Despite mechanization, human work remains an integral factor in the smoothness and friction of all logistical movement.

The imprint of working bodies and their contact with the spaces of transshipment halls. Traces left in the system of moving goods. Repeating sequences and the order that hopelessly tries to push out all remaining chaos. These are some of the examples of themes addressed in the (not only) photographic works of Jan Kolský (CZ) who is currently working in tandem with the architectural project Space for Relational Research (DE).

Jan Kolský is a Czech photographer focusing on the documentation of artistic projects and architecture. Apart from his professional practice, he also works on artistic projects exploring the overlaps between artificially created environments, work and technologies. Kolský graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague with a project titled Here There Be Workers (2019) that was subsequently exhibited in the Fotograf gallery. The project focused on the organized employment of people within the grey zones of global digital network infrastructures as well as the topic of human work in automated systems. Kolský has been a long-term member of a collective research project focusing on the life and work of Ester Krumbachová that culminated in the exhibition Ester Krumbachová: Yeti – Wear the Amulet – Tangle Up the Archive (Tranzitdisplay, Prague, 2017) and the publication of an original book titled Green Fox Street. He was also member of the Extrasensory-Aesthetics Research Working Group that focused on the history and practice of Czech psychotronics in the 1970s and 1980s and was featured in 2020 as part of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award.

Space for Relational Research is a Berlin based spatial practice interested in aestheticising, politicising and transforming spatial relations. Barbara Herschel, Kaspar Jamme, Felix Künkel, and Justus Schweer studied architecture at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and the University of the Arts Berlin. For them, relational research is based on an understanding of space as a network of relationships between different actors, materials, and processes, which produce space in interaction with one another. Creating space for relational research means critically examining the conditions of spatial production, blurring the disciplinary boundaries of architecture, and establishing new forms of cooperation and transformation. A central aspect of this work involves developing transdisciplinary working methods that mediate between perspectives from architecture, urban planning, ecology, civil society, and public administration.

Curator: Tereza Rudolf

Architecture and guests: Space for Relational Research

Monologue texts: Klára Vlasáková

Sound: Jonáš Richter

Graphic design: Pavla Nečásková & Žofia Fodorová

Translation: Vít Bohal

Acknowledgment: Miroslav Pazdera