Programme produced on the occasion of Playbill Act V: Anna Daučíková & Helena Jiskrová at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam June 9, 2023.

Completely adept at taking on institutions that wield normative forms of power, Anna Daučíková is unashamedly informed by the value of her lived experience, a personal history that takes a guiding role within her practice, particularly the period of time during which she lived under surveillance in the former Soviet Union.

In an early photographic series titled Acadamey of the Arts (1988), Daučíková rightly takes up her position atop a plinth built into the side of the Academy of Arts building in Moscow, a subversive move given that it was a position traditionally reserved for the male greats. Daučíková went on to become a professor herself, and was for a long time one of the few women teaching at the academy in Prague. This biographical trajectory evolved into a series of films titled Portrait of a Woman with Institution, which plot out the relationships of various women to the institutions they inhabited. For Act V, one film from this series was screened, dedicated to Czech architect Helena Jiskrová. Alongside the screening, four pieces of furniture redesigned by Jiskrová from salvaged street materials set the scene for the viewing.