Year: 2025
Location: Prague
curator: Otto Drexler
collaboration: IDU Arts and Theatre Institute
sound design: Jonáš Balcar
video: Savka Marenić
Weaving a Narrative of Space was a performative lecture presented at the Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague, where Savka Marenić discussed the methods she employs in creating performative gestures, speculative fiction, and spatial pedagogy. The lecture explored how she develops and constructs fictional roles as a way of engaging with and narrating space.
The presentation was accompanied by a small workshop titled Zápisník příběhů (The Story Notebook), based on a field video filmed in a restricted and unused path within the institute’s shared courtyard. The path is normally closed and inaccessible—even to employees—and is locked with a key, separating the courtyard into two disconnected zones. As a result, hidden elements such as sculptures or a fountain remain out of view and unusable. The artist accessed the path unofficially and created a speculative video from a non-human point of view—perhaps that of a cricket, a grasshopper, a stone, or a snail sliding along the walls and fences of the courtyard. This quiet observer explores the environment and the hidden layers of obscured spaces that remain unseen and unnoticed. It is about simply observing and listening.
During the workshop, participants and employees engaged with the video and collectively worked with Savka to decode its layers, co-creating narratives and alternative readings of the space. Through this shared process and exploration of the courtyard, the video and accompanying field notes encouraged participants to see their everyday environment from a different perspective—revealing hidden layers, barriers, and possibilities within the space they share.
