What is life like for artists who found the city too constricting and decided to move out to the countryside, even though they didn’t grow up there? Did they quickly grow accustomed to the open spaces and fresh air? Does the road to the Krkonoše or Mirošovice lead through London or Taiwan?

When Covid first started, artist Juliana Höschlová left for the mountains and basically never returned to Prague. She was expecting to have a symbiotic relationship with nature, but this turned out to be a romanticized notion, and she was forced to cope with the realities of climate change. "Of course, the isolation gives me the luxury of time and space, but then I have to divide my time between painting a picture and weeding a garden bed. And the garden bed quite often wins out," says Höschlová, describing the amount of upkeep required of a house in the mountainous setting of a national park.

Prague-born artist Tereza Stehlíková also shares her experience of living in the countryside. After thirty years in London, she returned to the Czech Republic, specifically to Mirošovice, where the tranquil forests of Central Bohemia surround her with silence and inspiration, and her work focuses on the role of the senses in aesthetic experience.

The podcast is produced by tranzit.cz, an initiative for contemporary art, in collaboration with the online daily Deník Alarm. The series is hosted by Tereza Havlínková, the sound design is by Jonáš Rosůlek, the visual identity is designed by the studio Day Shift Office, and the producer of the podcast is Tereza Stejskalová from tranzit.cz. The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.