The Spring Collection will feature two live works and two installations. On the Cellar Stage, Jakub Roček, Ladislav Mirvald, and Šárka Svobodová will present the audiovisual performance OD PRIOR, accompanied by the musical composition STESCOU performed by Tomáš Šenkyřík. In the catacombs of the Centre for Experimental Theatre, the video installation Shopping Fall by Jan Kristek will be displayed, and Jakub Roček will offer the audience the opportunity to enter the game environment titled Jižní Centrum.
🌀 OD PRIOR: A/V Live Gameplay Performance
Jakub Roček, Ladislav Mirvald, Šárka Svobodová
Audiovisual Performance – Cellar Stage, CED
The performative work by Jakub Roček, Ladislav Mirvald, and Šárka Svobodová interprets the final phase of the story of Brno’s Prior department store through a gamified form. The multimedia, real-time rendered environment gradually reveals the spatial and historical context of the iconic 1980s building. Šárka Svobodová’s verbal contribution oscillates between historical exposition and urgent critique of the socio-economic situation after the fall of the Iron Curtain, emphasizing the loss of tangible cultural heritage. Ladislav Mirvald complements the scenario with a sound composition based on authentic recordings of the building’s final moments, particularly its agony during demolition. Jakub Roček, as the author of the visual part of the performance, navigates the environment of the so-called Southern Centre using contemporary real-time game visualization tools, creating a visual score for the entire collective. The piece balances historical facts, authorial fiction, and the spectacle of the last evening, in which the lived experience is relativized.
๛ Jakub Roček is a graduate of the Drawing and Graphics Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. His work engages with new digital technologies such as virtual reality and digital 3D space. In his drawings, objects, and video essays, he explores various subtopics within this broad field, such as the integration of machines and human entities into new functional systems. An important aspect of his practice is the re-signification and redefinition of categories such as body, society, architecture, responsibility, and climate. Roček’s digital works are often characterized by mechanical precision, uncanny realism, and a pronounced emphasis on their technologically complex nature. A significant element of his practice is the use of multiple media—both in the sense of multimedia installations and in terms of his workflow, in which the subject of interest flows from one medium to another, undergoing transformation. Unlike the other members of the trio, he is not a member of the 4AM collective, but he has collaborated with the association over a long period.
@jakub._.rocek
๛ Šárka Svobodová is an architectural historian, curator, and founding member of 4AM. She works on both authored and exhibition projects and publishes scholarly as well as popular texts, focusing especially on architecture of the second half of the 20th century. As an educator, she teaches at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology. She is also active in preserving architectural and artistic heritage, engaging in public debates on how contemporary society receives and interprets architecture and visual art from past political regimes.
@sarka.ova
๛ Ladislav Mirvis Mirvald is an unconventional master of unusual sound and visual solutions, a sound designer, and a creator of specialized recording technologies. He is a member of the 4AM collective and serves as a consultant at the Department of Musicology at Masaryk University in Brno, the Brno Philharmonic, the Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology, and the Moravian Science Centre Brno, where he also works on spatial acoustics. He translates this expertise into practice by developing techniques for capturing and reproducing the sounds of spaces, structures, and materials. He has participated in numerous music, film, and theatre projects and acts as a consultant and producer for audiovisual installations. He is the sound engineer for the Expozice nové hudby festival. As a sound engineer, he works on post-production and live recordings of performances from contemporary experimental and independent music scenes, covering not only contemporary classical music but also broader post-industrial concepts. He is co-author and technician of many artistic audiovisual installations and, above all, a versatile sound producer focusing on experimental and electroacoustic music as well as independent music projects.
@L_mrvs_rk_s_vrvs_M
๛ The collective 4AM Forum for architecture and media has been active in Brno since 2010, while developing collaborations on a national and international level. It serves as a platform that critically addresses professional issues related to architecture, urbanism, contemporary audiovisual culture, and broader socio-political and cultural phenomena. Its projects emphasize interdisciplinarity, the examination of current societal issues, and open collaboration with authors, creative collectives, and institutions.
@4AM_forum
🌀 STESCOU
Tomáš Šenkyřík
Concert – Cellar Stage, CED
The composition STESCOU captures the soundscapes of the Tesco supermarket. The piece aims to convey how the department store sounded, from its interior spaces to areas that merge with the surrounding environment. The central concept is based on a journey through the supermarket, following a path the author traced within and around the building. Using various microphones and recording techniques, he documented the acoustic events of the space. The composition serves as a record of the soundscapes unique to this site, which have now disappeared due to the demolition of the building.
๛ Tomáš Šenkyřík works with field recordings and sound art. The sound environment that surrounds us and is constantly changing serves as a fundamental source of inspiration for him. He has been engaged in field recordings since 2008, focusing on the sounds of forests, the calls of birds and amphibians, as well as the underwater acoustic world. He is interested in the biodiversity of the sites he studies and in changes to soundscapes caused by climate, human-made noise, or natural environmental shifts. He is the founder of the portal Soundscape.cz, a sound map documenting the sounds of South Moravia.
🌀 Shopping Fall (2024)
Jan Kristek
Video Collage, Installation – Catacombs, CED
The video collage Shopping Fall is based on the demolition of the PRIOR department store in Brno (1984), which had to make way for a new shopping center last spring. Footage of the ongoing destruction is combined into fictional spaces in an endless loop. The work is not merely an observation of the end of a single building but thematizes the fall of all major brutalist structures built before 1989.
๛ Jan Kristek studied architecture and urbanism. He currently works at the Faculty of Architecture in Brno as head of a studio and served as its dean from 2018 to 2022. His research and publications focus on critical theory and critical approaches in the context of urban planning and its history. In practice, he works as a curator, exhibition architect, and, most recently, scenographer.
🌀 Jižní Centrum (2025)
Jakub Roček
Intermedial Installation – Catacombs, CED
Sound Design: Ladislav Mirvald
Technical Collaboration: Jaroslav Vysoký, Alexis Raverdy
The environment of Jižní Centrum is a multi-layered aggregate designed as an interactive game. Players have no specific goal; following the example of the Situationist movement and its concept of the dérive, they deliberately wander, explore, follow the atmosphere, and chart their own path through the space and events. The starting point was the architecture of an extensive brutalist project, of which only a single, recently demolished, department store was ever realized. The digital reconstruction was preceded by archival and field research of period environments, from which the author drew textures and structural layouts. The result is not merely a digital utopia, but a collage of materials, ideologies, dreams, gloss, and social taboos. Short animations link the destruction of a specific department store with the end of an entire era, thematizing the vacuum of post-1989 sentiments. The work amplifies a sense of discontinuity that society tends to suppress, but which, in light of current global crises, demands our attention. It is a game about time that no longer exists—the countdown has ended, and nothing has happened.