Date: 26.04.2024 — 09.06.2024
Opening: 25. 4. 2024, 18:00
Opening hours: Thursday–Sunday 2 pm–7 pm
Curated by: Nela Klajbanová
Planýrka is an extensive hillside that belongs to Ponava district of Brno. It’s situated north of the city centre, where the Královo Pole Shopping can be found. Planýrka is an area with unregulated lush greenery, wetland and has rich biodiversity. In 2023, as a part of a biological research, it was found out that some 360 species of flora and fauna inhabit the area, 39 of those falling under the ‘endangered’ category. Some are protected by law, while a few of them are critically endangered, like the Northern lapwing, which is one of the fastest declining bird species in our country. Planýrka is a unique ecosystem, where hundreds of species co-exist together in the background of the hustle of the city and therefore it’s necessary to come up with strategies for more than just human cohabitation.
The urban wilderness of Planýrka is long term affected by urbanization, market plans and complex ownership relations. The area has a specific geomorphological character – any surrounding demolitions or developments could put too much pressure and activate the present landslide. The underdeveloped sewage system in the surrounding Brno districts is causing deposition of sewage sludge to the local wetland. While the reports of the scientific community and activists were repeatedly asking for the area to be protected, the local authorities prioritize its commodification through development plans. Even though the city denied the 2021 urban plan proposal of the Brno City Architect’s Office, the currently progressing development projects, mapped by the BRNO BRZO web portal, are suggesting that the intended buildings could potentially destroy the conditions needed for a multi-species co-existence and they could lead to a landslide. These steps confirm a clear pro-human approach that doesn’t consider the unique local biodiversity, nor the unstable subsoil.
Reflection of the Planýrka ecosystem and the prerequisite for local interspecies cohabitation is something that visual artist Tamara Spalajković focuses on in her artistic doctoral research Imagination as a Way to More Fair Spatial Politics at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. The research includes field recordings, text, image and video outputs. An illustration of the aforementioned biological assessment from 2023, co-created with Matěj Sláma, is also a part of it. The aim of this visualization is the representation of all the species residing in the area, whose living conditions are influenced by urbanization, and which are not taken into account in the decision-making processes of future urban planning. In many ways, this is also represented in the exhibition, whether it’s a nominal list of all the species, or the spiral object. The spiral represents a metaphorical roundtable meeting of all the species, where the representatives of individual groups of the habitat can discuss and become a part of the decision-making processes concerning landscape management.
Once Upon a Time in Planýrka exhibition follows up on the research as well as it is a narrative of multi-species cohabitation on the hills of Brno. The social-urban development is complemented by speculative narratives mapping the anthropogenic influence and gradual changes in the landscape. Among other things, the author questions the current practices of urban planning, which ignore site-specific multi-species cohabitation.
In Net Worth (2023) video, co-authored with Daniel Rejmon and Jakub Daněk, we follow the stories of several characters with diverse attitudes towards the area. Some of them work there, some are sent there for an exploration mission, others want to invest in it or spend their free time there. The video uses fictional and speculative modes of storytelling to describe commercial and political interests interfering with the shape of the area and the conditions for cohabitation and interspecies relationships. The area becomes an agent affecting the spatial planning processes with its properties. Another plane we can observe in Net Worth is the merging of humans with brain computer interface technology (called Synapse Pro in the video), which illustrates the deepening of technocratic growth focused on profit. The video called Intercepting Urbanization (2024) was created several months later and loosely follows not only Net Worth, but the whole story of Planýrka as well. In both videos we follow a pair of pigeons which guide us around the area and present us with the problems associated with life on Planýrka and its future. Net Worth ends with the two pigeon companions singing. They sigh over the current gentrification and development projects leading to unaffordable living not only for humans, but for the animal and plant species as well, due to buildings on natural sites. In the beginning of Interception Urbanization one pigeon thanks the other for joining him in a song. Their storytelling blends with utopian ideas of what Planýrka could look like if only the ecosystem was maintained with consideration of the resident species.
Without doubt, the space as an ecological niche suffered from anthropocentric development projects, but different stories can be told as well – a rich history of resilience and adaptability of the land, and of each animal and plant species against environmental changes. Therefore, Planýrka becomes a case study of much wider problematics – urban planning policies, urbanization and ecosystem restoration.
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Tamara Spalajković (1996, Belgrade) is an artist, researcher and musician. She completed her studies in the Video studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno where she is currently a PhD candidate. As part of her artistic research, she creates docu-fictional videos which deal with the effects of urbanization on multispeciesspecies coexistence. Tamara Spalajković is part of the FaVU music label, in the past she was a member of the editorial team of Bublina Magazine. Together with Daniel Rajmon, she has the band Keiko Sei. She independently creates experimental electronic music as hiding season.
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The videos were created at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Technology in Brno as part of the project Imagination as a Tool For Fairer Spatial Policies, supported by the funds of special-purpose support for specific university research provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports in 2023. The exhibition is supported by the funds from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the City of Prague.
The video Net Worth was co-authored with Jakub Daňek and Daniel Rajmon.
3D animation for the video Intercepting Urbanization: Sofie Gjuričová
Graphical data processing: Matěj Sláma
Exhibition architecture: Kateřina Radakulan
Graphic Design: Nela Klímová
Production: Tereza Vinklárková, Anna Davidová
Technical support: Max Máslo
Photodocumentation: Jan Kolský
Thanks to: Markéta Effenbergerová, Sára Märc, Kateř Tureček, Galerie Fotograf, Pavel Dvořák, Andrew Wilson
