Accompanying program to the exhibition Small, Completely Silent Changes, Moravian Library
We invite you to an accompanying program for the exhibition Small, Completely Silent Changes, which runs until December 31, 2025, at the Moravian Library (Kounicova 65a, Brno). Guided botanical walk led by Martin Žák
Thursday, 13 November 2025, 17:00, foyer on the ground floor
From the meeting point in the foyer on the ground floor of the library, visitors will move to the adjacent Björnson Park, which was a gardening colony from the end of World War I until the mid-1950s, and some plant residues from that period remain there. They will then return to the public areas of the library, where they will learn about the greenery and crops growing inside the building.
Anna Garcia, Agáta Kertész, Jiří Skála – Uncinematic Screen (YouTube video essay festival)
Thursday, 13 November 2025, 19:00, conference hall, ground floor
Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 19:00, MZK Gallery, ground floor
Wednesday, 26 November 2025, 19:00, MZK Gallery, ground floor
The YouTube video essay format is primarily intended for the relationship between an individual and their mobile device. But what happens to this unique form of auteur film when it is presented publicly? The curatorial team has prepared a selection of videos divided into three thematic areas. The first evening will present the YouTube video essay as a separate genre. The second meeting will focus on its overlaps with documentary film. The festival will conclude with an experimentally oriented program. *Preparation for the festival began before the information about the business agreement between the Israeli government and Google was made public. The collective of authors protests against the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Saturday, 15 November 2025, 18:00, conference hall, ground floor
For this audiovisual performance, MSHR has designed a digital system that connects image and sound parameters using open-source software. The pair of artists improvise with the system using a handmade sculptural interface – an instrument that arranges signals into video projection and four-channel sound compositions. The result is a kind of live cinema, where visual and sound forms are transformed based on the interaction of the performers present. MSHR is an artistic collective that collaboratively creates and explores sculptural electronic systems. Their performances and installations integrate electronic signals and human presence, creating an intertwined and dense network of causalities that form a lively and pulsating audiovisual environment. MSHR explores the intuitive and technical transitions between sound and sculptural forms, using analog circuits and open-source software to create mutually resonating hyperobjects. MSHR was founded by Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper in 2011 in Portland, Oregon. The performance will take place in collaboration with the platform Terén.
Agáta Kertész, Tamara Mižáková, Alžbeta Papíková – What Goes Around – I Don’t Know – Comes Around: Before I Go to Sleep, I’ll Read You the Instructions on How to Use a Dehumidifier Properly (performance)
Monday, 1 December 2025, 18:30, ground floor foyer
The common silverfish, or Lepisma saccharina, as the archetype of an outcast – a creature that lives in the shadows, in the cracks of civilization. The choice of the silverfish as the main character of the performance opens up a powerful metaphor for life on the margins, in hiding, but at the same time in constant motion. In a gray space without beginning or end, where metal dust rises from the fog and silence echoes, three silverfish meet – creatures that survive in the cracks of the world. On the margins of reality, in the kitschy backdrop of a forgotten western camp, they sit down at an improvised metal fire pit. The scene is monochromatic, steel, austere – like the interior of a post-industrial dream. The props are exclusively metal: a tourist mug, an accordion, tin reflections. The costumes resemble the scaly skin of insects – shiny, gray, anonymous.
měkký í (Michaela Kocandová, Zuzana Staňková, Valentýna Vránová) – Land of the Free
Monday, 8 December 2025, 18:00, conference hall, ground floor
Debate on regulations and censorship in contemporary American culture with Denisa Krásná, Blahoslav Rozbořil, and Tomáš Pospíšil.
Matyáš Finger – The Elephant in a China Shop (performance)
Tuesday, 9 December 2025, 15:00, ground floor foyer
This performance explores the social stigma of noise and distraction in public spaces. A costume with sound elements that react to every movement transforms the performer into the embodiment of noise. The work raises questions about the boundaries between personal freedom and the normative expectations of those around us, and explores whether difference is accepted or merely tolerated – and when it becomes too burdensome for those around us.
Valerie Kohoutová (she), Eri Mrtvá (he/she), Klára Pospíšilová (she) – BRAVO to All Minds (performance)
Tuesday, 9 December 2025, 16:00, ground floor foyer
This project connects the themes of libraries, the perception of time, inclusivity, and nostalgia for old magazine quizzes. The authors consider the question of who really belongs in a library. What if you are the type who always loses your library card and returns books late? Can a library also be for chaotic people? And what about those who perceive the world differently, for example, without an inner voice or with a different concept of time? Through an interactive questionnaire—a quiz inspired by magazines from the childhood of today's middle generation (Bravo, Popcorn, Top Girls)—the authors ask visitors not only about their relationship to the library, but also how they perceive the reality around them. Do you have an inner voice, or is it silent? Can you visualize images in your mind like a movie, or is it dark? How do you perceive time – linearly, cyclically, or not at all? Do you see colors in numbers and words? Can you realize that you are dreaming? Questionnaires and quizzes are a way to better understand yourself and reflect on your own identity. A performative guide will introduce us to the questionnaire section and a corner reflecting Y2K nostalgia.
Eva Klíčová, Jan Bělíček – TL;DR (live recording of the Alarm literary podcast)
Tuesday, 9 December 2025, 17:00, conference hall, ground floor
And this time it will be a special witchcraft episode! Jan Bělíček and Eva Klíčová will discuss the Czech translation of Silvia Federici’s feminist classic Caliban and the Witch (2004), which will be published this December by Tranzit. Witch trials are usually understood as manifestations of religious obscurantism, which was overcome by the Enlightenment. Federici, however, interprets them as a systemic part of the domination of women as a reproductive and cheap productive labor force subordinate to men, the true actors in the capitalist competition for profit. This subjugation of women's bodies is a prerequisite for the success of the emerging capitalist social order. Violence against free-thinking, rebellious (mostly) women contributed, among other things, to what we still associate with womanhood today. Technical realization/audio: favu label.
Eva Klíčová – Cancelled Authors (lecture by a leading Czech literary critic and journalist) Wednesday, 10 December 2025, 18:00, conference hall, ground floor Cancel culture is a term currently associated primarily with woke culture and its rejection of xenophobia, racism, transphobia, etc. For conservatives, it is proof of the existence of censorship and left-wing hypocrisy. However, the tools of cancel culture are nothing new. On the contrary, they are very traditional—it's just that conservatives haven't minded them until now. Using the example of literature, they can be described as a set of tools for excluding women from public and artistic life. Male control of the female voice has not only institutional but also informal support and includes automated aesthetic criteria, as demonstrated in the conflict between realism and imaginative postmodernism in the 1990s. Patriarchal cancel culture also has deep roots, as described by feminist psychoanalysis.
The event is organized by the Moravian Library and FFA BUT.
The project is realised with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Brno.
