Backing Vocals: Anna Daučíková
6, 7 June, 2022
Member programming
Online – sign up via the member calendar

In June, for Backing Vocals, we have the unspeakable pleasure to welcome Anna Daučíková as a conversation partner.

After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 1978, artist Anna Daučíková immigrated to Moscow (then USSR) where she lived and worked until 1991. Her extensive painting practice and interest in photography triggered by her encounter with feminist thought is related to this period. Returning to Bratislava in the 1990s, her artistic practice went towards video art and performance events, then widely organised in the Slovak art scene. In her video art the engagement of artist’s body and bodily action became her main concern in presenting her queer statements. Despite working consistently for decades and at the forefront of deeply relevant conversations—as Paul B. Preciado notes, ‘One could say that Anna/Anča Daučíková is the first Czech/Slovak feminist female artist—except that Daučíková’s work problematizes the terms of this seemingly simple enunciation’—Daučíková’s work has only recently begun to receive the recognition it deserves. Therefore, she’s perfectly poised to answer any questions around sustaining a career and going up against the dominant narratives that determine who gets space and when, while her years of teaching experience and dexterity across mediums can also shed light on the more material aspects of working as an artist.

Anna will be taking your calls June 6 and 7.

Signing up by filling in your name behind an available slot in the member’s calendar.

If you do not yet have access to the calendar, don’t know how to sign yourself up, or would like to sign up to become a member in order to join, contact us via mail and we’ll help you out.

In 2022 our members-exclusive Backing Vocals program continues. Over the past year we were thrilled to hear that some of these one-on-one conversations brought about new friendships, new collaborations or a nudge in the right direction. Such an outcome was beyond our biggest hopes for what this thing could be and do, so, onwards!

Image 1: Peggy Ahwesh, Tears of Eros, a lexicon in the style of Georges Bataille, video still.
Image 2: Peggy Ahwesh, The Color of Love, 1994, video still.

In parallel to the exhibition Bronze Icebergs, Cauleen Smith and Kunstverein bring you The Distance Between Slits and Screen. This two-part, online only film program expands on Smith’s own interests and filmic oeuvre, touching upon topics and methodologies used by kindred-spirited filmmakers and finding itself in latent friction with archival material from the collection of the EYE Filmmuseum.

Running on an endless loop on Kunstverein’s website from today onwards, this first part takes up the suggestion Smith proposes in her new series of drawings currently on display at Kunstverein and rhetorically wonders: What if we collectively redirected our focus and put the revenant energy applied to the monumentalisation of small and foolish men towards the truly monumental, the features of this planet both grand and mundane, from microbes to crystals and volcanic outbursts. It features works by, in order of appearance: J.C. Mol, Cauleen Smith, H. Bekker, Basim Magdy, Huzel and Deimantas Narkevičius.