Combining live audio “micro-improvisations” (refined by musician Ivan Palacky) with live video manipulations (by video and VJ-artist Filip Cenek aka VJ Vera Lukasova), Carpets Curtains express an engaging and nuanced interplay of audio and visual material. With live visuals being mostly based on self-made video sequences in which emphasis is placed on ambiguous "narration" whilst VJ software-mistakes are used to reach new amoebic image qualities, the result is a principle or method of remaining fixed to moving images while vacating the essential aspects for building concrete meaning. Such visual approaches find parallel in Palacky's delicate musicalities, in which found objects and minimal electronics are fused to create elegantly small sound mixtures.
A musician and architect Ivan Palacký (born 1967) has played with various groups and taken part in several music projects. He was a member of the guitar/doublebass/bassoon group "Sledě, živé sledě" (Herring, live herring) - and currently performes in a duo called "Tílko" (Singlet) with Jennifer Helia DeFelice and audiovisual project of "Koberce, záclony" (Carpets Curtains) with Filip Cenek. He "writes" a sound diary from all his journeys - collects excerpts of stories, weird sounds and various acoustic mistakes. He likes to take part in one-shot improvisational groups or duos (with Cremaster, Ruth Barberán and Margarida Garcia, Will Guthrie, Andrea Neumann) as well as playing solo performances. As an architect he is interested in architecture without "building", sociological methods in designing a morphogenetic maps in digital architecture.
Filip Cenek a.k.a. VJ Vera Lukásová (born 1976 in Jeseník, Czech Rep.), educated projectionist, graduated from the Brno Faculty of Fine Arts, Video Studio (Keiko Sei). Has worked as a teacher and assistant at the faculty since 2003. In the second half of the 1990s, he dealt with the theory and practice of non-linear stories and narrations in the digital environment (especially with the paradox of the expression "interactive story") and then with fuzziness, illegibility and omissions as positive phenomena. In his postgradual experiments at the FAMU Centre of Audiovisual Studies in Prague, he is dealing with the topicality of image (vjing) and the creation of live re-edits of refound photographs and sounds resulting in a specific audio-visual revision of recall and imaginariness. In collaboration (mostly with Jiri Havlicek), he has created several short films and animations dealing with rearranging of characters and various language of animation narrativity, a reminiscence to a generation's experience with fairytale creation and experimental use of audial accompaniment. In 2004, he was awarded the Tranzit Developmental Grant for his work in the field of visual media which allowed him to realize "Carpets Curtains" DVD-Video disc, with Ivan Palacký. He is represented in the National Gallery Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art in Prague, the Marek Collection and other foreign video libraries. He has occasionally presented his works at exhibitions of contemporary art and film festivals in the Czech Republic and abroad (Centre Pompidou, Paris; L'immagine leggera, Palermo; EMAF, Osnabruck; Wardrobe, Leeds; Parker's Box, New York; MNAC, Bucuresti among others). He also makes the visible part of Midi Lidi project (with Magdalena Hruba and Jan Sramek) and works as a co-curator for FreshFilmFest (Theatre Optique section) and NewNew! Festival.