A series of videos by international artists discussing the autonomous zone. Selection by curator Martin Mazanec and visual artist Dominik Gajarský.

A series of screenings related to the issue of autonomous zone was created at the course of online dialogue between Dominik Gajarský and Martin Mazanec. At the beginning, the departure point was the “autonomous” look of various genres, be it a portrait, a grotesque or a video-parable. Gradually, both curators came across autonomous means of curated circulation of moving images beyond the frame of gallery and film distribution. The final selection of works made for NORMA will be accessible only to the audience of the screening in Ostrava.

Martin Mazanec is a curator, dramaturge and theoretician. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Palacký University in Olomouc in Sociology (1999-2004) and Film Science (1999-2006). In 2012 he received his PhD at the Department of Editing at FAMU. He’s been an in-house dramaturge of PAF since 2007 and since 2009 he has focused on curating activities in the field of presentation of the moving images in gallery and film systems (Josef Sudek Studio, KGVU Zlín, Summer Film School, Febiofest, Aye Aye, Mladých Gallery Brno etc.). He is a member of the research team of the MEDIABAZE.CZ research project (Centre for Audiovisual Studies, FAMU). He contributes to magazines Cinepur, Iluminace, Labyrint Revue, A2.

Dominik Gajarský is a representative of the sandwich generation on the contemporary Czech art scene. Although his work isn’t strictly anchored in a single technological medium, he has succeeded in creating his own specific language, both in terms of content and form. He shapes his work around black-and-white visuality that picks up on the language of modernist photography. He maps events of the cultural past in his own subjective manner, while referencing history and achieving results that aren’t stripped to bare research; research here is the structure that enables to build visual relations.