Cocain 6

No. 6

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN KARLSRUHE (ZKM ) / Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MOCAK)

quarterly • July 2014 • www.cocain.pl • edition 500 copies • ISSN 2299-6893

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Anna Kompanowska PLACES WITH A SECOND LIFE .............................................................................................3 Resident Malina Barcikowska ZKM – A CULTURAL FACTORY .............................................................................................4 Jerzy Olek TIME OF TOOLS Conversation with Prof. Peter Weibel ............................................................................10 Jerzy Olek VAN GOGH’S EAR .................................................................................................................22 Comments Magdalena Zięba THE MUSEUM AS A PERFORMANCE AND A SCULPTURE USING THE EXAMPLE OF THE NEW MUSEUMS IN SPAIN .....................................................30 Interviews Anna Kompanowska “HARD IMPACT” – an interview with Włodzimierz Pujanek – director of “Elektrownia” ........................................................................................................40 Territories of art Delfina Jałowik THE MUSEUM AS A CHANGE CATALYST. ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN KRAKOW ..................................................................................48 Joanna Zielińska THE PERFORMATIVE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CRICOTEKA AND A NEW PUBLIC SPACE ..........................................................................................................52 Václav Mílek 14|15 BATA INSTITUTE Regional Gallery of fine Arts in Zlín ................................................................................56 Tomasz F. de ROSSET CHÂTEAU D’OIRON – THE CASTLE OF CONTEMPORARY ART ................................60 Anna Kompanowska LES ABATTOIRS. ONE ORGANISM – THREE INSTITUTIONS ......................................66 Interpretations Aleksandra Hołownia THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRES OF BERLIN RESIDE IN HISTORICAL MONUMENTS ...........................................................................................72 Marta Smolińska THE WOZOWNIA ART GALLERY IN TORUŃ – TAMING THE PILLARS ....................76

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PLACES WITH A SECOND LIFE Anna Kompanowska

This issue’s leitmotif is conversion. It turns out that the 1990s were particularly abundant with clever and daring projects for cultural institutions to be sited in old, often listed, buildings formerly of an industrial or similarly unromantic purpose. The selection of such institutions, the stories of their past, together with their present activities became the focus of our interest.

The majority of those institutions found homes in neglected factories, like an abattoir in Toulouse, power plants in Radom or in Cracow, a shoe factory in Zlín, a tableware factory in Cracow or a weapon factory in Karlsruhe. To convert an industrial space into a venue for presenting art is quite a challenge, not just for the architects but also for the executive staff of such a cultural organization. It’s hard enough having to re-adapt the old shell to serve an entirely new purpose – arranging space in order to boost its attractiveness and to make the contemporary art display look even better, but the task that may

be even tougher is to make the local people warm to the potential new role of the familiar place and to present it as a friendly and accessible spot well worth visiting.

There is a second type of conversion where the original venue is usually a former state institution or a private residence. Be it the fifteenth century palatial residence in Oiron, the eighteenth century municipal hospital in Madrid or the nineteenth century artillery carriage house in Toruń – they all require special attention from the conservators, making a modernization is a rather tricky process.

When discussing re-adaptation, one should not forget the social aspect of such an endeavour.

When an old building is being reused, its character changes, often permanently influencing the whole neighbourhood and leaving its mark on an entire city, sometimes even a country.

Enjoy reading!

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ZKM – A CULTURAL FACTORY Malina Barcikowska

ZKM | The Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (Germany) was established in 1989. Initially, it was housed in a number of locations across the city, but it finally found a permanent seat in a historical building of a former munitions factory, known as IWKA “Hallenbau”, in 1997. Unaffected by the Second World War, the space was divided to accommodate, apart from the ZKM, the Municipal Gallery and the State Academy for Design in Karlsruhe.

A factory has to be functional. Its architecture is meant to be utilitarian and to facilitate production.

A factory is where “anonymous” workers operate machines. Well-known accusations levelled at the capitalist economy (Marx) emphasise the objectification of people in relation to the machines which replace them as subjects. It is art that may turn out to be a “crack”, a breach in this relationship.

So, in the most general sense, art signifies activities not supposed to generate profit and incompatible with capitalist ways. Obviously, there is clear opposition here – however, how are we to understand it when we encounter art that brings the “machine”, or tool, into focus? At first, it seems that this very paradox relates to the ZKM. INDISPENSABILITY OF THE MACHINE Many accusations against new media are based on this way of thinking. They tend to highlight the fact that artists active in this field cannot live

Hall, ZKM | Karlsruhe. Photo: Dirk Altenkirch, © ZKM | Karlsruhe 1995

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Gameplay, ZKM | Karlsruhe. Photo: Jerzy Olek

without machines. Unlike in the traditional sphere of words and images, whatever is created in this domain would be impossible without technology. It is technology that imposes particular conditions and assumes power. And, like in the symbolical factory, it allows work to be conducted on a mass scale and to reach a larger audience.

Establishing a site like the ZKM in a former factory conserves and seemingly increases these and similar controversies: assessment of the negative effect of culture on individuals in an industrial society, domination of quantitative purposes, the passivity of the public, obliteration of differences between high and low culture. However, Schweger + Partner, the architectural firm that was responsible for the shape of the ZKM, worked hard to maintain the original character of the factory. They adopted an approach that was respectful to the particular space. The existing structure of the building was incorporated into the introduced improvements. This means that the context, the past and the otherness have been added to the value of the newly established site not only symbolically. As a result, the former munitions factory has determined the potential – both architectural potential and research potential, and IWKA “Hallenbau� has become a contemporary response to the development of information technology and changing social structures.

ZKM_Foyer, ZKM | Karlsruhe. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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A building of ZKM, exterior shot. Photo: Uli Deck, © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe

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ACTIVITY OF THE ZKM The Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe has a wide-ranging programme that includes national and international exhibition projects carried out in two museums, which are part of the institution – the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Media Museum, interdisciplinary research in the field of new media conducted by the Institute for Visual Media, the Institute for Media, Education and Economics, as well as the Institute for Music and Acoustics, or collaboration with established authors (Hans Belting, Jacob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg and Peter Weibel, among others). Both curatorial programmes and publications are dedicated to the most topical problems in contemporary art, turning the factory into a unique “global laboratory of contemporary art”.

This formulation of the ZKM’s mission was chiefly advocated by Heinrich Klotz, director of the institution from 1992, and Peter Weibel, its president since 1999. The latter is an Austrian artist, curator and theoretician who has received a comprehensive

education (French, cinematography, mathematics, medicine and logic), active in the field of conceptual art, performance, experimental film, video and computer graphics; he took part in happenings of the Viennese Actionists. He also held many significant positions, including artistic advisor and later art director (1992-1995) for Ars Electronica, curator of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 19931999, as well as chief curator at the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria.

The founding ideas developed by Weibel in Karlsruhe can be summarised in four points: 1. Exhibitions, publications and symposiums are open to all kinds of art (including traditional art).

2. People from all over the world are invited to the ZKM to discover, discuss and research art.

3. The Center is dedicated in equal measure to both practice and theory – it thus cooperates with artists as well as scientists representing various disciplines.

4. The ZKM is also a place for the preservation of digital art, thus becoming an Archive for the twentieth and the twenty-first century art.

A building of ZKM_Cube at night, exterior shot. Photo: Uli Deck, © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe

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Sound Pavilion ‘Morcing Line’ in front of ZKM. Photo: Jerzy Olek

Apparent in the treatment of existing architecture, the openness also pertains to different kinds of art, people who create it and interdisciplinary approaches to projects. It has become the dominant feature of the place, which is not only dedicated to media but a “medium” of encounter itself.

the ZKM to turn into a place of serious reflection on the present state of information technology and its effect on art, the economy and politics. Thanks to numerous symposiums, discussion and publications, perspectives and questions raised by the ZKM remain important components of the constantly developing contemporary thought.

MEDIUM One way of defining this term, directly connected with media art, links the concept of “medium” with communicational practices in the broad sense of the phrase. It is exactly due to the medium that a situation like this occurs – it becomes the centre of communication. Consequently, artistic disciplines which employ media are by definition associated with the so-called participatory culture. There are no more consumers of media, passive viewers, as the emphasis has been shifted to active reception.

Exhibitions at the ZKM assume the participation of the public. Viewers – rightful subjects of presented artistic situations have replaced objectified workers.

As a result of the initial premises and related strategy, the ZKM is now an important exhibition, museum, research, educational and documentary centre. The institution closely collaborates with the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design as well as other – also international – institutions. Activities at the crossroads of art and science have enabled

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TIME OF TOOLS Conversation with Prof. Peter Weibel – an artist, curator, theoretician, and many-year head of ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Jerzy Olek: Would it be right to claim that technology has dominated art to an excessive degree? And if so, what has been the course of mutual relations between thoughts and tools, ideas and objects produced from ancient time till now?

Jerzy Olek

Peter Weibel: In ancient Greece, there was a clear division into techne and episteme, meaning practical skills and theoretical knowledge. Techne stood for agriculture, architecture, music, painting and sculpture, and these were activities to be performed by slaves. On the other hand, episteme, or rhetoric, astronomy, logic, grammar, arithmetic and geometry were accessible to free people, to educated citizens.

They didn’t make music, they only listened to it.

Rome adopted this tradition, upholding the division into the liberal arts (artes liberals) i.e. former episteme, and the vulgar arts (artes vulgares) i.e. former techne, renamed as mechanical arts in the Middle Ages.

Jerzy Olek: And then the Renaissance came when artists put in a great deal of effort to create works with the maximum accuracy, and when attempts were made at determining the character of mental, memory, pictorial and musical art.

Peter Weibel: Many believed that there was something called the “tree of knowledge”,

Peter Weibel. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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Christa Sommer, Laurent Mignonneau, ‘The Interactive Plant Growing’, ‘Holography from the ZKM collection’, 1993. Photo: Jerzy Olek

contributing to the establishment and maintenance of hierarchies.

ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast”.1

Jerzy Olek: Its nature wasn’t straightforward. There were also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Kabbalistic tree of life, and, lastly, the tree René Descartes wrote about – whose roots were metaphysics, trunk – physics, and branches, leaves and fruit – moral and applied sciences.

Peter Weibel: With his novel views, Leonardo was firmly rooted in tradition. He referred to the shapes of visible things; he meant what can be seen through the eyes. Painters were supposed to represent the reality they received via their eyes. Whereas science invents objects which cannot be seen with the eyes that are part of our bodies. Therefore, it is right to claim that science also contains the kind of art that makes use of technological achievements. Science is a better type of visual art as it reveals the shape of visible things which can only be perceived with the help of various devices.

Peter Weibel: I have quoted this metaphor in relation to art. What I’m driving at is the hierarchy that’s hidden in it, the division of arts inherited from antiquity and the rivalry between them. Leonardo didn’t like that at all. He believed that, being a painter, he had to do something to raise the status of painting. In his treatise, he set out to prove that painting was superior to sculpture. He wrote that painting was a matter of mind. In other words, painting is science. And the tools of a painter include the point, the line, the surface and the volume, and it is them that make representation of the shape of visible things possible.

Jerzy Olek: In the work of this genius with the mind of a scholar and a scientist, there is another characteristic sentence to be found: “He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards

Jerzy Olek: As time went by, technological solutions and inventions started to take priority.

Peter Weibel: They were held in high esteem already in the age of Enlightenment. The French Encyclopédie was dedicated to technical subjects.

It mostly gave information on how things were 1 Leonardo da Vinci, Traktat o malarstwie [A treatise on Painting], Wrocław 1984, p. 47 / English version. BrainyQuote.com.

