Petrohradská Kolektiv – the Factory, the Echo

Petrohradská Kolektiv

Type

Institutions,Research

Date

Since 2015

There is a peculiar logic to the fact that postindustrial buildings, once filled with the noise of machinery, have become places where artists listen for silence and record its remnants. This is precisely what happened in Prague, in the Vršovice district, where in November 2018 Polish artists Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko took up residence at Petrohradská Kolektiv — an initiative whose home is a building with a long and layered history.

Petrohradská Kolektiv

The building, erected in 1903, originally served as a mill and bakery run by the couple Hedvika and Karel Müller. By the end of the 1930s it underwent a major reconstruction and became a chocolate goods factory for the brand Korda and Co. Historically, the last occupant of the building was an assembly workshop of the Plants for Industrial Automation. The layers of these successive functions remain embedded in the fabric of the structure — in the shape of its windows, the height of its ceilings, the layout of its spaces. Although the building is currently earmarked for demolition, since 2015 it has been used by the collective as a centre for cultural events and a platform for contemporary art.

ph. Petrohradská Kolektiv Press materials

Petrohradská Kolektiv was founded in 2015 by Edita Štrajtová and Daniel Konopáč as a studio complex for artists, designers and creatives from related disciplines.

Soundreaming exhibition, Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko, Jedna Dva Tří Gallery, Petrohradská Kolektiv, 2018

Over the years, the project grew into a multi-genre platform for both domestic and international collaboration, encompassing the Jedna Dva Tří Gallery, Kino Petrohradská cinema, a community club, a photography studio, a recording studio, and facilities for international artist residencies.

The mission of the institution is to bridge the gap between the art world and the general public, and to provide a safe space for the discussion of contemporary issues. In spaces where industrial life once pulsed, a dialogue between artistic disciplines now unfolds: contemporary art, experimental music, performance and audiovisual practice.

It was into this post-industrial space that Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko arrived with their project Soundreaming, a cycle begun in 2014 and carried out through artist-in-residence programmes in various European cities, including Prague, Barcelona and Linz. The project is a digital audio-visual archive that draws its inspiration directly from the surrounding environment. Motivated by location, experience and memory, it inverts the traditional roles of photography and sound: soundscapes replace photography as the dominant documentary element, while the visual representation is derived directly from the acoustic recording of a given place.

Soundreaming exhibition, Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko, Jedna Dva Tří Gallery, Petrohradská Kolektiv, 2018

The industrial past of the building became for the artists not merely a backdrop, but raw material in itself. During the residency, Jacek Doroszenko recorded the sonic environment of the former factory — its silence, the acoustic traces of its industrial past, the resonances of empty space. From these recordings, sound installations were constructed in which the acoustic environment of the place was transformed into artistic substance. The works and installations presented in the exhibition revealed the artists’ ongoing inquiry into real landscapes, virtual environments and soundscapes — the aural territories that shape our perception of the world.

The story of Petrohradská Kolektiv exemplifies a practice that European cities are pursuing with increasing awareness: rather than demolishing post-industrial structures, filling them with new life — residencies, exhibitions, cinemas, studios. Such places offer something beyond alternative cultural infrastructure: they carry the weight of history, which becomes both context and inspiration. In the case of Doroszenko, that weight was literally audible. While awaiting its inevitable demolition, the building on Petrohradská Street endures, sheltering artists and their questions. Doroszenko listened to its walls. And they recorded what they heard.