Amálie Bulandrová
Curator, Researcher, Educator
Amálie Bulandrová is a curator, researcher, and educator based in the Czech Republic. She currently serves as co-head of Studio of Fine Arts I at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). She studied History and Theory of Contemporary Art at UMPRUM and Theatre Studies at Masaryk University in Brno (MUNI). In 2026, she completed her PhD at Masaryk University with a dissertation focused on visual dramaturgy and scenographic matter.
In her curatorial and research practice, she explores theatricality and contemporary scenography, ecofeminist perspectives in visual art, and the performativity of public space. She is also dramaturgically involved in Kafkárna / Centre for Art and Ecology at UMPRUM, where she continues to contribute to the development and dramaturgy of its interdisciplinary programme.
Presentation: “Staging the Infrastructure of War: Scenography, Affect and the Performance We Love Shooting”
15 October 2026, 12:20–12:35, In-Person Session. Symposium Agenda
Abstract
Contemporary performance increasingly addresses armed conflict, yet most analyses focus on the representation of violence rather than on the scenographic conditions through which war becomes imaginable and materially present. This paper argues that scenography can stage not only war itself but also the political, economic and affective infrastructures that make war possible. Focusing on the participatory performance We Love Shooting (Display Gallery, Prague, 2024) by Jiří Žák and the Prague-based collective 8lidí, I examine how exhibition architecture, objects, sound, smell, moving images and audience participation collectively produce an embodied encounter with the military-industrial complex. Rather than positioning spectators as external observers, the performance places them within a fictional shareholders’ meeting of an arms company, where they negotiate exports, handle weapons and confront conflicting emotional responses generated by the scenographic environment.
Building on this example and drawing on Rachel Hann’s concept of “worlding” in scenography, I propose understanding scenography as a political technology that does not merely represent events but actively organizes bodies, affects, relations, and modes of participation. In this sense, scenography becomes a means through which the infrastructures of war can be experienced, negotiated, and critically encountered.