PROGRAMME
28 Oct 2016 – 13 Mar 2017
Educational programme for the HAVEL exibition.
Held on the occasion of what would have been Václav Havel’s 80th birthday, this exhibition will feature the photographs of Bohdan Holomíček and Tomki Němec. A range of large-format and smaller photographs will be accompanied by hitherto unseen film footage from the life of Václav Havel by Petr Jančárek.
The HAVEL exhibition is an opportunity to ponder the world around us from a different perspective. To what degree can Václav Havel’s story be an inspiration to us in this respect? To what degree is he real in the exhibition, and to what degree are we watching a documentary about the creators of the photographs and film?
Within the scope of the educational programme we will classify how we perceive and judge the recording of reality into three categories: documentary – fiction – programme. We define a documentary as a recording of reality; it brings us news of the world. Fiction, on the other hand, creates new worlds, though in doing so it uses real ones and can take us to the very limits of the human imagination. And finally a programme represents structured information, and its task can be not only to inform (for example the programme for some event) but also to influence what we do (for example a political programme). All three categories intersect and out ability to differentiate between them gives the same “facts” quite different impact.
Has it ever happened to you that everyday reality has seemed to you like a play or computer game? Or rather that you felt as if you were part of some script or (computer) programme? Have you ever found it almost impossible to differentiate between what is real and what is made up?
Inspired by psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s Heroic Imagination Project, we will try to intentionally turn a documentary and fiction into a programme, and in the exhibition devoted to Václav Havel we will look for a hero and an anti-hero. Just like every narrative has to contain these two elements, students will be tasked to look for them or create them, and to think about them within the scope of the three defined categories. Students will thus explore and get to know the nature of messages, their veracity and sources, and above all will themselves discern what is and is not a value that defines a hero and anti-hero.
Held on the occasion of what would have been Václav Havel’s 80th birthday, this exhibition will feature the photographs of Bohdan Holomíček and Tomki Němec. A range of large-format and smaller photographs will be accompanied by hitherto unseen film footage from the life of Václav Havel by Petr Jančárek.
The HAVEL exhibition is an opportunity to ponder the world around us from a different perspective. To what degree can Václav Havel’s story be an inspiration to us in this respect? To what degree is he real in the exhibition, and to what degree are we watching a documentary about the creators of the photographs and film?
Within the scope of the educational programme we will classify how we perceive and judge the recording of reality into three categories: documentary – fiction – programme. We define a documentary as a recording of reality; it brings us news of the world. Fiction, on the other hand, creates new worlds, though in doing so it uses real ones and can take us to the very limits of the human imagination. And finally a programme represents structured information, and its task can be not only to inform (for example the programme for some event) but also to influence what we do (for example a political programme). All three categories intersect and out ability to differentiate between them gives the same “facts” quite different impact.
Has it ever happened to you that everyday reality has seemed to you like a play or computer game? Or rather that you felt as if you were part of some script or (computer) programme? Have you ever found it almost impossible to differentiate between what is real and what is made up?
Inspired by psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s Heroic Imagination Project, we will try to intentionally turn a documentary and fiction into a programme, and in the exhibition devoted to Václav Havel we will look for a hero and an anti-hero. Just like every narrative has to contain these two elements, students will be tasked to look for them or create them, and to think about them within the scope of the three defined categories. Students will thus explore and get to know the nature of messages, their veracity and sources, and above all will themselves discern what is and is not a value that defines a hero and anti-hero.
Suitable for teachers of Art, Social Studies, Czech, History, Media Studies
Programme duration: 120 min
Target group: elementary and high school students
Programme price: 400 CZK/group (500 CZK/group in English) + exhibition admission
Exhibition admission: 40 CZK/student (free entry for accompanying teacher)
This educational programme must be ordered at least two weeks in advance
of the desired date.
