s e j n                                                                    b o h e m i ae   r o s a

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B o h e m i ae  R o s a   25  –  31 August 2017

S i t e B o d y E x p l o r a t i o n

The Morava River – The Czech Republic / Moravia

International Interdisciplinary Open-Air Workshop for artists and dancers exploring the relation between body, art and landscape

led by Frank van de Ven and Milos Sejn

guest artist Günter Heinz

Supported by Bohemiae Rosa Foundation –

  Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic –

– Litovel Morava River Basin Protected Landscape Area – The Olomouc Centre for Ecological Activities

The Morava River

Since 1995 Milos Sejn and Frank van de Ven have co-operated in their bi-annual interdisciplinary open-air Body-Site-Exploration projects in various National & Cultural Reserves in the Czech Republic (Kokorin Valley, Plasy Monastery, Bohemian Karst, Bechyne Monastery with the Luznice River, Bohemian Paradise, Sumava and Krkonose Mountains, Kuks Spa, The Elbe Sandstone Mountains) known as the Bohemiae Rosa Project.

This edition of the Bohemiae Rosa Project will take place in the Moravia area known since the early Middle Ages as "Moravia Magna" (Greek: Μεγάλη Μοραβία). In this river landscape we find virgin forests, swamps, old meanders, meadows, springs, caves but also areas romantically humanized using artificial structures, such as ancient roads, gates, obelisks, hills and gardens. Walking and working in the Morava River Basin we investigate the numerous relations between Body and Landscape and their significance to contemporary (Performing) Arts.
 

The program will include:

•        MB -(mind/body, muscles/bones) dance training

•        practice of and reflection on physical and mental training

•        walking and wandering, silent walk, pilgrimage and nocturnal journeys

•        various modes of experiencing body, movement and landscape

•        investigating divergent senses of space and time

•        peripatetic records, drawing, writing, immediate contact with surroundings

•        mental topography of a location, myth, archaic mind and genius loci

•        geology, archaeology and history of the Bohemian Paradise as a model of self: layers, vertical connections and labyrinths

An integral part of the workshop will be the individual artistic projects that participants are encouraged to formulate and work on for about 1 to 2 hours a day. (in the fields architecture, landscape art, dance, performance, photography, sculpture, theatre, visual arts, biology and natural history). The workshop leaders are available to guide and support these processes.

The body is a landscape in itself moving within the larger frame of the given surrounding environment. The vertical and horizontal layering of the (historical) landscape invites us to reflect upon our own layers and connections of self and imagination.

Participants profile: artists and advanced students working in performance, dance, landscape art, sculpture, photography, architecture, theatre, visual arts, biology and natural history. Selection of participants will be based on c.v. and motivation.

No previous (dance) training is necessary but the workshop will be physically demanding. A good overall condition is required.

Practical information

Dates

25 – 31 August 2017, arrival in the evening of 24 August

 Meeting Place: Slunakov – the Olomouc Centre for Ecological Activities
Landline: +420 585 154 711
GPS: 49°38'29.182"N, 17°11'59.553"E

 https://mapy.cz/s/CyYo

Olomouc is easily accessible by train or bus. The nearest airport is Brno or Ostrava. From Olomouc take a local bus MHD nr. 18 and 20 to Horka na Moravě.

The number of participants is limited. We recommend early applications.

Bring yoga mat, backpack for day hikes, raincoat and hiking boots.  

All participants must have a personal insurance and must provide a copy of this before start of the project.

No previous (dance) training is necessary but the workshop will be physically and mentally demanding, therefore a good overall condition is required.
 

APPLICATION
To apply send name, a short c.v. and a motivation letter to
Frank van de Ven frank.bwa@xs4all.nl or Milos Sejn milos@sejn.cz.

From Bohemiae Rosa Project – September 11

2003 Bohemiae Rosa V Bohemian Paradise
video

E   X   T   E   N   D   E   D          I   N   F   O   R   M   A   T   I   O   N

 

 
The Morava River

The Morava River
Wikipedia  

The Morava (German: March, Hungarian: Morva, Polish: Morawa) is a river in Central Europe, a left tributary of the Danube. It is the main river of Moravia, which derives its name from it. The river originates on the Králický Sněžník mountain in the north-eastern corner of Pardubice Region, near the border between the Czech Republic and Poland and has a vaguely southward trajectory. The lower part of the river's course forms the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and then between Austria and Slovakia.