Retrieved July 16, 2014, from BrainyQuote.com, website: http:// www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/leonardoda140595.html

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Feng Mengbo, ‘Long March: Restart’, 2008, exhibition view. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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done. A substantial part of it dealt with mechanical questions. Diderot claimed that a free society was not possible without access to technology and so mechanical arts should be liberated, meaning that any segregation of arts should be done away with. It was a revolution nobody understood. Even Wittgenstein wrote: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”.2 This isn’t true.

Science goes beyond perception and language.

Jerzy Olek: The nineteenth century associated art with originality and individualism, and also with involvement, with the necessity of a clear message that would be more than the simple transfer of aesthetic impressions.

Peter Weibel: In 1913, classical art, whose programme – formulated by Leonardo – promoted mimesis, or imitation of visible things, came to an end. The change came with Kandinsky’s book Point and Line to Place, which referred to Leonardo’s treatise and, specifically, to his famous observation: “The first principle of the science of painting is the point, the second is the line, the third is the surface, the fourth is the body, which dresses itself of such a surface”.3 Kandinsky, however, maintained that the point is not to represent as it already represents itself. That was the beginning of self-sufficiency.

This is what abstract art is like: the line is the line, the point is the point, and the surface is the surface. These used to be means of expression.

Now, the function of these means is to represent themselves and, as a consequence, we are dealing with self-reference here. This is what Duchamp’s ready-mades were about. He said that if the world could not be represented, one should pay attention to the self-representation of objects: the object as the object.

Jerzy Olek: It took little time for the media to emerge.

Peter Weibel: They do represent the world, but in such a way that the viewer realizes that the emitted images are technical.

In this context, it should be said that art has lost some of its significance.

Jerzy Olek: Computerization has crushed it, incapacitated it.

Peter Weibel: We have new tools, new media and another chance to make the society classless, as Diderot demanded. This has necessitated the abolishment of the division into episteme and techne, and – as a result – the abolishment of the subordination of one to the other.

Jerzy Olek: Do you mean that we are now going through another version of the Renaissance?

Peter Weibel: Very much so. Artists tend to increasingly use computers; they have the same tools at their disposal as scientists. A lot has changed. Painting no longer feeds on science as was still the case in the days of pointillism. If you create monochromatic pictures, red for instance, this has nothing to do with science and should be interpreted only as an interesting experience, which has nothing in common with psychology by the way.

We live in an era of the decline of painting, among the ruins of the great tradition of Velázquez and Magritte. Their knowledge has been lost. This is not a problem, however, since we have new media and technological tools.

Jerzy Olek: In cyber-art and on the Internet, there is a lot of the triviality of gadgets, perfunctoriness and temporariness are at the forefront, meta-narrations eliminate the need of deeper reflection. The old longing for authentic experience is lost somehow.

Peter Weibel: Not long ago, art was very barbaric.

But then the return of tools came, combined with a technological revolution…

Jerzy Olek: …and undermined the credibility of senses. We have found ourselves in a world of illusions.

Jerzy Olek: In your opinion, what relations are there between art and science?

Peter Weibel: It should be emphasized that it is ideological illusion we’re talking about. It is only now that something we can describe as modern is emerging.

Peter Weibel: In science, we need to start with a theory in order to arrive at the understanding of things, art can perfectly do without it. Today, art is not theory and it is not technology.

Jerzy Olek: With the help of technologically sophisticated prostheses?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London 1922, p. 74.

3 Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della pittura [A treatise on Painting], a cura di A. Borzelli, R. Carabba, Lanciano 1924, p. 46.

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Peter Weibel: Yes, but this is already the third revolution. The first tool was a linguistic one, and the first technology was writing. Then came the primacy of the image. The third revolution has been

Dieter Jung, ‘ROTinGRÜNinBLAU’, ‘Holography from the ZKM collection’, 2011. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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point. When nature gets helpless, technology comes to assist us. Tools enable people to continue the work of nature. Advanced technology may create the exoskeleton of human beings. Glasses improve the eyes. The technological shell complements nature which has failed to equip us with organic orientation in the electromagnetic field or to enable us to receive radio waves. only by our natural ears.

We need exo-ears like radio to be able to listen to electromagnetic waves. Technology constitutes the extension of our eyes, ears and arms. Artificial organs are works of science, not nature.

FLUXUS plate, ‘Beuys Brock Vostell’ exhibition, 2014.

Photo: Jerzy Olek

taking place recently, dominated by a rich variety of instruments. In Greek, “mechanical” means “helpful”. This meaning is still valid today. The emergence of new tools has helped art to find a way out of a blind alley.

Jerzy Olek: Has it enriched us as well?

Peter Weibel: The eyes are the answer of evolution to the existence of the Sun. We want to know what the function of tools is. They are here to help us. It is thanks to them that we’ve achieved more than evolution did, as it progressed only to a certain

Jerzy Olek: Let’s go back to art, regardless of its current definition. Don’t you think that media are gradually becoming self-sufficient, as it were?

Peter Weibel: Media should not be self-sufficient.

One can, of course, employ them in such a way that they become self-sufficient but such art is not good.

On their own, they are neither cold nor hot, they are merely dull.

Jerzy Olek: Those who used technology were once ashamed of it.

Peter Weibel: When Henry Fox Talbot invented photography, he supplied a detailed instruction on

Rolf Jährling, Wolf Vostell, Bazon Brock, Eckhart Rahn, Joseph Beuys, Tomas Schmit, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik in the Galerie Parnass at the end of the 24 Stunden Happening, Wuppertal June 5, 1965; photograph, b/w. Photo: Ute Klophaus, © Ute Klophaus

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Joseph Beuys, ‘Kukei, Akopee – Nein!, BRAUNKREUZ – FETTECKEN – MODELLFETTECKEN’ during the Festival der Neuen Kunst, July 20, 1964. Photograph, b/w.

Photo: Peter Thomann, © Peter Thomann, © Estate of Joseph Beuys / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014

how to take pictures. An object was to be placed in front of the lens, then a long exposure should take place and the image was done by itself. Talbot came from the upper class and could hardly say “I’ve made it” because mechanical arts were considered inferior, and it wouldn’t be right to say that the image was created by a machine so he claimed that the photograph was taken by God. The title of his book is “The Pencil of Nature” instead of “The Pencil of Machine”. He does give a description of how the machine operates, but the agent for it is nature, or God. In his day, tools still bore the mark left there

by Greek philosophy. In a nutshell, what was made by a machine was only good for amateurs. It took more than one hundred years for photography to become art. Interestingly, it developed in a time when art was turning increasingly selfreferential, distinctly departing from representation.

Photography, on the other hand, seemed to respond to the need that arose in the Renaissance: to show the world in the same way scientists do with the help of their tools.

Jerzy Olek: The everlasting division into art and non-art still persists, including post-modernism. As consecutive systems of assessment and judgement have collapsed, objectivity is no longer a question.

Former criteria determining the objectives of art have vanished completely, but the division remains.

Peter Weibel: In order to make art modern, slogans like “art is for amateurs” were propagated, with regrettable results. There is no more mastery. There is a lot of barbarism in art now. In New York, MoMA has staged an exhibition titled “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” with the intention to demonstrate associations between contemporary and primitive art. Curators believed the connection was a virtue, I did not. In the last decades, the situation regarding the means of expressions has become particularly complicated.

In the first half of the twentieth century, selfpresentation of objects was in the foreground, but in the second half new media appeared. Theoreticians maintain that media are like maps. These days, it is difficult to tell the difference between the map and reality. Reality is constructed by media, and the map makes the territory. This is how I understand your Dimensionlessness of illusion, when you glued your brick-like works on the wall of a castle.

Jerzy Olek: Especially in Echidna, the boundary between what is illusory and what is real, between reality and its image became blurred.

Peter Weibel: What you call tautolusion, I call isomorphism. I mean the identity of form in reality and art. Here come media, which destroy the idea of reality as the differentiation into media and reality,

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Bazon Brock, ‘Lagerkonzert’, ‘Beuys Brock Vostell’ exhibition, 1967/2014. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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just like the difference between map and territory, disappears. This means that we have to use media to construct our reality. But something else comes to my mind as well: if a real object was introduced into art, like in Duchamp’s case, why not introduce real action? This is exactly what I did with my friends in Vienna in the 1960s – action art. Before, if someone was sitting at a table, that wouldn’t be called art. Two new phenomena were added to art in the twentieth century: media and action.

Jerzy Olek: Can there still be masterpieces? Many say that electronic media exert no impact, that what is created is a game played for the fun of it, that they lack expressiveness, not to mention the sacred.

Peter Weibel: I think that there are masterpieces in media and action art, for instance, some of Beuys’ actions. But they are different from Dürer’s masterpieces. There are no masterpieces in painting any more. Art historians who are accustomed to paintings find it difficult to recognize a masterpiece in something that has been created with new techniques. Some time ago, a questionnaire was distributed among one hundred art critics and curators. They were asked to choose the ten most important works from the twentieth century, so they could select one thousand art works altogether.

Not a single person named a piece related to media or action.

Jerzy Olek: So you believe that there are masterpieces, but they remain unrecognised.

Peter Weibel: The problem is not a minor one. In the twentieth century, there was a strong tendency to reject the idea of masterpiece. It started with Balzac. In his story ‘The Unknown Masterpiece’, he wrote that the difference between art and reality was disappearing, and what was left was reality. The notion that there are no masterpieces, that they cannot be created, that nothing is transcendent, comes from him. Then Duchamp said that the history of art was like a lottery, and history was a bitch – there were no criteria dividing good art from bad art. When the most important artist of the twentieth century talks about a lottery, we should listen attentively. So, in the period from Balzac to Duchamp, a trend against masterpieces was taking shape.

Jerzy Olek: The established hierarchy was destroyed

by Dadaists…

Peter Weibel: They said: power to amateurs.

Nowadays, amateurs are everywhere, in art, in politics, so the Dadaist programme has been

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carried out. To what effect? To no effect at all.

Amateurs rule everything: finances, politics. Their lack of competence is devastating to the world. As you can see, the demands of Dadaists have been satisfied, which has generated incompetence. In the twentieth century, 250 million people were killed – that was the price for amateurs assuming power. The slogan “power to amateurs” has been implemented in three spheres: politics, religion and art, but not in science. In the name of modernity, art has been separated from crucial ideas.

Jerzy Olek: How do you cope as director in this situation?

Peter Weibel: To me, this is a very important question in the context of a museum collection whose aim is to protect artworks against destruction and disappearance. In one thousand years, ninety-three percent of artworks have disappeared, only seven percent have survived.

Jerzy Olek: It is not only museums that produce and protect artworks, collectors also do that.

Peter Weibel: The majority of collectors are amateurs who collect the wrong things. Russian oligarchs have most vulgar tastes and they believe, for instance, that Jeff Koons is an eminent artist.

The mass media follow the oligarchs and they turn one person or another into an “artist”. The media shock us with news of the prices reached in auctions and people think that these exorbitant prices make someone an artist. In these circumstances, dilemmas are faced by museum directors who have to consider the market when they decide upon what they should exhibit. This often results in catastrophic exhibitions. If you show an artist celebrated by the market you will attract the attention of the mass media. On the other hand, if an artist is not present in the market, the exhibition will be ignored by the media. Even our current ZKM exhibition ‘Beuys, Brock, Vostell’ gets nearly no reviews because Brock and Vostell are no market artists at all.

Jerzy Olek: How do you think art will change?

Peter Weibel: I believe there will be a secession, a parting of the art world. There will be artists – slaves of the market and free artists. In classical time, well-known paintings and sculptors created on commission; all masterpieces came to be as commissions, not because of some intrinsic motivation. Once, the independent ones were rejected, like the Impressionists. If they wanted to break through, they would cause scandal, like

Douglas Tyler, ‘Urban Rhytm’, Holography from the ZKM collection’, 1984. Photo: Jerzy Olek

Manet did with his Luncheon on the Grass. Ingres was even more radical as he painted his Turkish Bath with numerous naked women. He captured great attention. Viewers are attracted to provocation and familiar things. Warhol took photographs of popular people which he used in his prints from the tabloids to become popular himself. *** There is a lot to reflect upon in this conversation.

