It is difficult to pin down Vojtěchovský’s role in the art world since it borders several spheres. He is involved in trans-disciplinary projects and symposia, publication activities, curatorship and teaching. If we were forced to thematically frame his activities, platforms would be attractive examining the relationship between art and technology, ecology, audio art and art in public spaces, with an emphasis on community collaborative projects.
Vojtěchovský graduated in the aesthetics and history of art at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in 1980. For a time he worked as a postman, night watchman, curator and folk musicians in the art-rock band Mozart K. Later he moved to Amsterdam (1985–1995), where he worked as a printer, construction worker and gallerist. In 1991, along with the archivist and activist Tjebbe van Tijen, he founded the project Orbis Pictus Revised in collaboration with the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe. This multimedia project was based on the book by John Amos Comenius Orbis Sensualis Pictus and was a model linking teaching aid, artwork and research tool, the theme of which was questions of comparative iconography and the relationship between thinking and imaging technologies. In 1991 with Jiří Kornatovský he founded the Hermit Foundation and later the Metamedia Centre in the cloister in Plasy, where 400 Czech and foreign artists from the sphere of socially engaged art, music, performance, literature and other forms of visual art met at summer symposia, festivals and later by means of residencies between 1992 and 2000. The project was conceived of as multidisciplinary and was one of the first of its kind in this country. The Hermit Foundation supported other experimental non-commercial art and theoretical projects in the Czech Republic using a three-year grant from the Swiss foundation Pro Helvetia.
In 1995 Vojtěchovský took up the post of curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery. Along with Jaroslav Anděl he organised the exhibition The Morning of the Magicians (1996 and 1997), which reflected upon the end of the millennium and the current situation in art, science, and society using the work of 19th and 20th century artists. The last exhibitions on which he worked at the National Gallery was an exhibition of Martin Kippenberger and an exhibition of Dutch electronic art The Second. At the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art (today the Centre and Foundation for Contemporary Art Prague) Vojtěchovský was coordinator of the Media Artlab programme (2000–2003), one output of which was the experimental communications audiovisual network radiojeleni.cz (2000–2004), the related art radio Lemurie TAZ (2004–2009), and later the website and community project based on Prague’s audio landscape sonicity.cz (2008 to the present day). His time at the Gallery Školská 28 (1999 to the present day) also increased the profile of this space.
Of his most recent activities we would mention, for instance, the festival vs. Interpretation for innovative improvised art projects and research funded by the Agosto Foundation, and the international project Frontiers of Solitude (2015 to the present day), which examines questions around the Anthropocene period, specifically the transformation of the landscape as a consequence of industrialisation in the region of the North Bohemian Basin and parallel Icelandic and Norwegian localities.
Teaching activities
Miloš Votěchovský began his teaching activities at the Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis in Amsterdam (1992–1994), where he delivered a series of lectures on the modern art of Eastern Europe. From 1997 to 2004 he worked as lecturer at the department of art history and theory at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (FaVU VUT). Since 2004 he has been based at the Centre for Audiovisual Studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). Along with Roman Berka and Pavel Bednář he founded the Intermedia Institute (2007 to the present day), whose activities are overseen by the Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT) and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU). The merger of the spheres of art and technology is intended to provide students with new methodologies, experimental teaching approaches and increased possibilities of finding their own identity within the framework of a technical and artistic education. Votěchovský specialises in the history and social context of art and technology, audio art, and community projects.