Geography: The lowlands formed by the river are the Upper Moravian Vale or Hornomoravský úval and then the Lower Moravian Vale or Dolnomoravský úval in Moravia, the Moravian Field or Marchfeld in Lower Austria, and the Záhorie Lowland or Záhorská nížina in Slovakia. The latter three are actually continuous parts of one large basin, forming the major part of the Vienna Basin.
In the Czech Republic, there are some larger towns lying upon Morava, particularly Olomouc, Kroměříž, Otrokovice, Uherské Hradiště and Hodonín. Downstream from here, the river flows along sparsely inhabited, forested border area, all the way to its outfall into the Danube, just below the Devín Castle at the outskirts of the Slovak capital Bratislava. After 354 km of its course, Morava feeds the Danube by an average discharge rate of 120 m3/s, gathered from a drainage area of 26 658 km2. The Morava river is unusual in that it is a European blackwater river.
The river's longest tributary is Thaya (in German) or Dyje (in Czech), flowing in at the tripoint of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The biggest tributary from the left is Bečva.

Naming and history: Though the German name March may refer to Mark, "border, frontier" (c.f. English march), the river's name more probably is derived from Proto-Indo-European *mori, "waters" (mare). It was first documented as Maraha in an 892 deed.Indeed, the lower part of the river, downstream of the confluence with the Thaya at Hohenau an der March, which today marks the Austro-Slovakian border, is one of the oldest national boundaries still extant in continental Europe: it was the eastern boundary of the Carolingian Empire with the Avar Khaganate around 800 and from the 10th century onwards marked the border of the Imperial marcha orientalis, later Duchy of Austria with the Kingdom of Hungary (within the Habsburg Monarchy during 1526–1918 due to the imperial expansion of the Austrian lands). At the times of the Cold War, this section of the river was part of the Iron curtain, being the frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Litovel Morava River Basin Protected Landscape Area: Litovelské Pomoraví (Czech: Chráněná krajinná oblast Litovelské Pomoraví, usually abbreviated as CHKO Litovelské Pomoraví) is a 96 km2 (37 sq mi) protected landscape area established on 15 November 1990, in the floodplain of the Morava River, north of Olomouc, in the Czech Republic. In the centre of the area lies the ancient city of Litovel, nicknamed "Venice of Hanakia", from which the protected area has derived its name.

The ecological backbone of the protected landscape area is the naturally meandering Morava, in floodplain forests branching out and forming a complex system of permanent and temporary river arms, a so-called anastomosing river system. The uncontrollability and power of regular floods in the Middle Ages led Hanakian farmers to building a wreath of dikes around the forest where it meets agricultural land. Thanks to these the floodplain forests of Litovelské Pomoraví have within living memory offered significant flood protection to surrounding villages and the cities of Olomouc and Litovel, as they form an enormous natural polder catching and storing the overflowing water without causing damage.

Contacts and further information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morava_(river)http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1741294
http://www.casopis.ochranaprirody.cz/en/z-nasi-prirody/the-litovelske-pomoravi-litovel-morava-river-basin-protected-landscape-area/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moravia

 

Milos Sejn / Solar Mountain

Sluňákov / The Olomouc Centre for Ecological Activities: The idea of Sluňákov and its activities is tied to efforts to strengthen the bonds between people and nature and the environment in which they live. I believe this pursuit is important because people are natural beings rooted to the living world and bound by a fragile web of relationships with everything they create. To put it simply: nature would manage just fine without human beings. There is hardly anything in the living world about which we can say the same thing. And this is precisely where I find the meaning of Sluňákov’s mission – about the sense to be humble and remain preferably silent. What is Sluňákov? It might be easier to say what it is not. It is not green; after all, nature is full of colours. It is not a political party; Sluňákov is an advocate of everything that lives in nature, with an awareness of its fundamental life-giving role. Sluňákov isn’t even a movement; it doesn’t want to promote something at any cost, it doesn’t aim to twist anybody’s arm. Instead, it would prefer to sensitively appreciate and cautiously offer a concept of nature in which all creatures exist in a web of intricate and variable relationships. In this way nature offers people its full bounty.
Sluňákov’s goal is to remain a viable organisation that provides valuable services to the local community – an organisation that reminds us that all of our strengths and weaknesses, joys and sorrows, all of our buildings, inventions and activities are based on the possibilities provided by nature.
I am extremely grateful to have a job where I don’t stare at the clock waiting for the end of the day to arrive; to have work that is meaningful to me and to be surrounded by wonderful fellow workers. I would like to say thank you to all of them, and would also like to invite you to visit us to talk about our common world and our joyful existence in and with nature.

