Non-places and experimental culture: the urban apartment as site of creative intervention
Lecture by Olga Krasa-Ryabets, Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 7PM
Krásova 27, 13000 Prague, Czech Republic
Punctum has been described as the “living room of culture,” and it’s known for it’s location, imbedded in one of Prague’s iconic vnitrobloks, and for the sense of community it built over the years. This makes it an ideal setting for a lecture and workshop on the relationship between domestic space, creativity, and resistance. Drawing on over a decade of my own artistic practice in apartments in Amsterdam and Prague, this session explores why homes and domestic interiors have long served as important sites for cultural production, from the Middle Ages to contemporary experimental art. Philosophers and theorists such as Gaston Bachelard and Mark Turner have argued that the spaces we inhabit shape our sense of self: home is where identity is rehearsed, stabilized, and felt most intimately. Because domestic environments provide continuity and familiarity, they help people maintain a coherent sense of who they are. At the same time, when uncertainty or artistic intervention enters these spaces, the home can become something else entirely: a threshold space outside ordinary social rules, where new forms of imagination, encounter, and resistance become possible. Through examples from apartment theatre, historical folklore, and contemporary performance, the lecture considers how ambiguity, intimacy, and atmosphere transform private space into a cultural laboratory. Participants will gain new perspectives on how environments shape identity and creativity, while the workshop component invites them to reflect on and experiment with the hidden theatrical, political, and emotional potential of their own living spaces. This proposal is especially timely as cultural institutions increasingly seek more intimate, participatory, and community-based formats beyond conventional venues.
