MISC, in collaboration with
SKUSY Residency, is delighted to host Samuel Velebný for an artist talk.
Samuel will present his practice and his experience as the first resident artist of SKUSY Residency, focusing on his research / ongoing work, titled
FRI 11 NOV
18:30
TYPOLOGIES OF CONTROL
In his talk, Velebný will guide us through the (not so) subtle monstrosities, paradigm changes, and cultural paradoxes of the upcoming World Cup, while discussing the growing importance of the broadcast itself, something he calls “the medial space” which is completely transforming the global nature of the game.
The evolution of football has been a continuous process since its inception in the 2nd half of the 19th century. What began as a community activity linked to the local place, sensory perception, the body, and its situatedness in the city and nature, has become slowly transformed into a commodity and massive industry on a global scale. The two "footballs", however, continue to exist in parallel. The media industries are quickly turning the stadiums of the wealthiest clubs into venues built primarily for broadcasting purposes. This process is taking on new dimensions and scale in preparation for the World Cup in Qatar, that starts in less than a month.
Samuel Velebny's research explains these processes and transmutations of football's very nature as a game with a case study of football stadiums and the surrounding urban structures. The stadiums, seen through different theoretical lenses and analyses of their cultural landscapes, serve as concrete historical and contemporary sources to identify the state of the given society and its values regarding equality, freedom, and democracy.
Qatari stadiums are being built when the fusion of physical and virtual realities is becoming a hot topic. In the case of the stadiums, this process is accelerating significantly - many of their design and construction details are more subordinate to the television audience than those physically present. As a result, the importance of the community physically present in the stadium is getting minimized.
BIO
Samuel Velebný is a multimedia artist, designer, and theorist from Košice. In his visual art and written work, he explores the themes related to the city, urbanism, design, agriculture, and aesthetics applied in public space. He is also interested in experimental visualization data, used in collaboration with members of the feminist collective Spolka and Samuel Setenyi (HU) in a large-scale interactive installation “Mestometer”. Another essential part of his artistic world is the relationship between sport and politics. In particular, he has chosen football to reveal and scrutinise the peculiar connectivity between power, game, cultural intimacy, and entertainment. His long-term project titled Road to Qatar (2020-2022) creates distance from the focus on the media image of football and points attention to the exploitation and violation of workers' human rights in Qatar during the 2022 World Cup preparations. Samuel Velebny's visual art text works can be characterised by nuance, humorous details, industrious playfulness, and critical edge. Samuel is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the New media Department, Technical University of Košice, and a curator of the Tabačka Gallery annual program. In 2022, he was an artist in residence in Krakow, Poland (Visegrad Fund) and Athens, Greece (SKUSY Air).
SKUSY is a newly established residency program that organizes residencies for Slovak artists in Athens. The name, derived from an old slovak expression ísť na skusy, means to go out into the unknown and explore what the world has to offer. SKUSY is not primarily focused on the production of new work, rather it seeks to stimulate residents’ practices by encouraging them to immerse themselves in a new environment that can offer new impulses for work and provide time for reflection. SKUSY was founded by three friends Lucia Tkáčová, Tamara Kametani, and Zuzana Bodnárová, all working in the arts in different roles: as artists, curators, and cultural managers. Their shared vision is to support artists and their practices away from the pressures of delivering solid outcomes and help facilitate new ideas and stimuli.
SKUSY has been supported using public funds by Slovak Arts Council.
