Czech artist and researcher Tereza Stehlikova will discuss her artistic practice which is concerned with the role our senses play in aesthetic experience. The talk will include a screening of a selected number of the artist’s short films and will be followed by a discussion with Sandra Gaudenzi, an internationally acknowledged authority in the field of interactive and immersive documentary practice and professor Charles Spence, an internationally renowned experimental psychologist with a specialization in neuroscience-inspired multisensory design.
Since 2005 Stehlikova’s work has been concerned with exploring the relationship between touch and audio-visual media which she uses in her film practice. Inspired by Czech artist Jan Švankmajer, she embarked on a practice-based PhD at the Royal College of Art (2008-12). She subsequently expanded her interest to also include smell and taste. Her work has led her to a number of cross-disciplinary collaborations with chefs, experimental psychologists and philosophers of perception, resulting in immersive, multi-sensory performances and short films.
The Covid pandemic became a catalyst for Stehlikova to start to question more deeply the increasingly more complex relationship between the digital technologies which now extend our perception and mediate our relationship to the outside world and others. In 2020 she launched her cross-disciplinary Tangible Territory journal, where she invites artists, philosophers and scientists to discuss the above-mentioned themes.
Stehlikova is also engaged in developing interactive performances which help to return participants to the here and now, into their own body, as a counter balance to the screen-based lives. The latest one of these was The Infra-Ordinary Lab, which was developed specifically for Prague Quadrennial 2023 and explored Holešovicka Tržnice, a market in Prague.
