Name: Architectural Cross-Section
2026 Biela Noc, Festival of Contemporary Art
Concept, scenography: P. Mazalán, P. Ebringerová
Visual design: P. Mazalán, P. Ebringerová, D. Volfová
Performance: A. Petrová
Viola: J. Urdová
Spatial and performative collaboration: S. Vlčeková

The mixed-media project by Peter Mazalán and Paulína Ebringerová explores place as a dissected organism – marked by pain and trauma, yet also capable of regeneration. Architecture becomes a form of evidence, enabling a retrospective examination of social ruptures, mechanisms of power, control, and resistance. These are spaces cut through by conflict: from barriers affecting disadvantaged groups and places shaped by the uncertainty of otherness, to the room of concealed domestic violence. In today’s uncertain world, a shelter associated with isolation, fear, or violence becomes only an apparent place of protection. The project is inspired by Franz Kafka’s short story Der Bau (The Burrow), in which a refuge gradually becomes a site of surveillance, isolation, fear, and perpetual threat. The Kafkaesque motif of constructing one’s own safe space is shifted into a contemporary architectural and social context, raising the question of what kind of space can truly be considered safe.