For instance, if the meaning of the word “art” blurs in the thick fog of artistic and non-artistic actions and declarations, other terms should be used, such as anti-art, a-art, non-art or empty art, even though each of them is equally inadequate. Metaart, math-art (from mathematics) or techno-art would probably prove unsuitable as well. But why art? It would be best to coin a term unknown before, open to accept new senses with a much wider conceptional range than what has been contained by art so far. Of course, that term would grow to mean so much that it would eventually cease to have a precise denotation. But this is the natural course of things.

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VAN GOGH’S EAR Jerzy Olek

“Hello, Vincent,” I said into a microphone. But he didn’t reply.

“His” ear at its best was right before my eyes. It looked very much alive, although severed from the rest of the head. The ear, however, is not original.

The real one vanished without trace. It remains unknown what Rachel did with it when Van Gogh gave it to her after a row with Gauguin. It was 1888. The new ear was reconstructed more than one hundred years later. It is to be found – listening to visitors – at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. Its uniqueness results from the fact that it is actually biological, even though the living replica of the severed ear is not exactly identical with the original. The peculiar reanimation took place in a scientific laboratory. Immersed in tissue nourishing fluid, it is a work by Diemut Strebe, a German artist, who invited Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-greatgrandson of Theo, the famous painter’s brother, to participate in the experiment. Live cells were taken from him to grow the tissue and a computer visualization technique was employed to ensure that the would be the same shape as Vincent’s natural ear. DNA was taken from an envelope addressed by Van Gogh in 1883 – from the back of the postage stamp and seal flap.

It is easy to imagine an exhibition featuring ears that have been severed and sewn back on, like the one Stelarc has. Actually, his extra ear is on his arm, rather than on his head, and that location has turned out to be a perfect place for the implant to anchor. I remember the opening reception of my Tokyo exhibition in 1981: Stelarc arrived with a third upper limb – an artificial forearm: a robot responsive to signals sent from muscles. But he decided to place the third hearing organ, Extra Ear, on his own arm. It happened in 2007, when the ear was implanted into his real forearm.

There are a few examples of body art at the ZKM. Virtual reality is overwhelmingly dominant. Even plants develop electronically. For instance, in Christy Sommer and Laurent Mignonneau’s installation The Interactive Plant Growing, it is enough to stroke the plant to get shoots and leaves growing fast on the wall behind them, which serves as a screen. One finds oneself in cyberspaces like this one over and over again. In a labyrinth of dark rooms, consecutive video works pulsate with recorded motion. Everyone who happens to be there is surrounded by imposing images which change endlessly in adjoining alcoves and booths. Finally, one gets into a small room from which one can observe Christian Jankowski installing his screening equipment on the roof of a building.

As the projection begins, the viewer is blinded by the light emitted from the lens to eventually see

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Diemut Strebe, ‘Sugababe’, ‘High Performance’ exhibition, ongoing project. Photo: Jerzy Olek

a nearby tower block fall to pieces, blown by the power of the act of creation.

As I’m leaving, I ask myself whether the film 16 mm Mystery, this spectacular “boom” of crucial importance to the narration, glorifies the power of technological art, or whether it is meant as a kind of warning of the unavoidable necessity to destroy any excess, to cleanse the field. The problem is acute. After all, many active creators of web art as well as its users, penetrating the area of their interest and asking themselves how to become competent while being faced by an ever-larger accumulation of information, are caught in the fundamental dilemma about how to comprehend the excess coded in the net?

Some of the artists working in the digital medium attempt in their own fashion to bring order to the chaos which is an inherent part of the Internet.

They try to introduce a modular system into their work, hoping to achieve clarity of expression and narrative explicitness. However, bearing in mind the almost limitless volume of computer memory, possibilities of manipulation that appear within even a relatively simple initial scheme soon lead towards an infinite number of solutions. Endlessly generating images, the highly efficient machine gives no chance to scrupulous perception.

Rebellion often takes over artists’ minds. It may be caused by a variety of reasons. Opposition to traditional ways is most often the case. Opinions tend to be truly radical, like the one: “We will explode art’s tower of Babel”, aired by Dziga Vertov in 1924. Nowadays, they say that all Internet pseudo-art should be done away with. That would not be easy to do but possible. Perhaps, a properly programmed mega computer yet to be constructed is all it would take to perform this salutary act.

Net art is devoid of an ordering principle, not to mention references that would determine the value of its content. Deprived of any context, representations are equally good and bad. When they catch the eye, their purpose is not of being remembered. In the case of net art, McLuhan’s slogan the medium is the message has been fulfilled completely: the Internet has become both the main medium of art driven by conceptual revolution as well as the dominant subject of what appears on the net. It is conditioned by the net, the lack of which would render it senseless. As the content is hardly possible to order, linear narrations have ceased to exist within it. They have been replaced by hypertext. Anyway, the whole net art is megahypertext that follows no rules but has a clear structure, whose syllables are constituted by such subdivisions as websites, e-mail, software,

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installations connected by the net, as well as all kinds of online and offline phenomena. It also has numerous offspring, including form art, web art, code poetry, ACII art’s semigraphics and several others. Even spam is considered art.

The electrically thickening net of non-material information dispersing all over the world forms an open order of atomised images available on the Internet and, in fact, useless beyond it. In postphotographic and film-related culture, terms like visual matrix have become devalued. High-speed cameras and images rapidly changing on the screen require a reconstructed eye that would keep up with the speed of light impulses. Growing more and more intense in relation to the Internet, disappearance of the illusion of reality and symbolic emptiness surrounding the remnants of representation cause superficial reception.

Centuries-long contact with the image resulted in a close relationship between representations of the exterior with the internal reality shaped by them.

Associations between the two spheres were well defined. They were in direct contact: the perceived world was fixed in consciousness which made its representations credible. Images were both iconic signs and products of perception. They were like two ends of a short segment. They constituted a coherent whole linking cognitive credibility with emotional appeal. Old images made mental excitement possible as they represented a reality that was superior to them – comprehensible and clear, open to connotations, though not always straightforward ones. Flickering images on computer screens signal the possibility of cognition but they by no means provide in-depth knowledge. One cannot reach or even touch truth through them.

Thoughts like these tend to come, mostly uninvited, not only in front of one’s private computer but also in places like the former ICC in Tokyo or the NACT (National Art Center) established several years ago in Japan’s capital, or – last but not least – the ZKM. Designing the NACT, Kisho Kurokawa assigned 15,900 square metres to exhibitions (the whole building, including a library, a lecture theatre, a shop, a technical department and stores, has an area of 50,000 square metres). The ZKM, on the other hand, is situated in a former munitions factory with a usable floor area of more than 16,500 square metres, of which over 14,000 square metres are dedicated to display purposes. The huge industrial building (the façade is 312 metres long) was adapted by Schweger und Partner, architects from Hamburg, who added a glass cube in front of the main entrance. Divided into 10 atrium-like sectors,

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the building houses the Municipal Gallery and the State Academy for Design, apart from the ZKM (the Media Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, a media library, a shop, a media theatre and a lecture hall). In front of the post-industrial building, there is The Morning Line, a sound pavilion by Matthew Ritchie. It is a sculptural and acoustic space with 58 loudspeakers which are centrally controlled. Walking inside the pavilion, one affects the computercontrolled sound. This also gives one a foretaste of what the main building of the Centre hides.

On entering this unique plant generating products of the digital era, which the ZKM undoubtedly is, one has to make a wise choice as it is not possible to digest everything. The dark interior of High Performance seems appealing. Wandering about various presentations, one comes across an airy shack made of unpeeled planks with six monitors emitting bright light inside. Each of them shows a different documentary film; their consecutive titles are Cheese, Chicken Soup, Concert, Hairwash, House and Milk. The whole installation is entitled Cheese and has been created by Mika Rottenberg. This is a strange mixture: dreams of a life consistent with the rhythm of nature as well as with modern techniques of recording. The six-channel video shows six young long-haired women who find fulfilment in a peculiar paradise, best described as a utopian idyll of coexisting with animals. In Rottenberg’s installation, one can see a small barn whose windows are monitors. Through these windows, one observes the women milking goats, washing their hair or making cheese. The artist is trying to convince us that the female body is a “source of creation, transformation and production”, referring to Grimm’s fairy tale of Rapunzel. Well, we like the world of fairy tales (even more so if it is virtual) where nothing happens for real, attracting us with the safety of appearances.

But there is a difference. Famous fairy stories exerted a major impact on readers’ imagination.

Contemporary picture stories – films, videos or digital graphics – tend to irritate with their veristic literality, rather than evoking dreams. Their message is not as explicit as was the case with traditional stories. However, is the approach of the public addicted to computer games equally ambivalent?

At the ZKM, one goes from one unreality to another, this time it is a world of holography. In another dark room, holographic apparitions of real life attract the eye. Something that seems real comes into view but is merely emanation of light which disappears altogether having taken one or two steps. The collection is quite large. The oldest exhibits come from the 1970s when the first attempts at turning holography into an artistic medium were made.

Rick Silberman, ‘Meeting’, ‘Holography from the ZKM collection’, 1978. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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One of the pioneers was Rudie Berkhout, who experimented in his specialist studio in New York City. Rick Silberman’s Meeting is an object created in the same period. It is one of the best works at the exhibition, showing an intriguing union between reality and pseudo-reality. There is a broken glass on a little shelf in front of the hologram. All one can see is the shadow it casts upon the glass sheet. Without the shadow, it is practically unnoticeable as the holographic projection completes the object with its full form. The glass merges with the illusions made by light. This is a sort of subversive tautolusion, separating the object from its representation. It did not take long for holography to leave the frames on the wall. Artists began to create kinetic spatial forms, similar to Calder’s Mobile and installations.

One of them, particularly rich in references, is to be found at the ZKM. It is Window, Memory and Perception of the Future by Edward Lowe which unites an object, its various shadows and holographic image. I believe that the choice of a window was a highly conscious one. It is, after all, a symbol of a framed view which pretends to be showing reality but, in fact, is usually a fragmentary representation of it.

From the darkness that holography would be pointless without, I proceed to rebellious art from the mid-twentieth century, which has sunk into oblivion despite its considerable significance. In a perfectly arranged exhibition, curated by Peter Weibel, three prominent figures are featured: Josef Beuys, Bazon Brock and Wolf Vostell. The time when they expressed their countless disagreements to fragments of national history and German petty bourgeois mentality witnessed not only their artistic and personal courage but also some very radical provocations. It was a period when controversial political and cultural problems were decidedly addressed. The end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s was a decade in which radical attitudes of the leaders of the avant-garde were manifested, invalidating artistic paradigms established through

Rudie Berkhout, ‘Spatial Frequences’, ‘Holography from the ZKM collection’, 1979. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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AP Holographie, ‘Orbitown’, ‘Holography from the ZKM collection’, 1985.

Photo: Jerzy Olek

tradition. Peter Weibel has presented the key notions of the artistic output of these three creators in a nutshell, showing the public only the essence of those heroic days in the form of early sketches, notes, poems, documentary photographs and film materials.

Brock’s Lagerkonzert [Camp Concert] achieves a powerful impact. The artist used the fence of a camp as a score. On a stave made of barbed wire there are notes of shredded clothes. It is hardly possible to view this gruesome notation without being moved. Raum der deutschen Realität [Space of German Reality] brings a similar effect and it must have deeply shocked the public back in 1965.

