Zvuky Prahy / Sounds of Prague

This year the Festival 4+4Days in Motion occupied another huge empty building in the city center, located between Na Florenci and Masaryk Station. The exhibition "How not to want anything" was spread out over three floors of the palace, which somehow reminded me the bank interiors from the epogue of the c&k Empire or Napoli. It was the first time ever I could walke in. For quite some years deserted palace stands on the place where used to be The Teissingerova Garden, it means across from Masaryk train station platform in the block between Florence and Na pořící. Smaller building was purchased in the mid-40s of the 19th century by František Vincent Des Fours Walderode from Hruby Rohozec. He commissioned a huge building serving not only the needs of the owner, but was also for flats to rent. The stucco decoration of the rooms, marble paneling, cast iron railings, tiled stoves, mosaic floors illustrate high level of the then Czech craftsmen.
To the palace belonged as well large garden with a greenhouse and a neo-Renaissance dome and gardenhouses. Alas in the 50s of the 20th century it gave way for a new building of Rudé právo publishing house. When in the 80s the Communist Party planned a generous redevelopment of this house, the fate of demolition awaited as well the Palace. In 2011 went monstrous edifice of RP to ground zero because of interests of new developers. Now there is standing equally monstrous new administrative glass center Florentinum, owned by the powerful investment group Penta. It is not clear whether this Penta owns Desfourský palace also and what will happen in future. The voices in the recording belongs to the multichannel sound installation by Pavel Sterec, dedicated to Bedřich Hrozný aka Frederick the Terrible. The image is the stains on the linoleum floor.