Invisible Prague
– A Journey Through Memory and Imagination

Invisible Prague is a creative exploration of a place I’ve never visited, built entirely from the memories and stories of others. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, this project transforms fragmented recollections into a personal vision of Prague—a city reimagined through the lens of second-hand experience.

The Concept

How do we connect to a place we’ve never been? For this project, I interviewed people who had visited Prague—some briefly, others multiple times. These were travellers, not residents, whose memories provided a rich tapestry of impressions. Their stories became the foundation for a constructed version of Prague: part real, part imagined, and wholly unique.

One participant described the city as, “The City of 1000 Spires,” adding that it looked as though, “Tim Burton designed it.” Another recalled an unnamed alleyway, leading to a beautifully painted archway, remarking that it was “striking and so beautiful.”

The Work

The final piece was a video combining animation and footage shot within a scale model of Prague that I built, inspired by the memories shared during the interviews. The animations brought these recollections to life, blending fragments of the real and the imagined into an evocative depiction of the city.

Exhibition

Invisible Prague was presented remotely at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial in the Student and Emerging Designers Exhibition. While based in New Zealand, I conducted interviews via Zoom with attendees at the exhibit, asking them to share stories of other places they had visited that I hadn’t been to. The intention was to expand on the Invisible Cities concept, creating a new work inspired by these recollections. Unfortunately, due to technical challenges on-site, these interviews were not usable, and the follow-up project could not be realised.

Despite this, Invisible Prague remains an exploration of the power of imagination and memory, offering audiences a chance to engage with the interplay between personal experience and collective storytelling.

Invisible Prague (2019)- 2 mins 22 seconds