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September 7th, 2008
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Meeting point

An ambitious artists' complex takes shape in Smíchov

December 5th, 2007 issue

By Martina Čermáková

For the Post
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
David Černý ponders the slow pace of reconstruction at his studio complex.
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Černý shown along with curator Zuzana Blochová conferring with German artist Todosch.
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Meet Factory

Ke Sklárně 15
Prague 5–Smíchov
Current exhibition
Berlin Bricolage
Unique ideas for home and garden by Petra Kludasch and Torsten Schlopsnies
Through Dec. 9
Open 2–7 p.m. daily

Get off at the Lihovar tram stop by the rundown distillery, walk across a lonesome bridge over the railroad tracks, take the first dead-end road to the right, and keep on walking past abandoned houses and piles of corroded car and train parts until you see a massive, two-story building with peeling green paint and graffiti.
If you have any doubt about whether you’re in the right place, look for the two life-size, pink-glazed cars staked to the building on either side of the entrance.
This is sculptor David Černý’s vision — a multimedia center and artists’ studio space that links Prague to happenings on the international contemporary art scene. Stamped with the well-known names of Černý, film producer Alice Nellis and Czech musician David Koller, the former storage building officially opened its doors the first week of October.
But rather than launching itself into the stratosphere right away, the ambitious project is taking off bit by bit — literally — as reconstruction is finished and artists move in.
The Meet Factory’s goal is to create an “everything under one roof” art scene, Černy says. There will be a performance and viewing space, a gallery, 15 “ateliers” for resident artists, a recording studio, publishing facilities and a bookstore.
Unlike existing multimedia spaces such as Roxy/NoD in Old Town, which hosts performances and exhibitions, the Meet Factory will also be a place where things are created, says Nellis, whom Černý recruited to manage the theater/film part of the operation.
“We’d like it to be a place around which people would meet, not in the sense of meeting up for a concert or an exhibition, but where [artists] work next to each other,” she says.
Aside from denoting a meeting point, the name is also a play on words — the Meet Factory is a factory for meat. As in, people are meat, as Nellis puts it, taking a bite of a chicken wing.
Thinking big
That name certainly worked better in the Meet Factory’s original location, which was in an actual meat factory in Holešovice until 2002, when it got flooded. Černý’s second attempt didn’t get going until three years later, when Prague City Council offered him the crumbling building near Smíchovské nádraží. The situation was a win-win: City Council wanted someone to take care of the building, and Černý got a vast space.
“If you want to run [a project like this], for it to function it’s necessary to go big,” Nellis says. “If you open ateliers for four artists, you won’t create any community.”
But the massive size also poses a challenge: The 5,000 square meters (53,820 square feet) startle Koller every time he nears the building.
“If it were a little club with a couple of ateliers, it’d be fun designing individual walls,” he says. “But here it’s about dozens, millions, and about a pretty complicated schedule of what needs to be done and when.”
The team of three has so far raised 12 million Kč ($668,700), which Koller estimates is just a third or a fourth of what they need. Money quickly disappears for repairs every time it comes in. Everything needs to be fixed, from the electricity and heating to the plumbing and floors. The building’s outside appearance will remain mostly unchanged, keeping its factorylike character.
Next on the list is to build proper acoustics for the multifunctional performance space — not an easy job for a big, hollow space enclosed by a highway on one side and railroad tracks on the other. The acoustics have been worked out on paper to accommodate a range of genres, including classical and traditional music, since Koller is keen on staying open-minded about what is performed on stage. Now, they need money.
“We’re no construction engineers, nor are we managers competent to seek finances,” Koller says. “I must say, we’ve jumped right in without doubt or delay, and still, we are falling. We’ll see where we come to a rest, where that rock bottom lies — moneywise — and whether then we’ll get out of it.”
Icy isolation
On a recent afternoon, the large, empty corridors of the Meet Factory are just as cold as the outdoors. A thundering sound resonates through the gelid silence, shaking the cardboard walls. It’s Todosch, the self-named German artist Torsten Schlopsnies, rolling his sculpted granite ball. He stands in one of the white corridors of the residential first floor in his muddied black-rubber boots and a fur hat, stoked.
“This is real rock ’n’ roll,” he says, smiling.
Schlopsnies is one of seven artists chosen so far for the atelier residential program. The artists’ community is to be the Meet Factory’s cornerstone, and the studios were the first feature of the building to open after the electricity was turned on in September. Artists from outside the Czech Republic were chosen by a panel of judges and approved by Černý. They live and work here for a period of three, six or 12 months, in studios that come in the sizes of 40, 60 and 120 square meters.
“We’re planning, in the future, to provide accommodation in the building attached to this one, so artists won’t have to work and sleep in the same space,” says Marie Vojáková, who helps manage the residential program. For now, portable heaters are running full-time to make the large rooms livable during the cold winter months.
“I like it that here I can really focus on what I am doing,” Schlopsnies says. “When I’m in Berlin, there’s always someone calling me on my cell phone.”
Martina Čermáková can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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