Kulturní doom

Kulturní Doom is the latest visual offering from the Knedlo Zelo Wear (KZW) skate division. In this film, the KZW crew embarks on an unconventional pilgrimage across the Czech Republic, exploring the overlooked open spaces surrounding kulturní domy (Houses of Culture in Czech), built during the socialist era to accommodate civic function, cultural control, and mass order.
These public spaces, far from being urban background in today’s post-socialist/neoliberal Czech towns, take center stage in the film. The wide-open plazas, with exposed-concrete platforms and granite-covered monumental forms, once embodied the socialist vision of collective order.
Today, those very features have been taken over by skateboarders as elements for conveying spontaneous, uninstitutionalized individual expression. At this strange intersection of fixed function and fluid reinterpretation, skateboarding acts as a cultural connector, rebelling against both past and present notions of societal order. Kulturní Doom isn’t just a skate video, it’s a demonstration of how skateboarding re-imagines and re-
appropriates post-socialist urban space.

Featuring: Tonda Záhorka, Štěpán Janda, Vojta Freitag, Javier Varillas, Michal Majer and Kuba Novotný.
Guest appearances: Kuba Karlík, Pepa Kosťál, Fanda Záhorka, Honza Farkas, and Martin Kalenský.
Video by Javier Varillas.
Filmed by Javier Varillas and Michal Majer.
Thumbnail by Kuba Novotný.