#exhibition

Audiovisual interactive installation and group performance

Venue: Veleslavín Castle

Date: Saturday 7. 6. 2025 17.00 - 21.00

Project authorship: Darina Alster, Peter Bill, Viktor Takáč

Co-author of the performance concept: Magdaléna Šipka

Performers: Ondřej Macl, Martin Janíček, Peter Susan Šagát aka PXS, Alice Červinková, Ljubov Maltseva (UA), Michal Durda, Mila Petriv, David Buriánek, Katarina Mamchur (UA), Polina Revunenko (UA), Richard Eliáš, Ihena Chen (TWN), Sonya The Moon aka S.N.R.I., Nicole Pichlerová, Monika Machútová, Olivie Adamsová, Magdaléna Šipka, Darina Alster

The Tree of Life project was launched in the spring of 2024, when American media artist Peter Bill was invited to a short trans-pedagogical art residency as part of the Re-connect Art festival. In collaboration with Darina Alster, he prepared a workshop of the same name for students of the New Media 2 studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, during which they worked with performance media, its recording, and subsequent multi-channel video installation. In 2025, the project was further developed and expanded through collaboration with the Multimedia Studio of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art under the leadership of Viktor Takáč. The result will be site-specific video installations that are virtual interpretations of the Sephirotic Tree of Life directed by Viktor Takáč, Peter Bill, and students of the Multimedia Studio, as well as a collective performance that will be a walk through the Sephirotic Tree of Life and its embodiment. The collective performance experiment is done by Darina Alster and students of the NM2 AVU studio.

In today's dystopian times, when we are witnessing one natural disaster after another and at the same time realizing that what is happening is no accident but a consequence of the actions of our civilization, whose destructive expansion we are still unable to reverse, we seek hope and a path to our own source in the growth symbol of the tree of life. We believe that the roots of the tree of life hold the power of self-renewal, and through art we will try to bring it to life.

The project has several layers. The solid foundation is formed by video installations interpreting the ten sefirot of the Tree of Life. Their locations are marked on a map in augmented reality, designed by American architect and designer Ray C. Freeman. AR is only visible after scanning a QR code on a mobile device.

The ephemeral layer of the project consists of a collective performance that focuses on the central sefirah Tiferet – the beauty that invites us to realize fragments of heaven. In the performance, another world breaks into our reality. It is a piece of beauty that we allow ourselves to experience here and now. It is a moment of peace and inner silence, of surrendering to the creative power of being. Each participant comes to say goodbye to their fears or wounds and consciously transform them into light.