From Bohemiae Rosa Project – September 11
 

BIOGRAPHIES

Milos Sejn works in the fields of visual art, performance and study of visual perception. From the beginning of the 1960s he took pictures, drew, collected and described his observations of nature during his wanderings through the Czech landscape. Currently he teaches mixed media and the relationship of nature and art as intrinsic needs of the mind, and focuses on immediate creative possibilities, based upon relations between historical humanized landscapes and intact nature. 
CD ROMs: Colorvm Natvrae Varietas (Centrum for Culture and Communication in Budapest c3, 2000); Make Your Own Island/Make Your Own Forest (Utrecht School of the Arts, Institute for postgraduate and professional higher education in the Arts, 2001); Books: Being Landscape, 2010

Frank van de Ven is a dancer and choreographer who spend his formative years in Japan working with Min Tanaka and the Maijuku Performance Company. In 1993 he founded together with Katerina Bakatsaki 'Body Weather Amsterdam', a platform for training and performance. Since 1995 he conducts with Milos Sejn the interdisciplinary Bohemiae Rosa Project, connecting body and landscape with art, geology and architecture. Interest in dance and theory led to the 'How to make yourself a Dancing Body Without Organs' Project. Together with Peter Snow (Monash University) he performs the famed Thought/Action Improvisations.  An ongoing collaboration exists with musician Daniel Schorno, artistic director of Steim Amsterdam.
Films (video and 16mm): Dancing Plasy Times 8, CI-VIT, LOM and NOUGHTS.

Günter Heinz born in Zeitz, studied mathematics in Halle, music in Dresden and Berlin. Initially active as mathematician at various universities, 1983 doctorate. Since 1987 freelance as a musician, premiere of numerous contemporary compositions, concerts with improvised music, radio and CD recordings in Germany (organic music), Switzerland (For4Ears) and USA (ALEA) .1992-93 he was a guest composer at the electronic studio of the Musikakademie Basel. Collaboration with the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Neue Horizonte Bern and SEM Ensemble New York. His compositions were performed among others. In Berlin, Moscow, Madrid and the USA. Lessons in Malta and Sardinia. In the field of jazz he played among others. With Bernd Köppen, Lou Grassi, Hartmut Dorschner, Kent Carter, Bill Elgart, Michael Lythel, Agusti Fernandez and Fred van Hove. He is artistic director of the Festival of Free Improvised Music in Dresden.
 

Dictionary definitions

*site n., pl. -s [Latin situs "place, position", from sinere "to leave, place, lay"] 1. the actual or planned location 2 the place or scene of something (a camp site) / site vt., to place on a site or in position: locate

*body n., pl. -ies [OE, bodig, cask] 1. the whole physical substance of a man, animal or plant 2. the trunk of a man or animal 3. a corpse 4. [Colloq.] a person 5. a distinct mass [a body of water] 6. a distinct group of people or things 7. the main part 8. substance or consistency, as of liquid 9. richness of flavor

*landscape n., pl. -s [Dutsch landschap, from land + -schap "-ship"] 1. a picture of natural inland scenery 2. a portion of land that the eye can see in one glance

*wander vb., wan-dered, wan-der-ing [OE, wandrian] 1. to move about aimlessly or without a fixed course or goal: ramble 2a to deviate (as from a course): stray 2b to go astray morally: err 2c to lose normal mental contact (as delirium or madness)

*walk n., pl. -s [vb OE, wealkan "to roll, toss"] 1. a going on foot (go for a walk) 2. a place, path, or course for walking 3. distance to be walked 4a manner of living 4b social or economic status (various walks of life) 5a manner of walking 5b a gait of a four-footed animal in which there are always at least two feet on the ground

 
Milos Sejn / MORAWA

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