, changes in political regimes, and decisions by power structures have long overshadowed the role and significance of life’s fundamental environmental medium.

Robo Švarc (*1983) is a visual artist, curator, author, chef, and translator from German. He studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2008–2014). From 2009 to 2017, he worked as an artistic assistant in the Kochkunst studio of the German-Hungarian artist and chef Arpad Dobriban. Since 2013, he has been carrying out the Lecture Art project, in which he intertwines cultural, gastronomic, and environmental themes through lectures, seminars, workshops, culinary events, festivals, and more. In 2021, he curated the year-long multidisciplinary festival Beuys Will Be Beuys for the Goethe-Institut in Bratislava. In 2021, he published the book *Non Exit* and a translation of *Kongo Tribunal* by Milo Rau. He is currently finalizing the translation of *Gesellschaftsspiele*. Politisches Theater heute by Florian Malzacher. During the 2024–2025 academic year, he led the seminar “Art in the Anthropocene” at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He is a co-founding member of the civic association “Hopelessness and Despair,” which has been dedicated to utopian-realist projects in the fields of ecology and art since 2023.

7:30–7:50 PM

Painter Oskar Felber created a large-format painting for the staircase of the House of the Lords of Kunštát as part of the Brno Artists in Residence program, drawing on the artist’s long-standing interest in visual references to early childhood and adolescence. Pop-culture imagery—primarily moving images from animated series and films, video games, comic books, and card games—has sparked a fascination in him that he continues to explore in his work. He draws inspiration from various corners of culture and personal mythology, as well as from everyday situations and emotions such as melancholy, nostalgia, joy, and sadness. Her black-and-white compositions intertwine the positive symbols of fairy-tale characters with an ambivalent sense of being overwhelmed.