Are you still interested in Czech art now that David Černý’s Entropa has been unveiled at the European Council building? If yes is your answer, make a trip to the Holešovice art gallery DOX. Here you can see yet another art exhibition poking fun at stereotypes, on display until 1 February.
When the lower house was discussing the bill that was to criminalise the possession of marihuana for personal use in 1998, a group of artists known as Pode Bal made their first public appearance with a protest art installation displayed in the lower house. This group of provocateurs now has an exhibition at DOX, showing Briefs of their unrealised projects.
An exhibition dedicated to Jan Palach, the Charles University student who burned himself to death 40 years ago in reaction to the Soviet occupation, is on display at Prague’s Karolinum through 14 February. The exhibition, organised by the Philosophical Faculty and the National Museum, shows photographs, Palach’s letters and other documents from 1969.
A progressive rock band from Manchester, Van Der Graaf Generator, will play at Palác Akropolis on Thursday. The band, which started performing in the late 1960s, giving themselves a name after a piece of electric equipment designed to produce static electricity, is known for using electronically-treated saxophones in combination with the Hammond organ.
If you wish to hear something more up-beat, spend Thursday evening at the Rock Café. The Moldovan band Zdob si Zdub will be there, playing a mix of hardcore metal and their homeland’s folk music. The show starts at 7:30pm. Or you can celebrate the release of Faithcollapse, the new album of Unkilled Worker, a solo project of the vocalist and guitarist of Prague-based hardcore band Wollongong at the Strahov Club 007 on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Abaton’s Take Control on Friday will feature the popular Dutch DJ Icicle as a special guest. At the Roxy NoD on Saturday, the Norwegian new wave/post punk band, which consists of composers Svarte Greiner and Elegi, will bring its dark ambient music inspired by horror movies.
Not so excited about hardcore metal and post punk music? After two years, the Estates Theatre brings back the ice-hockey opera Nagano. The authors, classical composer Martin Smolka and actor and writer Jaroslav Dušek, based the unusual production on the Czech national hockey team’s triumph at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano. You can see the opera 22 and 29 January and 6 and 18 February.
The Estates Theatre, as you may know, is linked with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who conducted the world premiere of his Don Giovanni there in 1787. To mark the anniversary of Mozart’s birth, the theatre will stage a concert on 27 January with the young Slovak soprano singer Adriana Kučerová and the National Theatre Orchestra led by conductor Tomáš Netopil.
Pass the Popcorn
Waltz with Bashir which many are calling “the best picture of the year” arrives in Czech cinemas on Thursday. Following the release of Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir is another animated film about recent events in the Middle East. The Israeli director Ari Folman, who is a protagonist in the documentary film, sets out to find old friends who could help him recall brutal massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, which Israeli forces supported during the 1982 occupation of West Beirut. The film received many international awards including the Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes Awards and the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately, it is only available with Czech subtitles.
Other releases this week include Ivo Trajko’s drama Ocas ještěrky, the Norwegian film Switch about teenage snowboarders, the US horror film Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, a story centered on the war between a race of aristocratic vampires and their onetime slaves, the Lycans, and finally the FBI movie Traitor directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
As part of the live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, Světozor and Aero bring Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice on Saturday at 6:45pm. The story of Orpheus, who travels to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice, will be shown in Italian with Czech and English subtitles.
Kateřina Heilmannis a staff writer and translator at the Monitor. She
likes writing about cycling and culture.
You can reach her at [email protected]
