Vašulka Kitchen Brno

Statutory Representatives

Jennifer DeFelice was born in New York, where she graduated in arts at SUNY Empire State College. In 1993, she moved do Brno, where she absolved the Department of Photo-Perfomance at FaVU VUT in the studio of Tomáš Ruller. She works as a lecturer there. She is active as a performer, new media artists, curator, and a musician. She used to play in the band "Sledě, živé sledě", she participated in the project of Cafe9.org. She performed in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, USA. She used to work in the media-archive at FaVU and co-ordinated the exhibition Hi-tech Art in Brno.

Marika Svobodová is a curator based in Brno Art House and Vasulka Kitchen, in which is also a coordinator. She used to be a lecturer at the Seminar of the history of art at Masaryk University, Brno.

Barbora Šedivá is an independent curator and an art manager, the deputy of 4AM/Forum for Architecture and Media, the director of the space PRAHA in Brno and platform Multiplace, and also one of the founding member of the archive Monoskop.org. At the Department of Theory of Interactive Media at MUNI she led a seminar focused on active examining of archives, actual tendencies in new media art. In Vasulka Kitchen Brno, she coordinates the research concerned with the Vasulkas' Archive processing.

Honorary Chairman

Tomáš Ruller is a Czech visual artist and performer. He graduated in 1982 from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His work includes multimedia works, performances, installations, videos, architectural realisations and stage design. He was initiator and participant in many unofficial art exhibitions and festivals such as Malechov (1980 and 1981), Malostranské dvorky (Prague, 1981), Meeting in Courts (Prague, 1982) or Chmelnice (Mutějovice, 1983). Co-founded the European International Performance Arts Movement The Western Attraction / Western-East Project (since 1983) and the follow-up Black Market (since 1986), (Open Situation), etc. He exhibited and presented his events in most European countries, in Israel, Canada, Japan, USA, Mexico, China. His activities are connected to artist as Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic, Stelarc or Orlan, as well as to personalities of electronic art such as Steina and Woody Vašulka or Van Gogh TV. Since 1994 prof. Tomáš Ruller is the head of the Department of Video-Multimedia-Performance of the Faculty of Fine Arts - VUT in Brno, where he was a Dean between 1998-2000. He lives and works in Brno and Prague.

Honorary Members

Dušan Barok (since 2024)

Larisa Dryansky (od 2024)

Chris Hill (since 2018) is a media curator and currently on the faculty at CalArts. She received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo, where her teachers were also Steina and Woody Vasulkas. She was was video programmer at Hallwalls (Buffalo) for over a decade. Hill curated Surveying the First Decade: Video Art & Alternative Media (1996), a 17 hour collection distributed by the Video Data Bank, and edited the resource guide Rewind. Hill taught in the Video/ Performance Studio at the Technical University in Brno in the mid-1990s and her website Walking Trips in Czech Lands (1997) features interviews with artists active in the Czech parallel culture before 1989. Her research interests include re-performing archives and beekeeping practice. Her recent project for the Vašulka Kitchen Brno is A Navigational Tool for Traversing the Vašulka Mediascape (2023). 

Jana Horáková (full member since 2018, honorary member since 2024) teaches at the Institute of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and is the guarantor of the art studies programme Theory of Interactive Media. She focuses on the potential of new media in the historiographical research of new media art. She is the initiator of the virtual reconstruction of the 1968 Computer Graphic Re-visited exhibition and a project focused on the use of artificial neural networks and interactive interfaces in the analysis and mediation of the work of Vasulka's Media Art Live Archive.

Halldór Björn Runólfsson (since 2018) is a curator, lecturer and the director of the Depatment of Art History in the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts. Following studies at the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts he went to Toulouse and on to Paris where he studied at the Panthéon Sorbonne, achieving a DEA. He works and writes extensively on contmeporary art. From 1989 to 1992 he was chief curator of the Nordic Art Centre in Sweaborg, Helsinki. 

Kristín Scheving (since 2018) is a visual artist, curator and project manager from Reykjavik. Besides creating her own videos, illustrations and paintings, she has also curated projects and screenings in different parts of the world. In Iceland, she founded 700IS Reindeerland Experimental Art Festival, which focuses on experimental video, sound and media art. She holds an MA in Media Production and a BA in Fine Art from Manchester Metropolitan University in England.

Jiří Vanýsek is a film, television and theater director. He studied film direction at the FAMU in Prague under professor Otakar Vávra, graduating in 1968. He worked in the Czechoslovak Television studio in Brno, but was forced to leave in 1972 for political reasons, after which he briefly worked in the theater in Šumperk. In the 1990s, he taught at JAMU in Brno. He already met Bohuslav Woody Vašulka in the circle of the Brno Jazz Club, and they continued to be friends during their studies at FAMU.

Steina Vašulka (since 2016)

Wody Vašulka (2016–2019)

Ilona Víchová (since 2018) is an art historian. She graduated in Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. She works as a curator of the 20th and 21st century art collection at the Brno City Museum and has been cooperating with the Kampa Museum for a long time. She is the author of a number of exhibitions and publications dedicated to the artistic generation that entered the art scene in the 1960s. In parallel, she focuses on the work of younger, mainly conceptually oriented artists.  