The installation consists of a table surrounded by chairs and a lamp. The table is ready for an evening meal. Pieces of barbed wire constitute the main dish; they are on plates, the tablecloth and fruit.

This is a striking metaphor, and it is by no means straightforward.

It is difficult to depart from the wall onto which a documentary of Beuys’ famous 1974 performance I Like America and America Likes Me, presented in New York City, is screened. After arriving in the US, Beuys was wrapped in felt and transported by an ambulance with covered windows to an art gallery where he spent a few days with a wild coyote which tried to attack the artist but also grew accustomed to him. Afterwards, the artist was taken to the airport in a similar fashion. As a consequence, Beuys’ feet did not touch the ground at all. He said: “I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote”.

Interpretations of the message conveyed by the performance piece were manifold. They included a challenge mounted to American hegemony, an expression of opposition to the war in Vietnam, or standing up for the culture of indigenous Americans, destroyed by invaders and symbolised here by the coyote, once believed to be a god by Indians.

Bazon Brock, ‘Lagerkonzert’, ‘Beuys Brock Vostell’ exhibition, 1967/2014. Photo: Jerzy Olek

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Bazon Brock, ‘Die Linie von Hamburg’, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, December 18–20, 1959; photograph, b/w. Photo: Photo-Graphik-Witting, © Bazon Brock, © 2014 Hundertwasser Archiv, Wien / ZKM press material

Actions and demonstrations staged by artists at the time contained many explicit references – to war experience, the Holocaust or totalitarian systems.

They added a touch of bitterness to soothing prosperity; they were a thorn in the side of many viewers. A tool of propaganda and agitation, they also performed an educational role. In 1961, Vostell announced that art was equal to life. Other artists identified their mission in the same way, striving hard after radical emancipation of human beings and a civilized society. Time has shown that those beautiful ideas changed not only the situation of art but were also implemented in a broader context. As I was leaving the ZKM, I asked myself the question whether the super-technological art of new media can create an equally strong impact. Those avantgarde artists had undeniable charisma. What contemporary users of electronic devices have is mostly operational skills.

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‘Beuys Brock Vostell’ exhibition view, ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art. © ZKM | Karlsruhe 2014

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THE MUSEUM AS A PERFORMANCE AND A SCULPTURE USING THE EXAMPLE OF THE NEW MUSEUMS IN SPAIN (PART 1) Magdalena Zięba

The revitalisation performance of new technologies For this category, I would like to discuss more broadly the notion of performativity itself, which should be linked to the so-called performative turn in the humanities together with several important theories arising on this ground. According to Pierre Bordieu, culture would be the process based on production, over time passing into reproduction.

The latter is based on simulations and models that blur the distinction between what is real and what is unreal, replicated and reproduced. According to McKenzie, a performance is a collection of certain practices that produce meaning. This is a presentation or re-actualization of symbolic systems through the lives of individuals, as well as inanimate objects, such as architecture. And Erwin Hoffman, in turn, stressed the relationship between social life and performance art, stating that “in public acts there is a theater of performances included”.1 Calling a building, especially a building of the museum, a performance may seem unusual, even bizarre. There is a possibility to find in the literature the definition of the museum as a spectacle or a happening, but it is rather unlikely to be defined as performance art. The notion of performance appears more commonly in relation to the visual arts, theatre, body art, and the media. Whereas it seems appropriate to also apply this term to architecture, whose social role, and the role it plays in space, is extremely important. The museum is an institution that bears the stigma of a high-brow symbol, its presence ennobles the area that becomes a generator of cultural life inherently connected to the art market of today, and therefore to the whole background of the artworld, which Danto has already written about.

Branko Kolarevic and Ali Malkawi in the book Performative architecture: beyond instrumentality created a new approach to architecture, especially post-modern architecture, in which cutting-edge technologies are being applied. Architecture per se, they argue in the first place, cannot exist without reference to both the human individual as well as space. For, as Aristotle has already said, “architecture imitates human action and life”.2 This approach has a remarkably anthropological trait and seems to be entirely applicable with regards to museum architecture. In this case, yet another relationship should be added – with art exhibited inside of it. The problem of relationship with space 1 As cited in: E. Domańska, ‘The performative turn in the humanities’, Teksty Drugie , no. 5 (107) 2007, pp. 48-61.

2 As cited in: B. Kolarevic, A. Malkawi, Performative architecture: beyond instrumentality, New York 2005, p. 8.

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in which a given museum is emerging seems to be the most important issue in light of the political and economic context in which a museum is inevitably entangled as an institution, usually a state-owned one, occupying an important place on the tourist and cultural map of the city, and so therefore dependent on its financial planning.

The authors distinguish two ways of perceiving architecture, both of which obscure its true nature: the building as a construction system comprising a coherent design, and the building as a system of meanings and representation perceptible by the senses. Both approaches make a concrete material object of a building as the result of technological solutions and of the fulfilment of certain aesthetic expectations attached to it. Understanding of architecture in such terms is typically modernist, whereas a post-modernist approach to architecture requires a completely new attitude. The authors do not claim that their concept of describing architecture as an event, a performance, should become a binding method, though they try to create the basis compatible with the contemporary design of architecture, which is increasingly connected with ignoring functional aspects, as well as dematerialization of architectural projects.

They propose to omit the aspects of function and beauty of architecture as a work of art, and focus instead on the way in which this work of art performs. A seemingly static piece of architecture is an extremely busy object, generating interactions with the environment and with the participants of the urban spectacle, in other words, pedestrians and visitors. The action in a work of architecture takes place through dynamic forms, but also through substance used in its construction, such as glass reflecting neighbouring buildings or materials that correspond or contrast with the adjacent buildings.

They write about the notion of “economy of performance”, formulated by themselves, involving the assumption that architecture is characterized by specific “behaviour” – the building acts, but still remains a firm and steadfast body. So it has to work with the landscape and the environmental conditions, with urban space, and furthermore it has to act against such forces as gravity, wind and sunlight. “No actor on stage ever suffered as the buildings do” – they write – “whether one thinks of use and misuse, weathering, or additions and alterations”.3 The “economy of performance” is thus a relationship that occurs between the forces generated by architecture, and forces constituting their counterweight. In the modernist theory, the space Ibid., p. 22.

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of architectural work has been seen as an allembracing frame of each existing situation and circumstance. Continuum of this space has been seen as isotropic and homogeneous. Whereas in the post-modern methodology we tend to talk about topography rather than space; such topography is the reverse of space: polytrophic, heterogeneous and specific, one can distinguish regions that contrast with each other, sometimes come into conflict. If, in the context of space, the perception of architecture is a single act in time, then in the case of topography, meanings are transmitted in time.

In every possible place and at any moment, these structures require the recall and anticipation of some of their elements.4 Along with the development of technology, mass production, information and transportation, the nature of architecture is systematically changing, and its design is intrinsically linked to these factors.

Contemporary architecture is the architecture of change, it depends on space and time, and the current stage of advance in the rapidly evolving technology of materials and design. Buildings are created as a result of a detailed analysis of the weather, landscape, and urban conditions, they interact with each other and constitute a performance in regard to the relationship with man.

In the case of the museum, a spectacle also takes place, perhaps above all, in the interiors. The outer shell, sculpturally shaped, should inform about the symbolic importance of a building, although not directly about its function, whose explication is only a consequence of symbolic structures. Interiors, due to their cooperation with the exhibited works, also have a performative character, especially when it comes to those that are intended for temporary exhibitions, which themselves become the transformative element, changing the nature of the space that is adapting itself to the specific requirements simultaneously.

Kolarevic cites the opinion of Aldo Rossi who was against the paradigm of functionality in architecture, which in his view is only a methodological assumption that is not reflected in the actual manner of use of buildings. Architecture should be considered in the context of history and the passage of time that verifies its use, because a building created for a specific purpose changes its function. In the course of further discussion, it is going to turn out that architecture, although the most durable among art disciplines, is the most susceptible to change and transformation – over the centuries architecture has been subjected to Ibid., p. 24.

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subsequent modifications precisely due to the fact that utility is its base. The authors of the book Performative architecture consider exactly this value of architecture as the performative value, and in the context of the museum we should primarily bring up all the museums that are created in historic buildings, suitably modified both inside and outside.

A very interesting phenomenon in the panorama of museums, both of modern art, as well as art originating from more distant centuries, is their systematic expansion and modification. The art collection admittedly does not grow at a fantastic speed, but, as often happens in the case of ample aggregation, it is often placed in storage. Along with the new policy, which assumes exposing works of art to visitors, and not just their passive preservation, there are more and more new expansion projects arising for the well-known smaller and larger museums. The historical value of existing premises is usually very high, therefore museums are not moved to the completely new edifices, but their historic buildings are revitalized and converted by complementing them with additional architecture, which operates in harmony with the historical. Although the new features are very distinctive and advanced and their function is purely museal, they provide additional exhibition space, they also become a lure for tourists, a place

for bringing together public spaces designed strictly for masses, such as cafes, libraries and auditoriums.

In recent years, Spain, in comparison to other European countries, has been in the vanguard of museum revitalisation, in terms of both quantity and breadth. Layuno Rosas gives the name of palindromes to these museums, which were created in historic buildings, and have then undergone processes of revitalization aiming to adapt their architecture to the needs of the multidimensional nature of a contemporary museum.5 The establishment of such palindromic museum buildings was of great importance for the process of organizing the urban structure of Madrid. In the capital, three main museums have been extended: the ThyssenBornemisza Museum, the Reina Sofia Museum, and the Prado Museum, their locations mean that, today, they form a specific pathway along the Paseo del Prado, which is followed by tourists in search of art. Additionally, it would be worth mentioning the CaixaForum Madrid – the newly established museum and cultural centre on Paseo del Prado.

Particular attention should be paid to the realization of the extension project of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (MNCARS, 2001-2005) by the M. Layuno Rosas, Museos de arte contemporáneo en España. Del “palacio de las artes” a la arquitectura como arte, Gijón 2004, p. 144.

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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Nouvel building, central patio. Photo: Joaquín Cortés/Román Lores

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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Sabatini building, view of the façade. Photo: Joaquín Cortés/Román Lores

French architect, Jean Nouvel. It is one of the most specific projects among other similar activities within the existing museum buildings in Spain.

The building of museum has before been subjected to transformations aiming at the best adaptation for the museal function, but it is the third such significant project in history that has completely changed its shape and character.

The Museum was opened in 1990 and, since that time, its collection has had the status of one of the most important collections of modern art in the world. The building, in which this abundant collection is housed, was erected as the seat of a hospital (the Hospital General de San Carlos) in the late eighteenth

century and is an example of the Enlightenment ideas that guided King Charles III of Spain. In the sixteenth century, King Philip II of Spain appointed the area, where the Museum is now, for hospital buildings, founding at the same time the St. Charles Hospital – a project of José de Hermosilla Sandoval and Francisco Sabatini, which is the original seat of the Museum. In 1788, with the death of King Charles III of Spain, works stopped and in this building, which is a realisation of only one-third of the intended project, the hospital was established. Since then, this edifice has undergone a number of modifications and extensions. In 1977, under the authority of the Royal Decree, it was recognized as a monument of great

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historical and artistic value, due to which it was spared from falling into complete ruin.

Until 1986, the building did not function strictly as a museum, but it housed temporary exhibitions, and only in the years 1987-1988, did the process of modifying the former hospital for the purposes of a modern and contemporary art museum begin. At the end of 1988, the last necessary modifications were introduced by Jose Luis Iniguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro. Among the most significant, there was the creation of the stairs leading to the entrance, as well as the creation of a kind of moat directly in the front of the building façade, where two towers of concrete and glass with lifts inside were placed. They were designed in collaboration with the British architect Ian Ritchie. Already by this means the monument has gained a new, more up-to-date character, and has also become more functional. These changes did not violate the nature of the building that grew out of the eighteenth-century concept of simple form utilitarian architecture, which should refer to the theory developed by J. L. Durand. The intervention consisting of the introduction of glazed lift shafts into the fabric of the façade was the most characteristic feature. Although it was of a highly minimalist nature, it has given the building a neoteric look, which over time has become the distinguishing mark of the Reina Sofia Museum.

