Three promotion experts will present their techniques and practices in the second in a series of presentations titled Promotion in the Creative Industries #2. PR & Marketing manager Ondřej Čížek, visual artist Stanislav Ondruš and editor-in-chief of Artikl magazine Bára Alex Kašparová accepted the invitation to Telegraph Cinema and gave us some information in an interview before the presentation. The event will take place on 22 3 at 18:00.
You've been editor-in-chief of the cultural monthly Artikl for a whopping nine years. What was your journey to the creation of the magazine?
Already as a student at Charles University, I had other activities, including the study of classical singing and an interest in photography, which I subsequently went on to study as well. It was in connection with photography that I started to work with professional media dedicated to this field. For them I wrote texts about photography, supplied image content and also published my work. In the magazine FOTO, where I still appreciate the quality of the visual presentation worthy of photography, I had my own Talent section, which introduced young authors. For me, working with the media through both image and text was a natural part of my activities, which crystallized into taking over the then cultural magazine called Kulturní Pecka, where I worked as editor-in-chief. I was later able to use this experience to launch Artikl. We are talking about nine years ago. But the truth is that my first magazine was not Artikl, but Eva magazine, which I wrote at the age of six on my father's work laptop with a black and white screen and printed through his company printer in a simple V1 binding in a print run intended for his colleagues and then my classmates in the first grade of primary school. It was a kind of lifestyle with a historical window, where the visual section was accompanied by drawings by my classmates. So, working with media has been with me for more than a whopping twenty-six years, with a slight pause.
Artikl is transparent and open to possibilities in collaboration. What kind of people make Artikl Artikl?
Artikkl's editorial team is made up of language professionals who monitor the quality of each published text, as well as industry experts who publish regularly, but we also work with students, who are finishing their studies in a chosen field related to culture and journalism - such people usually come to us through the internships we offer to young writers, and also through the Artikl Academy, which we open every two years in the form of a parallel editorial office whose aim is to publish one consistently polished print edition of Artikl. This is aided and inspired by talks with invited guests from other media and media operations. The marketing department is also an integral part of this, ensuring that the ARTICLE is free to its readers every month at good cultural venues across the country.
You've been in the arts and culture business for a long time. You work with many creative people. Are these people an inspiration to you?
They are clear counterparts for me in creative dialogue and many of them are also very inspiring personalities that I try to keep in my life for a long time. As far as working relationships go, I prefer quality over quantity, i.e. a working team assembled with a specific purpose and a vision of long-term collaboration - such a model then ensures a reduction in many of the unpredictable factors that otherwise complicate the management of a complex project, and which often occur precisely in the context of impactful collaboration. However, I like to occasionally step out of this established functional model and seek out collaborations on other projects with other people or teams so that I don't get stuck in one profiled approach and can update or re-evaluate it.
You are the owner of media4free, a publishing and production agency for culture. What is the scope of this publishing house?
The media4free publishing house is dedicated to publishing the cultural periodical Artikl. This has been its primary activity since its inception. The aim is to keep the medium transparent and autonomous, not falling under the big publishing houses, with which there are numerous issues related to the ethics of funding, the publisher's directive idea of the direction of the medium, or managing its content according to specific priorities. At the same time, Artikl is a holistic cultural platform that, in addition to publishing a magazine, also organises cultural events, activates live culture, organises exhibitions, and engages in other sub-projects that support, disseminate and archive culture - mostly through physical media. This activity is then part of the production agency media4free.
What do you focus on in your curatorial practice?
In my field of vision are mainly authors whose expression and style I perceive a specific handwriting, refinement of form and long-term commitment to creation. As a rule, for me, the work precedes the author* - it must appeal to me, compel me to analyze and try to understand it, and of course appeal to me in its aesthetics. In the next stage, I am then interested in who - what personality - created the work and what intentions led the artist to the form and content. In my curatorial work I prefer to discover new artists and artists with whom I perceive a professional and personal affinity, and then I like to collaborate on other projects in the long term.
What is the next exhibition/project you are looking forward to?
As part of my curatorial activities, I am currently preparing an exhibition to celebrate ten years of publishing Artikl, which will present the work of ten selected artists and will take place next year. Among the smaller projects is the upcoming exhibition of Markéta Kolářová at the Prague House of Joy, which will open on 24 March and on which I am collaborating in the form of a text. Specifically in Olomouc, you could read another text of mine for David Mazanec's exhibition at the Caesar Gallery, but it ended less than a month ago.
