Supervisor: MgA. Zbyněk Baladrán

Jesper Alvær’s PhD dissertation, titled “Shortcomings…” investigates how audiences are directed and accommodated within art exhibitions, specifically focusing on shifting the viewer from a passive spectator to an active participant. The core research questions are:

Audience Accommodation and Direction: How is the audience, visitor, or viewer accommodated and directed upon entering an exhibition?
Workshop Outcomes in Exhibitions: How can material outcomes and preliminary workshops/exercises be utilized within an exhibition project?
Embodied and Exploratory Approaches: What is meant when an exhibition embraces an exploratory and embodied approach to its audience?
Co-authorship and Collaboration: How can an audience be imbued with a sense of meaningful collaboration or co-authorship?
Defining Artwork Boundaries: Where does a work of art or an exhibition experience begin and end?
Function of Itineraries: What is the function of using audience itineraries in performing the exhibition format, and can these itineraries make exhibitions “more alive”?
Location of the Artwork: To what degree can the “location” of an artwork be considered migratory if the prioritized destination for the work is the experience and consciousness of the audience member?
Audio Guides: How can questions regarding audience configuration and experience be answered through the use of an audio guide in a museum?
Institutional Motivation: What is the institutional interest or motivation for inviting artists who work specifically in the field of audience engagement?
Role of the Artist Researcher: How can the role of the artist researcher be understood from an institutional perspective, and what dilemmas does this role face?

The Six Research Exhibitions

Group of Engaged Audience (Brno, 2018-2019): An intervention into “The Audience Has Award” where an anonymous group developed an invisible exhibition through imagination and performative readings while wearing bread masks.
Pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-view (Česká Bříza, 2019-2020): A workshop-based exhibition where participants created clay objects while blindfolded, later developing poems and spatial choreographies based on their haptic experiences.
Audience without artwork (Prague, 2020): A project revolving around a missing glass sculpture by Brychtová and Libenský. Visitors selected an inscribed memory and underwent a “somatic transfer” of that memory through touch by a professional physiotherapist or massagist.
Exhibition as Alibi (Prague, 2020-2021): This exhibition utilized a strict itinerary where visitors had plaster masks made of their faces while listening to whispered poems, eventually hanging their masks in the gallery.
Precursor (Prague, 2023): A series of one-to-one encounters designed to prepare the audience for a later “delayed” experience through personal flute concerts and meditative gaze meetings.
Delay and Recognition (National Gallery Prague, 2024): Part of the “No Feeling Is Final” exhibition, Alvær and Isabela Grosseová selected works from the Skopje Solidarity Collection. The installation featured audio guides and architectural interventions, such as a hidden room where a monk meditated daily behind a Mikuláš Medek painting.
Professional Context and Positionality

Alvær notes the influence of his dual roles as a formally trained artist and an ordained parish priest in the Church of Norway. He describes a tension between these positions, sometimes feeling like he is in a “self-imposed hostage position” or “exile” as he balances liturgical performance with artistic integrity. The research was supervised initially by Vladimír Kokolia and later by Zbyněk Baladrán at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU).

MgA. Jesper James Alvaer, Ph.D.

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Dissertation: Shortcomings...

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