Landscape Festival shows visitors potential of abandoned areas in Prague
The Landscape Festival Prague 2024 is a three-month multidisciplinary platform that aims to transform the urban landscape for the summer season into a place for discussion about the potential uses of public space. Through temporary architectural interventions, art installations, exhibitions and happenings, residents, politicians, architects, artists and the general public are encouraged to meet and discover disused spaces and areas of urban wilderness together.
The concept of the festival is to guide you along a track, a “green line”, starting in Prague's Gordian knot around Florenc and leading you through Žižkov past abandoned areas and urban wildernesses, so-called “non-places” and “vague terrains”, all the way to Malešice in Prague 10. Dan Merta is the festival organiser.
“The idea is to present the wonderful Prague wilderness and the beauty of industrial monuments and past infrastructure in Žižkov and Malešice – infrastructure that is now not in such a good condition.”
As Merta indicates, the project centres around the disused Žižkov freight railway station, a brownfield site which has been out of use since 2002 and was declared a cultural heritage site in 2013 due to its historical, technical and architectural value. However, the site is in need of significant revitalisation, with parts of the track missing and the whole area overgrown with weeds. Indeed, as of 2021, the transport brownfield has been listed in the national database of contaminated sites, meaning it would require remediation prior to any redevelopment.
Nevertheless, the Landscape Festival organisers want to get people thinking about how this area could be transformed into a cultural and social hub. Exhibitions are taking place in the former railway station until the end of September, as well as smaller site-specific installations. Dan Merta again.
“The main highlight is the whole route, the location of the Žižkov freight railway station, and the forest in Malešice. There is also a new spot in the viaduct where we set up a small skate park.”
The skate park Merta mentions is one of several site-specific installations along the festival route – a map is available on the Landscape Festival website, where each installation along the route is numbered (the skate ramp is number 20). Visitors can follow the route, part of which goes along the abandoned railway track between Žižkov and Malešice, and are encouraged to participate in the informal “urban laboratory” to test the success of different uses of these public spaces.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Out of the City”, as the path leads you to wooded areas around the Malešice Forest stretching to the Smetanka and Klánovice-Čihadla Nature Parks, which have links to the open landscape beyond the metropolis. There will also be guided walks, such as one on 24 July through Žižkov’s cemeteries in bloom.
Accompanying debates, lectures, performances, theatre, and other forms of participatory art will provide a platform for communication and discussion on topics such as art in public spaces, green urbanism and adaptation to climate change, bringing together urban planners, developers, artists, activist groups, politicians, residents and the public.
The Landscape Festival Prague 2024 opened on 13 June and continues until the end of September.
