The Czech Answer to the Ice Bucket Challenge

Be on the look-out today for prominent Czechs (including tennis player Barbora Strýcová and her partner actor David Kraus and writer Michal Horáček and singer Lenka Nova) affixed to white boards with a whole lot of duct tape.

Is it an art installation gone wrong? Not quite, these stars are plugging for a newly launched campaign to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease in other parts of the world, you might remember the viral campaign a couple summers back that saw everyone from Oprah to President Obama getting doused in icy water to raise funds for its eradication.

Participants in today’s event hope to achieve the same goal just without the ice.

The installations are aimed at demonstrating the helplessness of being trapped in one’s own body while fully conscious, the plight of those in the advanced stages of the disease.

The celeb-studded boards, bearing the slogan: “Together against powerlessness,” will be on display today at Palackého náměstí and Wenceslas Square from 3:30pm to 4:15pm. 

The Czech Republic has about 800 ALS patients, with 200-300 new cases appearing annually and the same number of deaths. Among the best-known victims of the illness are footballer Marián Čišovský  and politician Stanislav Gross, who died in 2015.