June 6 and 7 is Open Gardens Weekend, and you are invited to the gardens of Troja Château for our first public program since the gallery’s reopening.
On this weekend, you can visit the chateau gardens, join our accompanying programs, learn about the upcoming Bio Troja project combining art and ecology, and check out the newly opened exhibition by Jan Kovářík.

From the outdoor program (fully booked):

– SATURDAY –

1–2.30 pm
Informal meeting about urban gardening etc. 
Gardening colonies are often on lucrative property in Prague. The Metropolitan Plan and developers therefore perceive them as a suitable location for buildings. The municipality is offering the land for civic organic farming far from the center. Can the impending climate changes and the tense current situation make shift in our thinking? Is there also a space for artist initiatives? Follow the program and participants of the gathering here.

2.30–4 pm
Workshop: “An Introduction to Beetle Architecture 1”
At this permaculture workshop for kids ages 7 to 90, you will learn how to improve mankind’s coexistence with insects in the city and in nature, and how to build a simple and inexpensive shelter for our six-legged comrades. When you’re finished, you can take you beetle hotel home or place it in the chateau gardens. Data regarding the decline in insect biodiversity in Europe varies, but by all indications, climate change and intensive agriculture are making life difficult for most of our insect friends. They need places where they can seek shelter from predators, where they can spend the winter and raise their families. Using materials easily found in nature, experienced instructors will show us how to come up with a shelter that will be a comfy home for earwigs, bumblebees, solitary bees, centipedes, and millipedes. You can also hear what kinds of sounds various insects make.

5–7 pm
Non-existent places – Island. (In Czech)
Currently detailed tourist maps, 3D scans of localions, or precisely following GPS routes are not providing much space for imagination, for physicaly engaging with places. As a result of this deficit, we tend to accept opinions of somebody else, not drawing our own paths and our own interpretations.

Following the four-part radio documentary of, scheduled for this summer on ČR2-Plus broadcast, we will visit one of such places “beyond the usual timespace”: an unique non-existent location – an island in Prague-Troja, which I document since 2013.
Jan Trejbal (*1982, Prague) is an urban planner, artist and pedagogue. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and now works at the Academy for Applied Arts in Prague. As part of his research activities, he is interested in transdisciplinary surveys, in practice, he is focusing on rural development plans. This year he published a monographic guide about Street Weather stations.
www.neolokator.cz
https://issuu.com/jan.trejbal

5–6.30 pm
Concert Jan Kotulán and Petr Korbelář
www.kotulankorbelar.cz

8 pm
Chateau Follies: Ondřej Smeykal, Petr Nikl
An onomatopoeic improvisation for the main stairwell at Troja Chateau.
Artists and musicians Ondřej Smeykal and Petr Nikl have worked together in various forms for many years. Their performances often respond to the specific environment in which they are set. Smeykal will accompany Nikl’s improvisation with an acoustic performance on the didgeridoo and gong.
https://www.smeykal.com/cz/lihen/140/

 

– SUNDAY –
10–4 pm
Ikebana, Flower arrangement workshop. (next to the Orangery)

1.30–2.30 pm
Guided tours of the gardens with the head gardener (in Czech)

2.30–4 pm
Workshop “An Introduction to Beetle Architecture 2”. (next to the Orangery)

4.30–5.30 pm
Guided tours of the gardens with the head gardener (in Czech)

6 pm
Elia Moretti & Petr Vrba
“In performance as in life, sound is born and dies with action. In its essence, the ephemeral nature of sound is dramatic.”
Elia Moretti: vibraphone, percussion
Petr Vrba: trumpet, clarinet
Although this is the premiere performance of this Czech-Italian duo, Moretti and Vrba have appeared together with various other groups since 2016. They are both members of the Prague Improvisation Orchestra, performed the graphic scores of Milan Adamčiak and Milan Grygar with various musical formations, played in a trio along with the renowned trumpeter Axel Dörner, and last but not least explored south Bohemian folk music and the sound environment around the town of Malovice, where they had a residency at the Continuo theater ensemble. Moretti and Vrba explore details with an increased sensitivity for rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic, melodic, and timbric elements in relation to sound and silence.
Searching for insect sounds using the mobile app Aporee.org (Sat+Sun)
And more… for instance discussions of ecological agriculture, community gardens in Prague, etc.

 

Organized by the Biotroja collective (in cooperation with MLOK and Miloš Vojtěchovský)