Miloš Vojtěchovský (full member since 2018, honorary member since 2024) graduated from aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Active in the field of folk music and fine arts in Prague and elsewhere since the mid-1970s. Pedagogical and professional activities: cooperation on Imaginary Museum Projects in Amsterdam, a lecturer at the Department of Theory and History of Art at FaVU VUT and at the Department of the FAMU Center for Audiovisual Studies, a curator of the Školská 28 gallery, psychicity geology project sonicity.cz, symposium and festival vs. Interpretation, an initiator of the project On the Boundary of Solitude 2015-2016. He lives and works in Prague.

Gaby Wijers (od 2024)

Association Members

Gajane Achverdjan is an art historian, gallery educator and documentary filmmaker. She works at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies at the Seminar of Art History of Masaryk University. She produces documentaries, educational videos and podcasts that serve as a tool for popularizing art objects throughout human history. Since 2022, she has been working at Vasulka Kitchen Brno and coordinates the accompanying programme, such as educational programmes, workshops and guided tours.

Lenka Dolanová is art historian and curator. She used to work at the Vysočina Regional Gallery in Jihlava (OGV), where, among other things, she has founded the IGLOO sound gallery and the O_kraj cultural newspaper. She is a member of the associations yo-yo, KRA - Kravín Rural Arts and Vašulka Kitchen Brno. Her dissertation was published in a book entitled Dialogue with the Demons of Instruments: Stein and Woody Vasulka (2011, NAMU and JSFA). She worked at the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice (VČG), and currently is curator at the House of Arts in Brno and Regional museum in Chotěboř.

Lloyd Dunn is a multimedia artist and publisher. He is a founding member of the intermedia and experimental group Tape-beatles and the founder, publisher and editor of several low-budget magazines such as PhotoStatic and Retrofuturism. Since the early 1980s he has worked with a range of media including 16mm film, video, audio, print and web applications. He studied linguistics, completing his MFA at the University of Iowa's Department of Film, Photography and Intermedia in 1987. He has been living and working in Prague since 2001.

Ondřej Merta is musician and founder of the Brno music initiative Bastl Instruments, where he creates and invents synthesizers for electronic music in the spirit of sustainability.

Kryštof Pátra is a musician. As part of his work at Vasulka Kitchen, he organizes musical productions at the Center and participates in the educational outreach program.

Terezie Petišková is director of the Brno House of Arts. She lectured at the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, where she explained the history of visual art in the second half of the 20th century. She also worked as an assistant at the detached Department of Design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in Zlín, then led the Galerie Mladých ("The Youth Gallery") and the U Dobrého pastýře Gallery at the Brno Cultural Center. Since 1997 she has participated in the preparation of V. and VI. part of the History of Czech Fine Arts edition at the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences in Prague. For example, the exhibition "Czechoslovak Socialist Realism 1948–1958" (Galerie Rudolfinum, 2002) or "The Field of Creative and War" drew on this art-historical research. Fine art from the collections of the VHÚ Prague ”(Moravian Gallery in Brno, 2008). (Artlist)

Previous Members

Jana Horáková works as an associate professor at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, and is the guarantor of the art study program Theory of Interactive Media. In recent years, he has focused on exploring the potential of new media in the context of historiographic research into the art of new media: see the virtual reconstruction of the computer graphics exhibition of 1968 / Computer Graphic Re-visited; or a current project focused on the use of artificial neural networks and interactive interfaces in the analysis and mediation of Vašulková's work / Media Art Live Archive).

Viktor Pantůček (2016–2020 regular member, from 2020 member) is musicologist and playwright, lives and works in Brno. He graduated in musicology from Masaryk University in Brno in 2003 and has been working as a teacher at the Institute of Musicology since then. He is the dramaturg of the Exposition of New Music festival and since 2015 the dramaturg of the Brno Contemporary Orchestra.

Matěj Kotouček (since 2020 member) is musician, promoter, member of the Brno AVA collective and founder of the audiovisual project Sky To Speak. At Bastl Instruments, he is involved in community activities and music publishing at Nona Records. He is active in the electroacoustic duo Thistle, which participates in the workshops Vlnobytí, connecting movement exercises, dance and improvised music. In addition to his own work, he composed music for several plays (Feste Theater) or for video games.

Nikol Štrobachová (since 2018 regular member, from 2020 member) is lecturer, activist and a musician associated with Synth Library Prague. She also co-founded the team of musicians Pink Noise, creates tutorials Patchení with Nikol, organizes educational workshops and experiments with connecting live plants and synthesizers. She performs under the stage name Kukla.

Cooperation: 

Dušan Barok
VKB Archive consultant

Karel Bařina
graphic designer

Tatiana Dižová
administration, grant agenda

Tomáš Doležal
architect

Radek Čák
installation

Romana Horáková
education

Daniel Karmazin
production, operation

Ivan Palacký
architect

Viktória Pardovičová
production, public relations

Tomáš Plachký
exhibition installation

Monika Szücsová
project manager, research

Barbora Trnková
photo documentation

In the past we worked with:

Kateřina Drajsajtlová
archivist, VKB Archive

Silvie Hrdličková
administration

Petra Hyblerová
production, public relations

Lucia Kolesarová
graphic designer

Matěj Kotouček
Noise Kitchen coordinator

Markéta Mazalová
production, public relations

Martina Stránská
educator

Nikol Štrobachová
Noise Kitchen coordinator

Gabriela Štvrtňová
production, public relations

Helena Todorová
production, public relations

Lenka Trantírková
education program development

Nina Zelená
production