Julien Maire

Julien Maire works with new media in his own, singular way often de-constructing and re-inventing analog apparatuses. He gives them a pataphysical slant, disassembling and inverting the functionality of various perception machines, like projectors or cameras. Born in Metz in 1969, Maire graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Metz, and currently lives and works in Brussels. Maire’s installations and performances, such as Exploding Camera, Low Res Cinema, and Demi-Pas have been featured widely and internationally at prestigious venues.

As part of his Agosto Residency, Maire will exhibit at the Inverse Mindset exhibition which will take place in Galerie AMU from 19 July - 2 September 2018.

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Inverse Mindset

This exhibition sheds light (and shadows) on a hidden narrative of optical and kinetic apparatuses. It brings together five works by two artists who have developed a particular, media-archeological approach to the aesthetics and ideology of the analog technology of the past, seen from the digital era. French artist

Julien Maire (1969) de-constructs and re-invents analog apparatuses and gives them a pataphysical slant. At GAMU, three of his works are on exhibit. These include The Man at Work (2014), an installation based on the stop-motion animation of a sequence of stereolithographic three-dimensional figures running in a loop. A similarly maverick cinematographic machine is his Instantanées (1998).

Robert Vlasák (1978) exhibits two assemblages: the sound sculpture Sirene (2017), an acoustic generator, based on an invention by August Seebeck (1805-1849); and a new kinetic sculpture entitled Vrtuloid constructed from a collection of car engine fan blades arranged on a shaft and suspended from the ceiling.

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Tonic Train

Tonic Train is the experimental electronics duo of Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann. The combination of Sarah’s homemade, circuit bent instruments and Knut’s feedback electronics creates a spectrum of fundamental electronic noises. It connects two methods of early electronic music practice: the appropriation of electronic circuits to make them sound and the improper use of electronic equipment to make it feed back.

Tonic Train’s artistic influence comes from electronic music pioneers such as David Tudor and Gordon Mumma. Over time, the Tonic Train duo has become part of many diverse musical projects and performances including a feedback ensemble featuring Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos, Nicolas Collins, Toshimaru Nakamura, Billy Roisz and Otomo Yoshihide. For the last four years Sarah and Knut have also been producing experimental radio programmes together for London’s unique radio art station Resonance104.4 FM. This work continues in their current project Mobile Radio, which aims to bring artistic radio production outside the sterile studio environment.

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Call for Nominations 2018

As part of its grant program Perpedes, the Agosto Foundation is requesting nominations from the general public for the support of the activities of individual artists, as well as for artistic or cultural projects. The Perpedes grant program fosters a closer connection between artistic and cultural activities, and the daily lives of various social strata and communities, on both the local and regional scale. The program focuses on strengthening smaller individual and civic initiatives which intersect or interact with interdisciplinary cooperation, and which address themes pertaining to social and environmental networks working within the framework of contemporary art. Nominations will be accepted until August 15, 2018. The grants will be conferred based on the agreed upon time schedule, with the availability funds lasting until the end of 2019.

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Open Call for Artists and Researchers

The Agosto Foundation seeks to establish strong platforms for the continuous and ongoing sharing of ideas. Through the Agosto Residency Program, the foundation seeks to create a context, not restricted to artists, for those active in the cultural realm to step outside of their usual frames of reference and to reach across disciplines. Selected artists and researchers will receive a private apartment in the center of Prague for a period of up to 3 months, a grant of approximately €750 (in Czech currency) to support their proposed project, travel expenses (limited) and assistance in project implementation.

The Foundation encourages and welcomes the participation of artists, curators and researchers from various backgrounds to apply for the support of projects which are in line with the mission of the Agosto Foundation and the declared objectives of the residency. Deadline: August 15, 2018 for residencies taking place between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019

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We would like to share this invitation to an initiative called Klimakemp with our readers.

Action Consensus: Klimakemp 2018

The year 2017 was one of the hottest year in the recorded history. Scientists agree that our planet is warming. They suggest that to avoid a catastrophic temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius, it is crucial to keep at least 80% of all known fossil fuels under the surface. However, fossil companies plan to extract and burn them nevertheless. Thus it is time for us to go beyond our own limits and stop the fossil industry.

After considering the urgency of the climate crisis, we decided to take the protests against coal industry a step further, to go from words to action. During the Czech Climate Camp, we are going to realize non-violent civil disobedience actions against one of the coal infrastructures in the brown coal district of Most. We are going to force the extraction operators to stop their common work by our presence inside or nearby the mine, a power station or another technical infrastructure. For a moment, we will limit mining and coal burning – the most crucial sources of the climate change and its dramatic consequences.

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