An approximate translation of the word “large” into Czech, velké is one of the many declensions of the adjective according to gender, number, or case. Every issue of the publication will be centered around one of the forms of the word. As such, velké will be followed by velká, velký, velcí, velkým, velkého, velkém, velkému, velkou, velkých and velkými, each accompanied by a colour. It will be this combination between a specific grammatical form and a precise colour shade that will provide the thematic background for each issue, rather than a linguistic topic.

The first issue is dedicated to the singular neuter, velké. The neuter is the conceptual correspondent of something that is in the middle: neither masculine nor feminine, and historically associated with the inanimate object. In contemporary gendered languages the connection is no longer as strict – some objects or entities might be masculine or feminine, but the remote genealogy of the neuter can provide a suitable background for Velké: something which is not a person, and is often not alive.

It is the neuter as the gender of the art object that is the starting point of the current publication. Velké dílo. A great work. Velké umělecké dílo. A great artwork. A large artwork. The neuter of the artwork is also the starting point for a particular understanding of artistic research: one which places the artistic work at its core. In other words, it is an artistic research which claims that art is research. Not that all art is research, but that one cannot construct an idea of artistic research without accounting for, first and foremost, the art as the core of the research. It is a perspective that asks, before anything else, whether the artwork works, and how. This is one of the most divisive questions in the field of artistic research. The focus of LARGE, and by extension of Velké, is an artistic research for which the art is central. The artwork can be large or small (velké umělecké dílo or malé umělecké dílo), the art can be large or small (velké umění nebo malé umění), it can be object-based or process-based, but the premise of this publication is that the neuter umění (art) is at the centre of artistic research.

This perspective also entertains the subsequent idea that art does, indeed, know. More than in English, in Czech the corresponding verb umět has the idea of knowledge implicated among its meanings. It is a knowledge that is not mere understanding, but rather one which has been exercised and developed over time. It involves a practical aspect, and an ability that comes with this practice. It is to this idea of art (umění) as a knowing (umět) enterprise that Velké is committed to.

The publication places itself in the tradition of Central and Eastern European avantgarde and neoavantgarde artist run magazines, in which artistic practice and knowledge was exercised by communities of artists who, rather than relinquishing the discourse about art to theoretical disciplines, reclaimed a self-defined comprehension of their own field through both image and text.

VELKÉ