The foundation of the Museum took place in 1988, and in 1992 it received its own collection.

The continuous development over the years has led to the situation where the room capacities of the historic hospital have become insufficient. In 1994, the Museum was visited by 715,268 people, ten years later the number had increased to 1,445,253.6 Therefore, in 1999, the competition for the development of the Reina Sofia Museum was announced, and was won by the French group AJN Architectures, led by Jean Nouvel.

Nouvel’s project takes into account the needs of the Museum, its main premise also became the transformation and revitalization of the entire urban space around it. That goal was to be accomplished through the creation of a public square that forms the link between the new architecture and the south-western part of the historic façade. The realization of Nouvel’s project enters into the current of sculpture museum and museum as a spectacle as well, being extremely expansive architecture, admittedly taking qualities of historic buildings on board, nevertheless introducing a completely new public space, not anticipated in 6

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http://www.museoreinasofia.es.

the eighteenth-century design, in the form of an extended square covered with a blobby structure that, without hesitation, one would associate with the Grazer Kunsthaus built by the architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier (Friendly Alien).7 The contrast between the old hospital building and forms introduced in its surroundings by the French architect is the most important trait in the composition and coexistence of these two structures, designed after all to create a unity.

Jean Nouvel has made a complete change of space disposition around the Museum, moving the main entrance to the rear elevation in the north-east.

He set up a building on a rectangular plan, located in the north-eastern part, almost adjacent to the façade on this side, and after it a second one of a similar size for a restaurant and an auditorium, and then, diagonally oriented to these two, an elongated rectangular building, closing a public square from the street side (north-west), for a library. These edifices are integrated under a common covering. It is a modern, gigantic structure on a triangular plan, made of a composite of fibreglass and polyester, with a characteristic red colour. It is the dominant form in the composition of the new premises, but it should be pointed out that, in addition to the covering function, it performs an important function in the light of the public space utilisation and its incorporation within the museum’s ambit. Thanks to this solution, the nature of the square is a gallery-and-public space, to which access is free, and yet it is used as a place of exhibition of sculptures (the constant element is a statue of Roy Lichtenstein from 1996).

The performative nature of these premises is revealed in the process of revitalization that the Museum has been undergoing since the 1980s, but the qualities ​​of the museum as a performance can also be found in other aspects of Nouvel’s project realization, which is after all, despite the close relationship with the historic building, autonomous architecture.

Each of the buildings designed by the French studio corresponds with the street to which it is adjacent, in such a way that these premises gain a performative character. Like in the case of MUSAC, Nouvel’s realisation exists in a close connection to the city, creating at the same time an inner urban structure. This architect has perfectly integrated the individual elements of premises with the environment, without disturbing the historical architecture monumentality: new buildings do not See also: M. Drozdowska, Architektoniczne “bloby”, [in:] http:// www.sztuka-architektury.pl/index.php?ID_PAGE=4876; H. Barnes, Blobitecture – Blob Architecture, [in:] http://ezinearticles. com/?Blobitecture---Blob-Architecture&id=1909121

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outshine it with their size, and the very covering reaches the fourth floor of Sabatini’s building. This public square carries out assumptions similar to those that were pursued by the SANAA duet in the project discussed above for the museum in Valencia, IVAM. The square next to the Museum is supposed to be a ​​dual nature space, to be a public part of the Museum itself, accessible directly from the street. It should be emphasized that the architect has adapted his design to the guidelines elaborated for this area of ​​the capital of Spain by Álvaro Siza and J. M. Hernández de León, who took into account the extension of Madrid Atocha railway station in the spatial development plan.

The new spaces have increased the museum area by almost 60%. Three new buildings are equipped with rooms designated for exhibition purposes (temporary exhibitions), an auditorium and a library. In addition, they house artworks not issued at the time, a bookshop, offices, halls, and a café.

Jean Nouvel represents the transparent architecture genre, sophisticated in nature. A hallmark of his work is combining the contextual requirements with an extremely modern approach to the architectural conception.8 Layuno Rosas points out that his design for the Madrid museum is based on a dialogue with the historic architecture. This issue has been repeatedly subjected to criticism, because there were many opponents to the solution proposed by Nouvel, which was considered as having an excessively strong architectural accent, totally devoid of foundation. 9 However, it seems that Nouvel has very consciously used this little bit of the heavy plastic cover, shiny and extremely dynamic, equipped with a series of rectangular skylights introducing light into the space of square.

This blobby structure has sculptural features and distinguishes the Museum from others located in its vicinity. It is thanks to this that the Museum can be regarded as a kind of spectacle: each person passing through the square is affected by the glass panes covering the façades of the building, where the light admitted through skylights is reflected with the red from the colour of the covering gleams, and the interiors present their features, one can glance at the people reading in the library or the visitors. Nouvel continues here the line initiated by the developers of the two glass towers containing elevators. In addition, the contrast between the modern materials used by M. Rogińska-Niesłuchowska, Współczesne muzeum jako miejsce i znak w przestrzeni miasta [in:] http://suw.biblos.pk.edu. pl/resources/i1/i4/i6/i3/r1463/RoginskaNiesluchowskaM_ WspolczesneMuzeum.pdf, p. 506.

9 See also: J. M. Montaner, ‘La renovación arquitectónica de los museos de Madrid’, Revista de museología, no. 2, pp. 112-121.

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Nouvel, and stone and brick used in the historical building sets a deliberated, clear boundary between the space dedicated to temporary exhibitions and social activities (the realization of Nouvel’s project) and the typically museal part with a permanent exhibition (the building of de Hermosilla and Sabatini). The relationship between the historical monument and the added part should therefore be defined as a harmonious combination of differences, although the minimalist architecture of the French builder, to some extent, relates to the puristically treated forms of the eighteenth-century edifice.

The large covering, totally non-functional, is meant to be a sculptural accent giving that architecture a highly individual and unique character. It is, though, the only one element “disturbing” the cubic serenity of particular buildings, whose simplicity is truly modernist, and their glass coating refers to the concept of the museum by Mies van der Rohe.

As a result of the transformation of a former industrial building, another museum has been founded in Madrid, CaixaForum Madrid. One of the most visited museums, which is also a cultural centre, it was established in the former power station for Madrid’s Mediodía quarter, transformed by the Swiss architectural duo, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The edifice, located in the southern part of the Paseo del Prado, the main “museal” street of Madrid, has been transformed in a radical way. The architects have kept only the simple façades, made ​​of red brick, of the old plant with a double dual-pitched roof. The construction works lasted six years, from 2001 to 2007.

One of the most radical moves of the designers was to cut out the base from the structure of the building and to transfer its weight on the inner, hidden pillars. Thereby, an illusion of levitation of the object above street level has been achieved.

The space secured this way was offered to visitors, protecting them from the sun and giving them a bit of refreshing shade.10 In this manner, the architects have bestowed a sculptural impression to the body of an old building which dates back to the nineteenth century. They have created a floating building-sculpture, directly connected with the surrounding urban space, harmonizing also with the wall of the adjacent building, planted, according to the plan, with greenery that corresponds with the nearby Botanical Garden (Jardin Botanico).

This is the second execution of these architects involving the transformation of an old factory into a museum; they previously became famous http://bryla.gazetadom.pl/bryla/1,85298,5288544,Caixa_ Forum_w_Madrycie___lewitujace_centrum_sztuki.html

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CaixaForum, the Social and Cultural Centre of “la Caixa” in Madrid. © Rubén P. Bescós

for the realisation of the Tate Modern project in London. The assumption of the project in Madrid was to emancipate the brick edifice positioned on a relatively small parcel, in close proximity to other buildings, from these limitations: the replacement of a gas station that separated this building from the Paseo del Prado with public square, and extending it into the building interior through creation of two storeys underground and opening it on all four sides to the outside.

“The Caixa Forum seems to float like a cloud, but the most important is the fact that it draws the passers-by into its interior like a magnet” – says Jacques Herzog.11 The constructed building encourages a dialogue with culture, and it is Ibid.

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of a great architectural value, for it meets the requirements of modern buildings to blend smoothly into urban space to a great extent, existing somewhere in between of what is public and what is private, or between the everyday and that what is “sanctified” if we are talking strictly about the values ​​of space intended for art.

An important element here is the wall garden, mentioned earlier, created on the wall of the neighbouring building that forms a vertical counterpoint to this architecture corresponding with this structure from the north-west. It is made up of 25 thousand plants of 125 different species that grow supplied by the water system placed on the façade.

The former factory building consisting of two floors and the attic was raised, complemented

by two underground floors and one overground, forming the ground floor, and elevated by adding two further levels. The architectural layout of the constructed edifice is similar to a square with a slightly elongated, situated at an angle, south wall. Obviously, the superstructural floors and sculptural development of the roof are the features that are formally most interesting. The two additional floors were created to complement the existing historic façades. The first one, being the current third floor, was integrated with a section that constitutes the attic, while the other one is completely autonomous. The façades are made of steel, artificially coated with rust, which is meant to remind viewers of the earlier industrial character of

the building. The spectacular majestic architecture of the CaixaForum centre is further underlined by the contrast of the adjacent wall’s natural greenery with the corroded sheeting.

The first superstructural level has a cubic form with a completely windowless façade, covered merely by rusty steel with square divisions. The second one (seventh floor altogether) is covered with a roof connected to the façade – the surface of these two structures is created by an openwork metal coating, also slightly touched with rust. The irregular division of the roof, visible from the top, achieved with the aid of convex-and-concave surfaces with cubic and rectangular shapes, appears from the bottom as differences in the building height.

CaixaForum, the Social and Cultural Centre of “la Caixa” in Madrid. © Rubén P. Bescós

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In the preserved nineteenth century façades (sevenand twelve-axial) all window and door openings have been walled up, only the arched crowns have been kept. On the other hand, two new windows have been created in the original three-axial façade, which is located on the western side: one in the shape of a horizontal rectangle on the fourth level and a vertical one on the fifth, and similar ones in the southern façade. The rooms located above are lit by sunlight due to the open, perforated like a degraded substance, twofold coating of glass and metal.

Inside the CaixaForum cultural centre we find a mix of forms, materials, styles and textures: the interior of the lowermost underground auditorium is covered with a metal coating, the lobby on the ground floor has a futuristic nature, and the stairs leading from one level to another are made of white concrete.

The staircase with oval forms resembles the ramp of the Guggenheim Museum in New York projected

by Wright. The stairs leading to the main entrance are completely different in character, for they form a metal ramp.

On the lowest level, there is an auditorium, parking and storage space, above – the halls destined for lectures and workshops. The ground floor is integrated with the external square and, through three irregularly located staircases, is connected to the next level. On the first floor, at the northwestern side, there is the main entrance leading to the lobby. On the second and third floors, there are exhibition rooms, each with a surface of ​​650 sq. metres, separated only by the partition walls into smaller areas. These are aseptically white spaces, devoid of formal and compositional accents. On the top floor there are commercial spaces: a coffee shop, restaurant and offices. The entire building area has been increased from 2 to 10 thousand sq. metres.12 12

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaixaForum_Madrid.

The edifice has a modernist character with features of deconstructive architecture, emblematic here is the literal sense of the deconstruction procedure applied to an industrial building, and then lifting it above the earth’s surface and supplying it with the irregular roof cover. The façades are plain and affect the environment essentially through their simplicity, acting as a paraphrase of the nineteenth-century industrial architecture. The innovative factor is a direct fusion of architecture with natural vegetation, which resembles, dating back to the late eighteenth century, the concepts of J. N. Durand, who argued that the only decoration of architecture should be the very vegetation. Furthermore, it is an important performative aspect of these premises, as in the cases of the Calatrava in Valencia or the Joan Miró Foundation in Palma realizations by Moneo.

The centre was established for specific reasons and with certain assumptions, which include not only the contemporary art from the CaixaForum collection (works of artists such as Mucha, Kieler, Polke, Cucchi and Baselitz), culture and art of the former masters (including Botticelli, Parmigianino, Luca Giordano), but also a social programme: the CaixaForum Foundation has planned a programme to eradicate poverty among children, and also for selfemployment promotion, drug addiction prevention, and environmental protection, etc.

An interesting programme of debates, conferences, permanent and temporary exhibitions combined with the innovative merging of historical industrial architecture into the modern form with the deconstructivistic and neo-brutalistic characteristics, meant that the centre quickly also, after its opening, one of the most important directions on the tourist map of Madrid, and became, in the consciousness of the city residents, a major destination that is also a culture generator.

More significantly, it has a very performative character, interacts with the environment, and is distinguished by its form against the surrounding architecture, while being an integral component of the urban landscape. It is also an architectural concept, which fits into the museum as a sculpture trend, as well as a building where treatments of architecture tissue dematerialization were applied.

José F. de Conrado y Villalonga, one of the managers of the “la Caixa” Foundation, stated that the realization of the Herzog and De Meuron project “is a great work of architecture, which, moreover, has the properties of sculpture”.13 Both MNCARS and CaixaForum are museums founded on a base of historical architecture, whose http://www.arquinews.com/edificios-nuevos/caixa-forummadrid/.

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CaixaForum, the Social and Cultural Centre of “la Caixa” in Madrid. © Rubén P. Bescós

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CaixaForum, the Social and Cultural Centre of “la Caixa” in Madrid. © Rubén P. Bescós

function has changed through the appropriate transformations accordingly. The adaptation of a former hospital to the needs of the Reina Sofia Museum progressed gradually, while the modification of an industrial building by Herzog and de Meuron was made in one step. Nevertheless, one can talk about the phenomenon of historic building revitalization based on the latest technologies in the case of both buildings. Nouvel tried to make his covering with an intense red colour dominant within the space of MNCARS, and to give the square created underneath the status of a dual, also performative, character: a half-public and half-exhibition area, which connects the interior of the museum with the busy street. In the CaixaForum such a connection was gained through a spectacular building elevation above the earth’s surface with the aid of pillars hidden in its depths. The anti-gravity character adds sculptural attributes to this realization, these features are also underlined by the textural qualities of the façade, which is a mix of historic bricks and rusty metal sheets, perforated in the top floor area.

That what is characteristic for the CaixaForum Foundation is the universality of this architecture, which does not set a clear message about its function. On the contrary, because architects tried

as much as possible to keep its industrial specifics.

In addition, the creation of large utility spaces in the basement pays witness to the autonomous nature of this architecture, which in this way became independent from the environment and the small size of this piece of land where the transformed building is located. So if the performativity of the Reina Sofia Museum is based on smooth transitions between the public space and the interior of buildings that are largely glazed, then the performance in the CaixaForum is founded on a mystery, on something unexpected, for even the entrance to the inside is in quite a surprising place, namely on the first floor. To some extent, this edifice is an attempt to stay separated from the outside. It invites to its interior, but remains fully independent among the scarcely attractive surroundings, hence the small number of window openings and the general character of the building, resembling a fortress. This characteristic is an indicator of the next group of museum buildings, whose performativity is based on the specific anti-spectacularity, and which manifest their autonomous nature through it, or inspire to enter into a game with architecture that is concealing the unexpected solutions.

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“HARD IMPACT” – an interview with Włodzimierz Pujanek – director of “Elektrownia”

Anna Kompanowska: Have you been in this project since the very beginning? When did you take up the position of director?

Anna Kompanowska

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Not long after it was officially established. I was employed 9 months later.

Anna Kompanowska: But you weren’t the very first chief executive, I believe?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: That’s right. In May 2005, the Masovia Voivodeship Board appointed a proxy to assist in establishing the Contemporary Art Centre.

It was Ms Agata Morgan who was the acting CEO until July 2007. Subsequently, the position was taken

by Zbigniew Belowski and, two years later, in 2009, I was offered the position and have remained in charge since that date.

Anna Kompanowska: It has been a long nine-year stretch since the Municipality of Radom bequeathed the power station building as a gift to Masovia, for them to turn it into a CAC, until the newly renovated centre opened. Was it because you’ve encountered serious adversities while re-adapting the space?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Yes it has taken a while, but you must remember the proper works did not begin until 2007. The project was based on the

A building of MCSW “Elektrownia” before renovation. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

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A building of MCSW “Elektrownia” after adaptation. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

assumption that there will be extensions to the existing building, but they would stretch beyond the plot that was owned by the authorities. The incorporation of the neighbouring plots was necessary and that’s where the problems started.

There were protests from the neighbours, especially one particular person who objected to the project, which caused us a fair bit of trouble and delayed the completion of the planning stage by two years (starting in April 2007 it was finalized in July 2009), there was also one appeal to the Appeal Council along the way.

Anna Kompanowska: Could you try and estimate, if it’s at all possible, to what degree you have taken advantage of the old, existing building. What was the re-adapting process like?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Well, at one moment, we changed the initial project – the alterations adjusted the concept and physical extent of the design solely within our plot. That’s when we gained momentum and our problems virtually disappeared.

The architectural project was ready, later on the public tender was announced and in 2010 we had the contractor signed up. The construction works took three and a half years, but by then other issues had emerged – the technical survey, which was conducted in 2006, did not include certain

structures which were then inaccessible. Later, it turned out that there was some old sewage system and old foundations – left after several features had been removed – and instead of digging to the standard 1.5 metres, we had to get to the primary ground level which was at the depth of about 3 metres. This kind of work took around a year and a half, which further delayed the proper development. It all started in roughly 2007 (the contract was signed) and lasted up to 2014 when the construction works were completed. Summing up, it was a very difficult and tricky development since it was mostly adaptation of the existing building into a new role – it resulted in the total conversion of what was already there, together with the new extension being added. From the outside, the old power station was kept in its original form, renovated to look very much the same as it did in 1901, when it was first erected. Inside though, it’s a completely different story. It can be best described as an independent and brand new construction inside an old building with the former being the proper centre that we are talking about.

The architect working on the project decided – upon closer examination of the technical measurements conducted on the outer walls of the old power station – that the old construction wouldn’t be able to support the new ceiling, which is why an entirely new frame consisting mostly of load-bearing beams

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was devised – a building inside a building – quite a complex architectonic structure altogether.

Anna Kompanowska: After seeing some documentary photographs from the end of 2010 showing the “before” condition, I can’t help but admire the unshaken optimism and enthusiasm essential for completing such a daunting task. The old building was in complete ruins. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to start from scratch and build something completely new based on modern technology?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Initially, when comparing the spatial extent, we were talking of 3,500 sq. m.

Today, after all the renovation and conversions we can boast an impressive 6,500 sq. m which is nearly double what it might have been.

Anna Kompanowska: What was the adaptation process like? Have you unreservedly entrusted it to the team of architects/designers or have you influenced the architects in any way, with future use in mind?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: We were watching their work closely and tried to give them all the feedback we could on the functionality of the building we were hoping to obtain. We’d like to think that we had certain input and, to some degree, we’ve shaped the

final form. For example, we tried to make sure the educational facilities were designed in a particular way – with the restrooms situated next-door and with access to running water. Occasionally, we would change the entire purpose of a certain space, as was the case with the underground parking. It was supposed to have 700 sq. m to cater for approx.

20 cars, while we noticed there was only 200 sq. m allocated for the collection depository. We’ve quickly changed that and now we have 700 sq. m of an art warehouse which is just as well – our expanding art collection is already 4,000 works strong. There are things – which we can now see – that we could have planned differently, but overall our input was much respected and considered. It’s quite tricky to plan such a vast space, particularly when there is already an existing architecture there to respect and work around. So there might be something we fell short of, one more room we could do with… but that’s pretty much it. All the other stuff, like sockets, taps etc. we’ve managed to plan nicely.

Anna Kompanowska: It is well known that there was much controversy around this venue.

Could you give us your opinion on whether two separate galleries (I’m thinking of the Museum of Contemporary Art and now the Masovia CAC) presenting contemporary and modern art in a city with just about 200,000 residents defends itself?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: The idea was that once MCAC is ready – the existing collection from the museum will be re-located to the new venue and, in this way, the museum will automatically cease functioning. It was the original prerequisite – with taking over the local collection of contemporary art, MCAC was supposed to become the only such institution in town giving an appropriate and dignified venue for this class of art selection.

Anna Kompanowska: Let’s talk a little about the institution itself and the way it operates. How far have you got with setting the place up? I’ve heard you are planning more than just showrooms? What else is on the agenda? A cinema… is that right?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: It’s been only a month since we moved in to the new headquarters and we still have 15 members of staff, which is what we had in our former place before the move. We have applied to increase staff levels, which is essential for us to prosper, and we are waiting for the decision. We are also expecting to get some office furniture, we need to furnish our multimedia room, the café, and the library. We need to get all those facilities up and running, but first of all, we need them properly equipped. We intend to run them ourselves without

A building of MCSW “Elektrownia” during repair work, 2006. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

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Night of Museums in MCSW “Elektrownia”, 2014. Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

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Kijewski&Kocur ‘Equestrian Portrait of Andy Warhol’, 1998. © MCSW “Elektrownia”

outsourcing if we can, but for that we need the go-ahead from our organizers as it would require employing more staff. We also see the library not just as a mere outlet to distribute our magazines, books or albums, but as a gift shop where you can even buy art or its reproductions, why not? Our venue is situated in the very city centre along the main track connecting it with the railway station, with several schools and colleges in close proximity, so we hope there will be quite a lot of young people coming by.

In our previous place we had some good experiences; people were visiting, often quite spontaneously, and there was only one room of 170 sq. m. That’s why we are hopeful that, in our brand new, state-of-the-art place, we will manage to attract not just art lovers but also plenty of ordinary passers-by who will be drawn by a friendly atmosphere, maybe at first just to have a coffee, but who will eventually become a conscious art audience.

and we intend to carry on working together, however, I do not limit myself exclusively to my team. I’m quite happy to consider working with other curators in future.

Anna Kompanowska: Were you thinking of announcing a programme competition for your institution or will you be solely relying on your team to devise such a programme? How about touring exhibitions from other venues?

Anna Kompanowska: How do you intend to staff this venue? Would you have a group of full-time curators in your employment or would you rather commission them on a temporary basis to conduct certain shows without committing to them in the long run?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: I must admit we haven’t thought of a competition as such. Our activity is based on teamwork, yet we do have some offers from other institutions and we are happy to take advantage of those too. We will create a place accessible to ideas and will choose the best ones.

We will continue presenting art from the region, which we always have done but will definitely provide opportunities for outsiders too. Possibly, one day there will be a need for a programme and then we may consider fishing for ideas and even setting up a competition. For now, we will depend on our team of in-house curators, which has been working quite well so far.

Włodzimierz Pujanek: We do have a team of professionals we employed in our previous venue

Anna Kompanowska: Who is ultimately responsible for the collection and potential new acquisitions?

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Interior of MCSW „Elekrownia”. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

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Włodzimierz Pujanek: Like I said before – we are about to be entrusted with a collection that has been expanding for years now – the Radom Contemporary Art Collection. We are not talking of just local names, but artists from all over Poland and even from abroad. We do have some external experts on call whose advice we keenly take. We plan to devise a Programme Council who will take full charge of future acquisitions. We receive an annual funding from the ministry towards expansion of the collection and we usually purchase 10-12 works per year. They are from various authors. None of the local artists have ever pressured us to buy anything from them or, at least, I’ve never heard of such a case. A considerable number of works are donations. We are in constant collaboration with Prof. Bożena Kowalska, who is a great lover of modern art – Geometrists in particular – and we have come into possession of around 200 pieces through her kind help. We also organize regular open air sessions in Radziejowice, near Warsaw, which also ensures the steady growth of our collection.

Anna Kompanowska: I need to ask a potentially sensitive question, which is: How is the MCAC financed? Is it all funded by the local administration?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Yes, we mainly get financial support from the local authorities, but we are also

subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Occasionally we apply for various grants for individual projects, like we did when working on the tourist trail, and we got some money toward our cinematic endeavour from the Polish Film Institute. The circumstances are difficult – we have just moved to a new, much bigger venue where our financial means won’t satisfy the expenses we’ll be facing. That’s why we haven’t started increasing staff numbers; we have to wait and see what the organizers have to say. Once we know our budget, we can draft the programme and plan our future activities.

Anna Kompanowska: It’s time to say a little about how MCAC is perceived by the citizens of Radom.

Have you had any feedback so far, and what was it?

Is MCAC now a permanent fixture on the cultural map of the city?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: I’m sure that, here in Radom, people have had a chance to become familiar with our presence. For all those years we have been developing “Elektrownia” we have simultaneously organized small, intimate indoor and outdoor events. We have received a range of reviews – some positive, some less so, but the overall feeling is encouraging. We commissioned a marketing agency to conduct an opinion poll about our institution,

Façade of MCSW “Elekrownia”. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

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on how it is received by people here in Radom. We wanted to know the cross-section of our audience: are they returning customers, did they like what they saw, and what would they like to see in future, also how did they find out about the place and about the exhibitions? We were quite surprised to find out that our average visitor is a middle aged person from 35-50 years old or older – people in their sixties, whereas young people were visiting less frequently.

The cinema has turned out to be a great hit – I need to stress it was while we were occupying the provisional quarters and the cinema was outside the venue – but that seemed to be the most attractive part of it. The exhibitions we have continued presenting have long been popular events in Radom and the public has got used to them, so we feel like we have become a regular presence on the cultural map of Radom and beyond. We receive impressive feedback from all over the country and various institutions, artists and curators think it’s worth co-operating with us. Recently, we even had offers from abroad, from people who were interested in supporting or taking part in our Jerzy Busza Art Festival. So, summing up – yes, we are a lively presence on the Polish cultural scene, not forgetting our international ventures, for example, we have started collaborating with a museum in Slovakia.

We’ve adopted a killer pace with 12 exhibitions per year. We organized Art Rising – an event which lasted 63 days, the same as Warsaw Rising. 200 artists took part in it. We are very committed to being noticeable and strongly associated with the contemporary art world, thus the intensification of work. We are not just about painting exhibitions, but also cinema and performance, anything from drawings to murals, really. We have the word “centre” in our name, which should give people an idea that we aspire to become something more than just a gallery or a museum. We are involved in the serious promotion of contemporary art and we do it on many levels. For example, last year there was an event called The Horizon of Freedom which was an idea for art projects to be executed inside Radom Prison. The artist would change prison yards, which are normally sullen concrete spaces, into a more positive ambience, something to reflect on or just simply something to please the eyes. The project was coordinated by Prof. Zbigniew Bajek, the head of the Interdisciplinary Dept. of the Painting Faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. As you see, we are determined to promote MCAC and to boldly support contemporary art in any way we can and this is not an easy task, particularly here in Radom.

I remember the time when we were organizing our Art Rising event in 2008, which was mostly based on performance art, people were kind of suspicious about it, they probably still are, but it

Façade (fragment) of MCSW “Elekrownia”. Photo: Marcin Kucewicz, © MCSW “Elektrownia”

seems like the attitudes have changed a little, and so has the overall reception. We needed this kind of “hard impact” quality to show what this place is representing and what it has to offer.

Anna Kompanowska: On a closing note, please tell us a little about the forthcoming opening exhibition.

When is it scheduled for?

Włodzimierz Pujanek: We are planning to open at the end of September – beginning of October, but we are still waiting for the final financial decisions, which will give us an idea of what we can do. Right now, I can only say it will be an official inauguration and the display will be based largely on our core collection.

Anna Kompanowska: In that case, I wish you the best of luck with all those tricky logistics and I do hope you’ll manage to keep to your ambitious schedule and open on time. All the best with the new venue, too.

Thank you for this interview.

Włodzimierz Pujanek: Thank you too and hopefully see you at the exhibition.

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THE MUSEUM AS A CHANGE CATALYST About the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow Delfina Jałowik

Since the 1980s, one can observe an exceptional growth of new forms of museum architecture. The museum of art has become an important quality indicator of the public space neighbouring it, as well as an integral part of the city and its structure. On the one hand, it is able to toe the line of urban rules prevailing in a city (for example, the Museumsufer in Frankfurt am Main), on the other, to complement a given space due to its own individual character (for example, the Kunsthaus Bregenz). More and more often it is becoming a sign or a symbol, or it creates a context for its immediate surroundings. Many times we encounter a situation when the museum building increases the attractiveness of a given quarter or a city area, not just by its appearance, but also because of an interesting programme and exhibition profile. This case remarkably pertains to districts that are mismanaged and even somewhat abandoned or neglected. The museum then becomes a factor which contributes to the development of a city and a region, and thus – the destination of numerous tours.

Economic and political changes in Poland that have occurred in the last two decades have led to the transformation of cities’ urban structure.

Many of the factory halls or the military barracks located there have been shut down. Perceiving an opportunity for further development, various public institutions, mainly museums and other

Building of Oskar Schindler’s Enamel- and Tinware Factory. www.flickr.com/fabidi, © Fatemah Abidi

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A Building of MOCAK, architect: Claudio Nardi, exterior shot. Photo: R. Sosin, © MOCAK

cultural centres, have seized it. The post-industrial spaces are an interesting area for various initiatives and artistic activities, offering expressive and voluminous interiors. The museums emerging in such areas are the catalyst for new investments in the neighbourhood, and sometimes its programmatic complement. Around them, there are often other developing public spaces of a recreational or showpiece nature. The Tate Modern in London and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao could be numbered among the most famous examples of this type. Similarly, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow MOCAK has played a revitalizing role towards the abandoned and ruined former Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, and resulted in a dynamic revival of its environment likewise.

MOCAK is located in the post-industrial Zabłocie area, which administratively belongs to the Podgórze district, on the south-bank of the Vistula river in Krakow, outside the city centre. The crisis that took place in the late eighties led to the closure of many manufacturers situated in this area.

Previously, among others, the Miraculum cosmetics factory and the Telpod electronics company operated there. Zabłocie became deserted and fell into decay. Twenty years later, the city designated it as a strategic area for development and therefore a gradual revitalization of old post-industrial buildings

has begun. A fast tram line was built there as well.

The branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow (MHK), Schindler’s factory, visited by thousands of tourists, and the large campus of the non-public college, the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University, are now located there. Currently, the construction of the Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, is about to be finished, with the official opening expected in September this year.

At the end of 2004, the Krakow City Commune purchased the former Schindler’s Factory buildings and land at 4 Lipowa Street as the future headquarters of the institution. In the years 1939-1944, Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory was

Building of Oskar Schindler’s Enamel- and Tinware Factory © Phil Curme, www.walkingthebattlefields.com

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A Building of MOCAK, architect: Claudio Nardi, exterior shot. Photo: R. Sosin, Š MOCAK

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Façade of MOCAK, architect: Claudio Nardi, exterior shot. Photo: R. Sosin, ©MOCAK

located at this site. In 2007, when the area was divided between two museums: MHK and MOCAK, an 11-person jury chaired by Prof. Konrad KuczKuczyński judged the competition for the design of the museum building, choosing the project of the studio of the Italian architect Claudio Nardi. The formal commissioning of the building took place on November 16, 2010, and the first exhibitions were presented in May 2011. One year earlier, the branch of the Historical Museum had been opened.

The body of MOCAK’s edifice fits into a narrow space between MHK, the Telpod building, and a new quarter of apartment complexes. It does not differ in height in relation to the other buildings in this area.

An important assumption, already made at the stage of the competition, was the partial preservation of the post-industrial hall and its extension by building new spaces. As a result, the building consists of two parts: a new exhibition space on the west side on the level -1 and on the ground floor, an office annex space, and renovated and partially rebuilt space of the old Building A covered with a shed roof (bookshop, cafeteria, reception, and audiovisual room dedicated for meetings, film screenings, conferences), and Building B (library, conservation workshop, small galleries, other offices, and guest room). Some of the walls of the façade are made of glass, which provides communication between the interior and the courtyard of the Museum. In May 2013 the Museum area was increased by another gallery — the Gallery RE, which is situated in the former gatehouse of Schindler’s Factory.

The modern exhibition spaces (total area: 9,200 sq. m, exhibition area: 4,200 sq. m) inside the Museum are characterized by simple, geometric shapes. Due to the prevailing concrete floors they have an austere appearance. The different size and height of rooms makes them suitable for presenting various works of art both in terms of their medium and their dimensions.

The remnants of the former factory are the structure and old pillars supporting it that have been

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encased. Because of that the only distinct elements revealing what was previously in this place are the shed roof, characteristic for buildings in this district – the main symbol of the institution, repeated in its logo, and the so-called “wall-witness” (the only original undeveloped wall of the former factory, also visible through the glass from the outside).

The emergence of MOCAK in Krakow was associated with changes in the function that this building serves. The existing space has been adapted and expanded while leaving the elements that testify to its former character. The presence of the Museum has influenced the surrounding area by changing the nature of Zabłocie, thus creating a whole new space for operations. MOCAK is an example of how it is possible to create within a post-industrial quarter an interesting architectural realization, which turns out to be the inspiration for new cultural initiatives.

Nowadays, some manufacturers are still operating here. Apart from them, there are many artists’ workshops, a co-working space, a photographic studio, pubs and clubs, and new housing areas are under construction. This quarter, located right by the river and within close proximity of the Main Square, has ceased to be considered featureless, abandoned and gloomy. It is here where more and more interesting initiatives occur for both residents and tourists alike.

Façade (fragment) of MOCAK, architect: Claudio Nardi, exterior shot. Photo: R. Sosin, © MOCAK

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THE PERFORMATIVE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CRICOTEKA AND A NEW PUBLIC SPACE Joanna Zielińska

Since 1980, since the time of founding the Cricoteka – a live archive of the Cricot 2 Theatre – Tadeusz Kantor1 was obsessively thinking about creating a proper museum, as the sole guarantee of continuing the existence of the ephemeral “Theatre of Emotions” that would undoubtedly cease to exist with the time of his death. The meticulously assembled archive and the collection of theatrical objects were supposed to remind the next generations about it and serve didactic purposes.

In September 2014, by the Vistula River in Kracow’s Podgórze district, the new building of the Cricoteka is going to open, with the aim of fulfilling the functions that the artist was wishing for. The facility will accommodate two exhibition spaces (one for the permanent collection, the other for temporary exhibitions), the archive, the performative room, the educational room, and a café and book-store.

The building has extraordinary aesthetic values that are inspired by Kantor’s objects, packaging, and his concept of a bio-object (an actor combined with an object), but above all by the drawing A man carrying a table. As Piotr Nawara from nsMoonStudio said: “there is a collision of two substances of different characteristics, they are coexisting, but are not touching each other”.

