Prague-Veleslavín railway station

The history of the station dates back to 1863, when the steam railway line replaced the Prague – Lány horse-drawn railway. The specifically poetic nature of the station is partly created by its form as a “transit railway station”. It is an important transfer point on the Kladno-Prague route.

Vladimír Turner
Carriage

The long series of films, videos, engaged interventions in public space, performances, and object installations provide a consistent testimony to the power of the themes reflected. For many years, Vladimír Turner has persistently pointed out problematic, and often strongly cautionary, moments of Anthropocene civilisation in various places around the world. The enchanted mechanism of consumption-production, the deceitfulness of marketing strategies, the extraction of non-renewable resources, the brutal devastation of the landscape, mass tourism, the misconception of the possibility of shackling the organism of a big city to a structure of order, gentrification, homelessness,  inhumane methods of political systems. In fact, the theme of the essence of pure humanity, personal and social responsibility towards the landscape, nature, and a sustainable way of life based on local self-sufficiency is recalled again and again. He points out the themes through matter-of-factly simple acts. This makes the awareness of the necessity of individual engagement all the more intense. Although his conceptual works have an activist character, often dealing with the subversion of paradox, the expressive power of the pure artistry cannot be ignored. Through his installation for the Veleslavín station, Vladimír Turner verbalises the sculptural situation with the themes of sustainable mobility, fossil fuels, international trade, the relationship of motoring vs. train transport, and exodus and nomadism as consequences of climate change. He chooses the form of a specifically modified Volvo car, with an appeal to the constant presence of the potential of a natural human resource. The ideas of the installation are directly related to the genesis of the artist’s intended film, in which he finds himself in the role of an aborigine, the last survivor on planet Earth, who begins to build everything necessary to live from the garbage all around him. “System Change! Not Climate Change!” (VT)

Photo by: Jan Rasch

Implementation team

Artistic director:
Čestmír Suška

Curators:
Dagmar Šubrtová and Iva Mladičová

Manager of production:
Ivana Vodičková

PR:
Klára Sofie Střihavková

Production:
Dan Toman, Josefína Frýbová,
Jarka Janíčková

Technical manager:
Martin Pertl

Grafic design:
Jáchym Moravec and David Babka

Web:
Simona Sušková

Special thanks to:
Miroslav Bílek, Blanka Němcová, Vojtěch Pollák, Richard Janeček, Matěj Remeš, Rebeka Široká, Matyáš Kořínek, Vladislav Tesárek – Kladenský pivovar

Patronage

The patronage of the m3 Festival was kindly accepted by:

Mgr. Milan Volf
Mayor of Kladno

Doc. Ing. arch. Petr Hlaváček
Deputy head of the city of Prague

MgA. Hana Třeštíková
Councilor of the city of Prague

Czech Chamber of Architects

MgA. David Kašpar
Deputy Mayor of District P10

Mgr. Ondřej Kolář
Mayor of District P6

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