The idea behind the exhibition sprung not just from the physical space of Kino Kosmos in Třinec but also from the mental dimension of this exceptional futuristic 1968 building. The image of a specific cinema building in a specific location has for the curators transformed into a platform to more deeply reflect on space, memory, dialect, and the universe. They explore the unique nature of place and its overlaps through audiovisual works, sculptures, and photographs by both artists directly connected to Třinec and those active on the international scene.

The exhibition Kino Kosmos presents and explores an archive of ideas occurring in one of the most interesting regions in the Czech Republic, a region that could serve as an unexpectedly sensitive seismograph recording contemporary discussions about theory, fiction, satire, science fiction, activism, and confession. The real Kino Kosmos, as well as its mental dimension, is transformed, through works of art, into an open space in which different layers of meaning and experience intertwine. A specific cinema, as a building with a specific function, acquires meaning not only as a geographically localized entity but also as a spatial and cognitive structure – and offers a new perspective for thinking about the relationships between film, language, the natural environment, and a unique territory.

Using audiovisual works, sculptures, and photographs, the exhibition’s curators explore the specific (filmic) grammar of place. And through speculations about cinematography, the local dialect, and sculptural, regional, and borderline spaces, they speak about experiences, dimensions, and the particular states that resonate in this grammar. The cinema, or the kino, and the cosmos, or kosmos, as both reality and metaphor, thus generate information enabling the curators to reflect on the conventions of two-dimensional (film) projection but also on the universe itself. The exhibition designers chose the artworks and art interventions based on how they can grasp and express the unique nature of place though a visual sensitivity we could tentatively call “hypercontemporaneity”. The exhibition, therefore, transforms into an autonomous world in which investing in fiction is more reliable than betting on reality.

Main Partners: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Moravian-Silesian Region
Partner of the exhibition: State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic