A Million Lines November 26, 2015 – January 31, 2016 Opening: Wednesday, November 25 at 6 pm
Co-organizers:
With performances by Magda Buczek Laura Kaminskaitė Erki Kasemets and Robertas Narkus
Partners:
With the financial support of:
Curators: Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Aneta Rostkowska Exhibition architecture: Mateusz Okoński Graphic identity: Vytautas Volbekas
Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art pl. Szczepański 3a, Kraków www.bunkier.art.pl www.xiitriennalebaltyckie.cc
Exhibition is a part of the XII Baltic Triennial and the project ‘Lithuania in Krakow: Season of Culture 2015’
‘Proteus and the Radical Imaginary’ by Kristupas Sabolius is the author’s first major translation into both Polish and English published on the occasion of the exhibition. *The short story ‘Details’ (2006) by China Miéville is available for reference in the Korporacja ha!art bookshop.
Exhibition Media Patronage:
MĀRIS BIŠOFS
26.11.2015– 31.01.2016
A MILLION LINES
Gallery Media Patronage:
XII BALTIC TRIENNIAL
Artists in the exhibition: Wojciech Bąkowski, Nick Bastis & Darius Mikšys, David Bernstein & Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, Māris Bišofs, Brud, Magda Buczek, Marek Chlanda, Beth Collar, Valentina Desideri & Céline Condorelli, Dina Danish, Kipras Dubauskas, Michał Gayer, gerlach en koop, Antanas Gerlikas, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Laura Kaminskaitė, Erki Kasemets, Yazan Khalili, Mikko Kuorinki, Žilvinas Landzbergas, Marcos Lutyens, Robertas Narkus, Rosalind Nashashibi, Bianka Rolando, Viktorija Rybakova, Algirdas Šeškus, Jay Tan, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
e w
‘Can you ima ‘It’s more intuitive than conceptual because simply there is no time to make logical structures in a classical sense. But either end of the long buildings were to be situated control gin This factory, it’s her relief, ‘Atbooths, that enwhere technicians would command instruments to it doesn’t mean that the sense or the meaning you get is accidental. You pick some fragments of information, put them e, regulate the temperature, humidity, and air pressure, as well as together according to your anticipations which are informed by your previous experience, and receive some intuitive thing been here for to waft salubrious scents and ‘rarefied condensed air’ through ters the or a product rather than a descriptive concept, and it’s a much more interesting way of working. Concepts are now simply reclaimthe halls. Nor would sound be left unorganized. Specialists slow, it is impossible to consume them because they are too slow. Conceptual art today feels a little bit clunky. It is more working ‘according to scientific facts’ would transmit from a while now. I reing her factory immediately universal, than, say, the language of German philosophy, but still it’s too slow. We risk speaking in a more effective and the control centre a range of sounds gauged to intensify faster manner but in pictograms. I think that’s the only way to speak at the moment.’ – Darius Mikšys the process of slumber. The rustle of leaves, the cooing of member how obsessed nightingales, becomes an emor the soft murmur of waves would instantly relax the most overwrought veteran of the metropolis. Should these in the beginning I thought the construcimagination from the hell of details she ployee of it. I hope fail, the mechanized beds would then begin gently to rock until consciousness was lost.’ – S. Frederick Starr on Sonata of tion process won’t be difficult but then could interpret in only one way. That way the duties will be Sleep (1929–1930) by Konstantin Melnikov I kind of gave it most of my time and my I could read to performed with thoughts. Now I can’t imagine living withher what someone dedication. No worries, there is no assembly r possibilities.’ – Jerzy Ludwiń ski out it. To some extent the factory behas at least actual- line here. There are many came part of me. ly written. other lines (of) though(t). yo a h ly er on I remember exactly when MayThe factory consists of e ar s o l d een a few y b d B u was a h I f I tI ay. ed I got the idea to create it. be one day several compartments. The on e m d n it m It was she’ll come back and find us entrance area already indicates t whe fro d e ill ist right here. Or maybe the factory that the place is busy. The other –d after I left Mrs Miller’s house when I disis her? Sometimes I have a feeling chambers are structured vertically , ho w ain covered that she was not there anymore. She that life is pulsating in its walls. It is and connected by means of disappeared leaving me full of anger, grief and as if something was there, apart a chimney. You may also call disappointment*. from bricks and layers of paint. it a tunnel. It is indeed a tranI’m not sure what happened to her. ProbaA living organism whose nature sit space. bly I’ll never know if she was taken to the psyI will never fully understand. Oh I’m particularly satisfied with the look, I’m now talking like her, it’s upper unit. It’s genuinely innovative, ‘The cornerstone of such a concept can be found in Derrida’s chiatric hospital spectral hauntology: both false consciousness and ideological mystification are not the products of dissociating fantasies or maybe to something she would say a lot. maybe even ground-breakbut refer to the irreducible field of the spectral – the third dimension, which is the creative force that cannot be equated a completely ‘Terrible!’ Or she’d go, ‘Bloody, ing. As you know factories bi with an individual mind. The ghost unveils the uncertainty as the irreducible realm where the imaginary manifests itself, not different place. bloody edges, bloody lines!’ Not usually produce smoke. through repetition or the representation of reality, but rather through functioning as a creative factor or the generative I used to visit that she liked talking about it at It’s a kind of a necesmatrix of reality itself.’ – Kristupas Sabolius I saw it, b ut her every day, all, thank God, it was awkward sary by-prodal s o to fin bringing her food on request of my mother as enough already. uct, someda so wa w n i k h ? o y t o sh ’ – Da ut r Mrs Miller was never leaving her apartAnything that has to be yo sM i kšy s ment. She was bothered by shapes ways the there in order for another thing to a of strange beings that she said she factory be produced. Normally the smoke kept seeing in all the cracks, lines defiproduced by factories is considand all the random shapes nitely ered a waste and everyone’s only in her surroundhas thinking about how to make less ha t ings. She was a life of its own, a life that of it or about changing the smoke gh: ‘so that they’d actually know w thou sure that there spreads in different directions itself in some way. Or are they? In exists a world parallel to ours in which and unpredictable ways. A life my factory the smoke is acceptthose creatures live and that they want full of possibilities. I’m not sure ed as it is, with all its blackness, to take over our world. I still don’t now if I still have control over ris toxicity and opacity. I just take it p m o know if she was right or if she was just it. It’s more like it has big part c back. It’s always part of the facmad. got control of me. tory, always part of everything else. Effective Who was she? Someone just like anyYou have to understand and efficient. Well, sometimes the mechanism one else, just an elderly neighbour? Or that the things in the factory are nothgets stuck, sure. Everything can get exhausted. a humble visitor from outer space? ing like the ones you are used to encounLook at that trash bin. Or maybe an artist? A healer, a seer? Or, ter in such places. Although many of them Downstairs it’s the on the contrary, someone with so little look like tools or equipment, they are not same, actually nearly imagination that she could not escape functional or effective in the way exactly the same, you may expect. Nor are they mere I never go there. ny shape I w ant even just one simple idea? t ta re a cig Some months ago I derepresentations, abstractions or deche t ‘(…) a n eye c a p a b e r e h der w n o w I ‘ cided to put a reading unit orations. In fact ‘I have so far made two versions of sleep prop pieces, one for right hand and the other for right foot. I became interested in particular positions people prefer while here. I don’t know why I did it. it is possible that from roj sleeping. I sleep sideways and need to have my other arm slightly lifted, I also need ’– e c tion, identif ic ation, a nd emp athy. to have my other foot lifted a bit. I basically wanted to see from outside these angles Maybe because I used to read to where they stand I appear by creating these props for sleeping, to create an image of a body by only showing the props that help the body to sleep. I place a clay piece on top of a pile of cotton her from magazines and books. to be an instrument or handkerchiefs and slightly press my hand against the clay to get perfectly fitting resting place for my hand. The piece is installed in the exhibition where I would It was as if the spo- ‘The major problems in the world are the result a decoration. choose to sleep in that particular room. One aspect of this project is also insomnia that I do suffer every now and then. Inability to let go, to do what is most ‘natural’ for of the difference between how nature works ca a human being to do, sleep.’ – Mikko Kuorinki ken word was giving and the way people think.’ – Gregory Bateson Everyone p a b l e o f r e l a x i n g t h e d e m a n d f o r i m p o r t a n c e, m e
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‘Do you need to know what is art when you make an artwork? Not necessarily, because in fact art uses us to make an artwork. And so let it know. And we just need to be free and be flexible in relation to it. (Without shoving forward what’s yours.) So that art does not need double efforts to embody itself: that is to conquer not only the resistance of the material but also ours. Nobody wants to be different. Everything that there is wants to be just as it is and to express itself. And knowing how things should be can take freedom away, can confine and trouble manifestation of art. Because art [illegible] needs to break that what is, that is also the knowing. Can art be created? No. It can only be named. One can only create conditions where it can manifest.’ – Algirdas Šeškus
to the just experiencing it mode!’ –Marcos Lutyens
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