Works by Velčovský and Anadol to be highlights of 2022 Signal
Prague’s Signal festival of light art will celebrate 10 years of existence from October 13 to 16, again drawing tens of thousands of people to the city’s streets. Among the highlights this year will be a work referencing Ukraine by top Czech designer Maxim Velčovský and a special new work by “superstar” artist Refik Anadol.
Since the Signal festival began a decade ago the organisers say its light art projects and video-mapping projects have attracted no fewer than three million visitors.
Martin Pošta is the festival’s founder.
“It’s a great experience and opportunity to be able to actually do a festival of the Signal type in Prague, because I imagine if it was anywhere else, in other parts of the world, it wouldn’t have been as easy to start up an event like this.
“Because the city is beautiful and the support is great, so it gives us the very generous freedom of exploring the city through art.”
On the second weekend of October this year Signal will deliver 15 installations on two routes, one downtown and one running from Vinohrady to Vršovice.
Among the highlights should be a work by top local designer Maxim Velčovský, who will turn actual destroyed cars from Ukraine into light art in the Old Town.
“Being Czech, being in the Czech Republic, I am always shocked that so many people consider reality as virtual reality, and they seem not to believe what’s going on very close to us – I mean the war in Ukraine.
“So many people died there, the war is still going on every day.
“We are bringing here four bombed cars and in some of them people might have died.
“We are bringing them to Mariánské náměstí, where they will be placed like lanterns.”
But the organisers say the single most exciting event during the celebration of 10 years of Signal will be a work by Refik Anadol making use of a huge screen at Prague’s CAMP, the Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning.
Štěpán Bärtl is from the institution.
“Refik Anadol is a Turkish-American designer. He is a superstar in visual design, audio-visual design.
“He creates these beautiful, abstract, motion pictures and motion designs.
“Basically for CAMP he’s creating a site specific installation which is based on city data.
“We gave him this very specific set of what’s called ‘point cloud data’, and he will make a site-specific installation for our space.”
Though Anadol is an abstract artist, Bärtl says visitors will be able to discern Prague in this new work.
“That was one of our requests for Refik, that it’s not only abstract but it’s also in a way figurative, so you can actually spot certain typical Prague street corners and places.
“So it will be fairly abstract, but you will be able to recognize Prague.”
