Natálie Kubíková and Mia Milgrom, Estranged Tools

The exhibition Estranged Tools perceives technology not only as instruments of progress but also as historical cultural phenomena intertwined with myths, speculative stories, and visions of possible futures. The individual works explore the deep connections between technological artifacts and narrative structures, viewing technology in the spirit of its original Greek meaning — as an expression of art and craft (techné).
Thus, technology is not understood as a neutral medium of a digitized present, but as an active, formative force that fundamentally shapes communication models, community cohesion, and ecological relationships. The exhibition presents technology as a nonlinear, networked system of meanings and possibilities, in which tools — the products of human invention — simultaneously co-create human subjectivity. These artifacts, removed from their original contexts, bear traces of uncertain pasts and open up spaces for speculation about future scenarios.
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Hynek Alt continually explores the human condition in the context of the contemporary digital era and the artificial structures behind it. Alt’s post-conceptual strategies include various media, expanding from photography to video and sculpture. The CGI-rendered dog in Untitled (Howl) mirrors the movements and sounds of a drunk human, blending the notions of the wild and the domestic into one. Periodically howling and then falling asleep, the dog’s rhythm refers to the cycles of social media presence as well as work hours. Untitled (Stranger I, for Sam) and Untitled (Stranger II, for Exile), carefully placed on opposing walls, serve as symbolic gestures of greeting. Printed via fax machine, they physically connect distant places, acknowledging a bond mediated through a machine.
The theme of the relationship between humans and machines, whose roots reach back to antiquity, is embodied by the mythical Talos — the first automaton — representing the fusion of craft, technology, and myth. In many stories, machines are described as being made from the same materials and techniques that artisans used in the creation of tools and sculptures; thus, techné becomes a bridge between natural materials and objects unknown to nature.
The artistic duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko creates installations at the intersection of architecture, art, and design. Each of their works is based on a specific phenomenon or metaphor, and in its abstracted form offers subtle hints of its original inspiration. The exhibited samples from the Appearing Flower series evoke everyday objects as well as archaeological traces, serving as foundations for the duo’s observation and subsequent creative process. A conscious play with scale and negative space introduces a speculative tone that transforms every gesture into a communicative tool.
Through the diverse approaches and media of the participating artists, Estranged Tools demonstrates that technologies are not merely tools, but active agents of cultural imagination. Here, artifacts lose their instrumental clarity and become open structures carrying stories, memory, and speculative visions. The exhibition invites a rethinking of the relationship between humans and technology, and a search for new forms of coexistence in a changing world, where the boundaries between the natural, the artificial, and the narrative are constantly being redrawn.
(from curatorial text by Natálie Kubíková, Mia Milgrom)