Do you have your favourites among the young generation of artists on the Czech and Slovak scene?
There are numerous such artists that interest me. Some of them are already very mature and interesting in terms of expression at a young age. I try to follow them and observe their creative journey. There are many such artists in my field of vision, and these observations, collected over more than nine years of intensive movement in the cultural field of art schools and galleries, are then a stimulating basis that I apply when consulting with collectors on which artists they should support with their purchases or which artist they should invest their money in. I also discuss the pricing of their work with the artists themselves. I act as a consultant for both collectors and artists.
In addition to journalism, you also work as a photographer. What subject matter do you focus on in your photographic work? What medium besides photography is close to your heart?
My grandfather was a photographer, maybe that's why I tended to choose photography, which is what I have been exposed to since my early childhood. I then studied photography at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, where the primary interest is the documentary approach. I was surrounded by this throughout my studies and to a large extent this position has been attributed to the way I work as a photographer. I came to it through a primary interest in photography as a medium, an attempt to understand it through its fragments, on which I then built individual photographic collections of a rather studious nature. In my current creative stage, the key for me in photography is its aesthetic form, which I perceive as the genius of this medium - there is no need for more in photography, and refining the form, mastering it in a craft way, is the real art of photography. I'm tired of the multitude of photographs or sets of photographs fulfilling a certain aesthetic and dramaturgical muster that our school was full of. From my primary tendency to approach things in my own way, I've been rubbing it in other positions and have come to see the painting of the image through the medium of photography. This is an influence through my mother's consistent and prolonged encounter with painting. I don't opt for a uniform visual approach, I perceive the interconnectedness of a certain creative state of mind as well as subject matter and form, and these attributes are then necessarily tied to the ensemble. For example, I was happy to photograph a set of male nudes that also worked with gender issues and mystification, which was awarded in a photography competition. Another medium that is close to my heart is painting, to which I relate my orientation with a similar intensity to photography. But I have also been following sculpture and new media for a long time.
At the Promotion in the Creative Industries #2 event you will discuss presenting yourself in the cultural field. In your opinion, what is the most difficult thing in promotion and what do you perceive to be a shift for the better?
I see the most challenging thing as meeting the right people who can take projects from vision to successful implementation. To meet true professionals with experience, insight and contemporary cosmopolitan thinking. We live in a time when anyone can do anything and its relevance is usually evaluated through its visibility - i.e. promotion. This is a phenomenon that is present and can also be very confusing. Good promotion can make even a mediocre project well attended and a dilettante artist into an artist who makes a good living from his work because his work has been presented to the right - uninformed - mass of recipients. PR is therefore a powerful tool and it is difficult to critically evaluate in black and white unless one has the proper education or other instruments to do so. In such a case, I would recommend at least knowing the relevance and establishment of the medium or person presenting the information. Especially in culture, it is very difficult to independently evaluate, without in-depth knowledge of the field, who is, for example, a more interesting painter than another, and why watch him or her, or why attend a contemporary dance performance when the audience is demanding. Such decisions are often aided by the form of promotion and its appropriate application to the right and relevant channels. The art of being seen is not only a necessary component for operating in today's world, but also truly an art. If you are visible, you are on course. That's just the way it is today. So you need to know your audience and communicate your content to them appropriately - this is best helped by a third party who has an awareness of the other two sides and also the distance - this is then the communications expert whose contribution to the client is then truly immense. In working with many individuals and cultural institutions, both public and private, I see that approaches are still very different and not always effective, even if it is perhaps an identical field of content recipients. A well-designed form of promotion is the basis for the further development of their activities.
Bára Alex Kašparová is the founder of the cultural monthly Artikl, where she has worked as editor-in-chief for nine years. She is the owner of media4free, a publishing and production agency for culture. She is the curator of the PRO ART project focused on contemporary visual art. She has long been involved in the promotion of young art, constantly monitoring the most diverse manifestations of culture. She is a photographer, publicist and critic. She writes texts on artists' work for monographs and exhibition catalogues. She is part of juries of competitions in the field of music, visual arts and design. Occasionally, she works as a freelancer in media communication and conceptual identity profiling of young or new subjects.
By Erika Kovačičová / Telegraph Gallery
Photo: Marek Volf
