Veřejný dům: Theo Alexander + Qow, Epos 257 & Robert Julian Hvistendahl, Annie Ernaux | reading, lobbyboy&saab900turbo + THC Luna G, A-i-R*s

Veřejný dům / A public house. This time in a more literal sense than ever before, the traditional opening party of the new season in the Smíchov factory will present MeetFactory as a cultural refuge and architectural phenomenon facing the turbulent transformation of its surroundings. The unadulterated periphery of engines and dingy shacks is becoming a district of gleaming modern buildings that promises to breathe new life into the industrial part of Smíchov.

The MeetFactory curatorial team has conceived the new rhythm of the factory's surroundings as a challenge and an impetus for a long-term collaborative art-research project, the culmination of which will be the forthcoming Public House. The individual outcomes are thus more or less free reflections on the transformation of the landscape adjacent to the Smíchov factory, while at the same time crossing the boundaries of the individual dramaturgical lines of MeetFactory.

॰ₒ॰ Gallery 

Other Edges of the World | opening 
The exhibition focuses on exile and displacement in both tangible and imaginative terms. It transcends the dichotomy of centre-periphery and enters a field that is constantly being rewritten, reshaped, simultaneously disappearing and reappearing.
artists: Kateryna Aliinyk (UA/DE), Ghazaleh Avarzamani (IR/CA), Eva Ďurovec (SK/DE), Darja Lukjanenko (UA/CZ), Mina Nasr (EG), Jura Shust (BY/DE)
curators: Flóra Gadó & Lucia Kvočáková & Piotr Sikora
architecture: Vojtěch Novák 
additional programme curator: Jiří Žák 

Robert Julian Hvistendahl & Epos 257: Collapse of the Landscape | opening 
The exhibition Collapse of the Landscape develops the themes of inner peripheries, the memory of place, and disappearing landscapes. As part of the Synapse Again project, an artistic collaboration between Czech artist Epos 257 and Norwegian Robert Julian Hvistendahl. The two artists have decided to create a joint installation at MeetFactory - a place that is geographically almost on the periphery of Prague, but culturally located in its center. The Norwegian city of Tromso, where Hvistendahl comes from, is a similar geographical periphery of Norway - although it lies just outside the Arctic Circle, it is the center of cultural events in this region. At the same time, the exhibition will work with the themes of memory of place and the transformation of the landscape on a general level. In the Kostka Gallery space, traces of the original glass furnace, which was part of the Josef Inwald refinery and glassworks, are still visible. From the roof of the original furnace and the current gallery, the installation will give viewers a view of the parts of Smíchov around the Lihovar, revealing the current irreversible changes due to the development of this part of the city. We will become observers of the development and growth of the city from the ruins of the former glassworks. Thanks to the installation, the authors will give us the opportunity to turn into critical observers of the transformation of the landscape around the MeetFactory and to observe it from an "observation room" located inside and outside the Kostka Gallery.
curator: Ján Gajdušek

Ing. arch. Josef Holeček - lecture 
In addition to his architectural practice, Josef Holeček's research at the FA CTU focuses on historical buildings and their transformations, as well as the analysis of their traces in the contemporary urban landscape, from the level of urban scale to architectural detail. The lecture will focus on the topography of the southern part of Smíchov and Zlíchov and their changes over the last hundred years.

॰ₒ॰ Music 

Theo Alexander + Qow: Palimpsest for 150 00” 
In their first musical collaboration, QOW and Theo Alexander have created a scenario in which they variously become opponents and collaborators as they build and maintain an ongoing composition using a process loosely inspired by the turbulent regeneration of the local area. 
Light design: Tasya

Sqare 
https://soundcloud.com/sqare  

॰ₒ॰ SHAPE+ 
Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko): Begeisterung
Heinali, a music composer and sound artist reimagining medieval music in modular synthesis, explores, through the prism of his musical practice, a guitar as a divining rod used to attract demons; possessed synthesisers examining the boundaries between Providence and Contingency; voices of angels joining choirs in reverberations of medieval cathedrals; a mind-altering resonance shared by megalithic chambers and Berlin clubs; electrical circuits as sacred writing, and XII century polyphonic music as time dilating Black Holes.

॰ₒ॰ Theater

Annie Ernaux: Obyčejná žena
The book by the Nobel Prize winner for literature, on which MeetFactory Theatre will be preparing a performance in the winter season, will be presented in a reading marathon by dramaturg Matěj Samec and director Eliška Říhová.
Reading is in the Czech language. 

Tomáš Hájek: Dies Irae

॰ₒ॰ A-i-R*s 

2S JULIE
lobbyboy&saab900turbo and THC Luna G

The video essay, the creation of which brought together the groups lobbyboy&saab900turbo and THC Luna G for the so-called Great Collaboration, tells the story of Smíchov Station and its surroundings through rap and graffiti. It pays tribute to its majesty in the last moment before the completion of its radical transformation into a modern communication hub with an adjacent residence.

Here, rapper Oki Kazi tells the story of Juliet looking for Romeo in the wrong train set, wondering where she'll go when the tracks are ripped up. Lobbyboy outlines a dark path to a future paved with capital. Bengreen Kali, in her minute-long sovereign speech, reflects on the fundamental changes in her life against the backdrop of the transformation of the railway. E.Y.Z's text then weaves the track with references to anime shadow guardians of the city or visions of Prague from Egon Bondy's Cyberkomix. Through daytime shots, the nostalgia of raw Smichov (as we know it from Jáchym Topol's book Anděl or the track Smíchov - Újezd by Vladimír 518 and guests Orion and Hugo Toxxx) meets the dark vision of the future represented by black ninjas and night vision.

The project also includes a show lobbyboy&saab900turbo with guests Bengryna Kali and Oki Kazi from THC Luna G with stagedesign, which is an original collab by graffitiartist Kitki and sculptor Erika Velicka.

open studios, residency floor guided tour

Ola Nenko (PL)
Urban Space Epics (US/CZ)
Jernej Čuček Gerbec (SI)
Coraline Guilbeau (FR)
Elia Nurvista (ID)
Stony Tellers (CZ)
Katerina Mamchur (UA)
Assaf Hinden (IS)
Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko)* 

*Heinali is an artist supported through SHAPE+ platform in 2023/2024. SHAPE+ platform is co-finsnced from Creative Europe and financially supported by Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

Line-up: 
18:30 Ing. arch. Josef Holeček - lecture
19:00 exhibitions opening
19:15 Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko): Begeisterung - lecture
20:00 Theo Alexander + Qow: Palimpsest for 150 00
20:00 Tomáš Hájek: Dies Irae
20:00 Annie Ernaux: Obyčejná žena - reading
20:15 residency floor guided tour
21:00 THC Luna G + lobbyboy&saab900turbo
21:00  Sqare

19:00–23:00 open studios

Admission is free for the whole event.

We will publish the schedule soon. 
Kostka Gallery and the residential floor are not wheelchair accessible, for more information, we recommend checking here