SOMEWHERE in between

Two Speakers, Two Stories, One Great Conversation with Tereza Violet Stehlíková – artist / researcher and Petra Janoušková – artist / shamanic practitioner.

First up, Tereza Violet Stehlíková will be talking with us about her work as an artist-researcher exploring liminal states: those in-between moments when familiar ways of seeing the world begin to dissolve but before new understandings have yet to fully form to take their place. Drawing on ideas from her recent book Exiled From Our Bodies, Tereza will reflect on the unique capacity of art to open such threshold spaces, not by offering ready-made answers or simple solutions, but by helping us stay with ambiguity, uncertainty and the unresolved.

Tereza suggests that these shifts in attention often emerge in everyday life through what she calls the infra-ordinary: fleeting, easily overlooked moments in which our perception subtly changes. It may be sunlight illuminating a room in a new way, the heightened atmosphere of an inner state, or simply arriving at a familiar place from an unfamiliar direction. In such moments the ordinary becomes strange again, and new forms of perception — and perhaps new insights — begin to emerge.

Then the artist Petra Janoušková will explore these in-between places from a different perspective. Petra will tell us about the shamanic concept of the three worlds (Lower, Middle, and Upper) and the journey shamans traditionally make between them in order to facilitate healing for individuals and their communities. She will also make direct connections between shamanic consciousness and CG Jung’s concept of active imagination, as well as the distinction between ordinary and non-ordinary reality. In addition, Petra will examine selected shamanic practices in relation to the arts and the creative process, touching upon its place in ritual and performance, particularly in the work of Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, and Rick Rubin.

Believing that everyone has access to these higher states of consciousness, whether through artistic expression, meditation or shamanic journeying, Petra suggests that moving between different realms—inner and outer, the familiar and the Other—enables individuals to better understand their everyday lives while moving towards a greater sense of wholeness and integration.

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Tereza Violet Stehlíková is an artist, writer and researcher whose work explores embodiment, sensory experience, and the relationship between perception, place and meaning. She is the author of Exiled From Our Bodies: How to Come Back to Our Senses (2025), and her interdisciplinary practice spans film, performance and installation.

Tereza is also the editor of Tangible Territory, a journal dedicated to embodied and multisensory ways of knowing.

Petra Janoušková is a printmaker, art therapist and shamanic practitioner who likes to explore new techniques and approaches in printmaking as well as the realms of imagination and consciousness.

Petra studied American Literature, Art History and Ethnology at MU Brno and received training in shamanic practices under Kevin B. Turner, Director of FSS Asia.