6:00 PM – 6:20 PM: Screening of a selection of short films
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM: Curated discussion program with audiovisual excerpts
The discussion program will feature:
🌱 Barbora Benčíková: Liberated Space
🌱 Lýdia Grešáková: Czech and Slovak Placemaking for the 99%
🌱 Petra Hlaváčková: Liberated Space
🌱 Adéla Vavříková: Notes on the Prison
Together with architect and researcher Adéla Vavříková, we will imagine what a world without prisons might look like and explore how the ideas of abolitionist feminism can be put into lived practice. Lýdia Grešáková, a member of the collective Spolka, will take us beyond the boundaries of conventionally understood architecture as she discusses her current research “Czech and Slovak Placemaking for the 99%.” With architectural theorists and historians Barbora Benčíková and Petra Hlaváčková, we will also focus on the themes of care and inclusion in the context of architecture as a “space for everyone.”
Bio:
👀 Spolka
Spolka is a non-profit studio of architecture and sociology that brings together experts in architecture, urbanism, and civic engagement. Since 2016, it has been active in city-making topics grounded in the values of care and sustainability. Spolka is part of several international initiatives (such as the New European Bauhaus, Year of Climate Care, and Escalator) and has completed dozens of successful projects focused on caring urban planning and co-creation of cities in Slovakia and Central Europe. More information about Spolka can be found at spolka.cc.
👀 Lýdia Grešáková
Lýdia Grešáková is a sociologist working at the intersection of feminist values, architecture, climate justice, and the critical role of art in transforming cities. She studies marginalized voices in Central and Eastern Europe and connects local stories with global contexts. She is a member of the Slovak non-profit studio Spolka. In the past, she worked as a research fellow at K LAB at TU Berlin, where she participated in projects focused on critical mapping.
lydiagres.tumblr.com
👀 Adéla Vavříková
Adéla Vavříková is an exhibition architect and independent artistic researcher. She completed her master’s degree at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), where her diploma thesis NOTES ON PRISON explored carceral structures and their intersections with architecture. Currently, she contributes to SHIFT, a research platform and laboratory for sustainability transformation at UMPRUM. She has previously worked as a gender equality expert in politics for the non-profit organization Fórum 50 % and as a research fellow in the Sustainable Urbanism Lab of Auto*Mat, focusing mainly on fair mobility and public transport. Together with Magdalena Uhlířová, she founded the architectural studio RUINA, specializing primarily in exhibition architecture.
👀 Barbora Benčíková
Barbora Benčíková is an architectural historian working at the Study and Documentation Centre of Villa Tugendhat, where she focuses on heritage care, education, and public programs. She has collaborated on numerous exhibition and publication projects, including Bauhaus, Women, Czechoslovakia (2019), Possibilities of Interpreting the Villa Tugendhat Space (2021), and CONTOURS (2024). Professionally, she focuses on research and education in architecture and urbanism. Since 2021, she has served as a dramaturge and coordinator of the Brno section of the Day of Architecture festival. She is also a member of the platform 4AM / Forum for Architecture and Media. Her long-term interests include sensitive urban planning, the social dimension of architecture, the role of women in the architectural field, and ways of mediating architecture to the public. She co-authored the publication Brno for Everyone: Sensitive City Planning (2022).
👀 Petra Hlaváčková
Petra Hlaváčková is an author, curator, and documentary filmmaker. Together with Nicole Sabella, she leads the Gender & Space studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her work focuses on feminist approaches in architecture, gender politics, and women’s emancipation in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. She is a co-founder of 4AM / Forum for Architecture and Media (Brno), editor of the Brno Architectural Manual (bam.brno.cz), and curator of exhibitions such as People in Revolt (2011), Compact City (2011), and Kill Your Idol (Brno 2011, Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, Leipzig 2013). She has received several international fellowships, including the Jan Patočka Fellowship at the IWM in Vienna. Together with Tomáš Hlaváček, she co-directed the documentary films When You Have a Job, You Have Everything (2016) and Living Against All Odds (2021), and co-authored the book Brno for Everyone: Sensitive City Planning (with Barbora Benčíková, 2022). She earned her PhD at UMPRUM in Prague and participated in the research project Women in Architecture (zenyvarchitekture.cz). In 2023, she curated the international exhibition Liberated Space: Architecture – Care – Feminism at the Bratislava City Gallery.
The evening will also include a selection of short artistic films responding to public space in relation to architectural, ecological, and social issues, as well as interspecies coexistence in the city.
🎥 Sofie Gjuričova & Jasmina Lustigová: Sauna (2024), Arcade (2023)
🎥 Oskar Helcel: Project Zaha: Under Construction, 2023, Project Zaha: It's Buildable, 2020
The program is curated by Jana Mikuš Hanzelová and Amálie Bulandrová as part of the year-long series Collective Dreaming Club, dedicated to various approaches to fiction and fantasy as strategies of anticipatory imagination.
Once a month, on a Wednesday, the Club of Councillors will be transformed into a clubhouse of collective dreaming, where art, activism, and academia coexist and create new imaginative connections. Throughout 2025, public gatherings will take place here, all linked by the shared practice of imagining more-than-real forms of the contemporary world. The program of each event is prepared in dialogue with invited guests, who personally guide participants through a form of collective dreaming emerging from their artistic or research practice.