Over the power plant from the nineteenth century, which serves as an archive and a theatre, a modern block has been built to serve as, among others, the exhibition space, covered with fashionable weathering steel called “Corten steel”. This material, 1 Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) was a Polish artist, set designer and theatre director. In 1955 he founded the Cricot 2 Theatre. In the 1960s, Cricot 2 gave performances in many theatres in Poland and abroad, gaining recognition for their stage happenings.

A Building of CRICOTEKA, visualisation: IQ2 Konsorcjum Wizja Sp. z o.o. - Stanisław Deńko nsMoonStudio Sp. z o.o. - Piotr Nawara, Agnieszka Szultk, Krakow

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A Building of CRICOTEKA, visualisation: IQ2 Konsorcjum Wizja Sp. z o.o. - Stanisław Deńko nsMoonStudio Sp. z o.o. - Piotr Nawara, Agnieszka Szultk, Krakow

making use of the natural processes of corrosion, which adds remarkable aesthetic values to the object with its rust colour, could be associated with the aesthetics of Kantor’s theatre, painting of matter, and the work of artists who are close to Kantor, such as Joseph Beuys or Anselm Kiefer.

The two colliding substances that Piotr Nawara is talking about operate in constant tension; they are also a metaphor for the old and new, tradition and modernity, motion and stillness, i.e. those values on which the new programme of the institution is built – combining visual arts with theatre and performance.

In order to get to the heart of the building, one must first take the stairs down to the lobby. The sculpture-like block suggestively levitates above the ground level. Its belly is covered with mirrors, which theatricise the square area below. There is going to be a spectacle of everyday life under the Cricoteka staged. Piotr Nawara emphasises that architecture invites the viewers to enter into the interaction and “create their own participation in the space”. The resulting architecture – much like the programme of the institution – has a performative nature, and it is not only because of the mirror reflections in the underbelly of the building, but also due to the introduction of perforations in the Corten steel that is covering the glazed staircases, windows in

the exhibition and educational area, and a café.

The viewers feel isolated from the outside world, but while looking through the small openings they may watch the lively surroundings of the museum, admire the breathtaking view of the city and the Vistula River’s bend.

The new object is emerging in a very special place of Kracow, since this quarter is undergoing rapid gentrification processes, and therefore dynamically changing its character. At the same time, it is a place near the former Jewish ghetto with its very rich and dramatic history. The “mirrored” area under the Cricoteka is going to be a completely new open public space with direct access to the river. Without a doubt, by the Vistula River there is a conical form rising “carried by memory and imagination”, relinquishing detail, a form which is also a “background for the historical detail and architecture of the immediate vicinity”.

The quotations in the text originate from an interview with Piotr Nawara of nsMoonStudio.

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14|15 BATA INSTITUTE Regional Gallery of fine Arts in Zlín Václav Mílek

Anyone arriving in Zlín for the first time usually has the impression that he or she is in vast suburbs and looks eagerly towards finally getting into the city centre. Zlín at first glance already reveals a special, even unique, urban structure, which is reflected in the nature of the area of the former Bata shoe factory and the residential district with small, simple brick wall houses embedded in the greenery. The unplastered burnt bricks, which also fill the reinforced concrete constructions of factories and public buildings from the Bata era, are the essence of the city. The basis on which the orchestration of the city was founded was, from the very beginning, the need to give an organized structure to the newly-created factory. In this manner, the “Bata grid” gradually grew – the modular system of substantial buildings placed on a rectangular network of streets and green spaces.

This inspiration of American origin could be found not only in the universal design of concrete buildings (20 x 20 ft – 6.15 x 6.15 m) or while observing the tall factory buildings, but also in their numbering system: the first digit always specifies the situation of the building according to its east-west location toward the main entrance and the second one – the north-south.

The eastern part of the factory complex is adjacent to the older core of the city, which also constitutes its focal point, as it was indeed scheduled and

Stavu budov 14-15, dnes 14|15 BATOVA INSTITUTU. Photo: Novotný Dalibor, © KGVUZ Archive

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14|15 BATA INSTITUTE, exterior shot. Photo: Libor Stavjaník, © Regional Gallery of fine Arts in Zlín

gradually implemented from the beginning of the twentieth century. After the fall of the footwear industry in the early 90s, the complex was gradually revitalized in order to make it open to the life of the city. For the time being, the most well-known object in the area of the ​​Bata factory is Building 21, the so-called Bata skyscraper, which nowadays houses the county seat of Zlín. In 2013, the reconstruction of Buildings 14 and 15 was completed, although they were not built by the Bata family. These objects were created after 1945, when the Bata empire was transformed into a national company under the original name of Bata, later Svit, by the decree of President Beneš. In 1944, the Allied bombings destroyed several factory buildings. The company management then decided to build in their place modern multi-storey factory halls that would, besides meeting the high requirements in terms of modern production, become famous as a symbol of the era of industrial development just beginning under the direction of the state. Jiří Voženílek (1909–1986) is signed as the author of this project; he was the architect of Bata, who at the peak of his career was a chief architect of the capital city and

a professor at the faculty of engineering and urban planning at the Technical University in Prague. While callous interventions and dubious use of Buildings 14 and 15 after 1989 resulted in concealing their architectural significance, the other of Voženílek’s work from this period, Collective House, has been for decades recognized as one of the inherent dominants of Zlín. In 2009, a competition to design the reconstruction of Buildings 14 and 15 was held, with 150 applications from all over Europe. The commission of experts appraised 36 of them highly, and the offer from ADNS PRODUCTION architectural studio finally prevailed. The creator of the project of the building, as well as its interior, became the City Work company that was comprised of the original co-authors of the design, under the leadership of Juraj Sonlajtner. The minimalist and perfect blending with the urban landscape solutions, as proposed in the winning project, have fully reflected the greatness and orderliness of Voženílek’s prototypes.

Between the two five-storey edifices, a singlestorey object was inserted, creating an open platform – the courtyard connecting the two buildings that, at the same time, constitutes a

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space for outdoor exhibitions and other events with audience participation. The three-wing halls on each floor have a structural height of 5 m and a floor area of ​​almost 1,600 sq. m. The original module was extended by 7.85 m in the north and the south wing. Due to the reconstruction and insertion of the connecting platform, new exhibition spaces, warehouses, offices, and extensive facilities for visitors have been created. In addition to the public library and the museum of the county’s history, the art gallery has also found its headquarters here; besides the exhibitions inside Building 14, it is pursuing its programme outside too – displays and installations on the roof and courtyard, videomapping projections on the façade of the building, etc. A dominant feature is the permanent exhibition, presenting the gallery collection that mainly corresponds to the original industrial character of the area.

The creation of a new exhibition in the gallery was based on three concepts: the designated space, the location (city) and, of course, the content of the institution’s collection. The openness and industrial nature of the original factory building, causing an impression of lightness and clarity, have met with the attention and understanding of both the architects responsible for the reconstruction, and the designer of the exposition itself, Jiří Všetečka.

The second floor of Building 14 has been selected for the permanent display, part of this level (5 poles in total), is transected by the lecture hall, the space for exhibitions of light-sensitive, fragile or demanding materials, and the staircase leading to the platform on the floor below. The display panels are situated mainly along the southern façade, with all the windows completely covered. Some free-standing panels are hung on pillars in such a way that they do not limit the exhibition space in any measure. The original ceilings ribbed with concrete girders do not have any screening, so the entire ventilation system is visible.

The content of the exhibition is divided into two main sections. The first of them presents the unique heritage of Zlín from the beginning till the end of the twentieth century, while the second is devoted to the transformations in free art from the nineteenth century up to the present day. The central theme is the objectified exposition of Bata’s architecture with models, plans and visualizations of factory, social, and residential buildings from the period of its greatest prosperity from the 1920s to the 1940s.

The core of the display, appointed in such a manner, passes along the south wall into the applied art of the postwar years. In the western part, the culture of Bata’s Zlín develops itself, expressed through education, in other words, the Study Departments (a specific museal complex), Zlín’s salons

Interior of 14|15 BATA INSTITUTE. Photo: Libor Stavjaník, © Regional Gallery of fine Arts in Zlín

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(a comprehensive overview of contemporary art) and the School of Fine Arts, similar to the Bauhaus. From there, natural associations with the main currents of Czech art in the first half of the twentieth century spring up – the art collection of the Bata company or the beginning of industrial design. Meanwhile, the eastern part is conceived more as a research section.

It shows an overview of the contemporary art of the twentieth century on an asymmetrical timeline with two basic narratives, which are the character and the landscape, and which gradually interfuse with each other. In this section, one could perceive Zlín as a place open to different ideas and discussions on contemporary art and its dichotomies, such as continuity versus discontinuity, innovation versus tradition.

Despite the multitude of themes and the vastness of area, the entire floor stays transparent.

Everything could be seen from every place and in all directions, visitors can move freely, without feeling lost in a maze of corridors. Even when the direction of exploring is set by chronology, one can find alternative contexts developing themselves.

Although the concept of exposure is essentially based upon the traditional linear model of time, it offers the visitors several parallel versions of history.

The exposition partially consists of a graphical visualization, but in its essence presents what for decades the mainstream gallery has included in its collection. This is not a review of the ideal of academic art history, but a certain type of archive, created by specific people for this very place.

Editor’s note The impressive story of the Czech factory began in the late nineteenth century. It was founded by two brothers Antoni and Tomáš Baťa and their sister Anna, who employed three workers and commenced producing shoes in Zlín, Moravia. The Great War turned out to be a major breakthrough for the company as the army put in a large order. The unique character of the company lay in its holistic approach to industrial activity; the Baťa family not only developed a management model based on a modernist social utopia (“capitalism with a human face”) but also effectively used the achievements of contemporary architecture and visual arts in their economic enterprise and the organization of their workers’ private lives. The Bata system (batism) combined manufacturing high-quality products with concern for the worker. Factories were built with sufficient welfare facilities. Each factory came with a residential area of distinctive

Interior of 14|15 BATA INSTITUTE. Photo: Libor Stavjaník, © Regional Gallery of fine Arts in Zlín

semi-detached houses for workers, kindergartens, canteens and infrastructure necessary for the functioning of “workers’ towns”. Characteristically, the system involved rapid development of the company via the opening of independent branches worldwide. Thriving sections were found in Poland ( “Chełmek” in Chełmek and “Radoskór” in Radom), France (Heillecourt, Vernon-Bataville), England (East Tilbury), the Netherlands (Batadorp-Best) and Switzerland (Mohlin), as well as outside Europe, including Singapore, Iraq, Lebanon, Congo, the USA, Peru, Brazil, Malaysia, Vietnam, Guatemala and numerous other places across the world (27 countries altogether). Every worker started from the lowest position by the assembly line, and ambitious volunteers were educated at a school in Zlín, where they learned the craft, but also two foreign languages and good manners. All the people employed by the company were to become part of a cohesive team; for this purpose a company magazine was also published and a rule was formulated saying that every person, including the director, had to produce a pair of shoes every now and then.

Nowadays, the Bata phenomenon constitutes a scientific question explored by historians, sociologists, urban planners and architects. In articles and debates held at many scientific conferences, they discuss the phenomenon that was based on the idea of developing a mass society of happy people.

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CHÂTEAU D’OIRON - THE CASTLE OF CONTEMPORARY ART Tomasz F. de ROSSET

Situated in the far west of the Loire Valley route, the castle of Oiron is quite an extraordinary place which became a highlight in the artistic France guidebook. It was erected in the original location of the Gouffier family residence, it was rebuilt into the current three-winged palace called entre court et jardin, during the sixteenth and seventeenth century’s conversion. It is a wonderful, historically layered and stylistically complex example of French residential country architecture. However, it’s most definitely the frescos that steal the show – the set of large ceiling paintings of great taste and class going back to the mannerist period. It consists of fourteen scenes depicting the Trojan War which were taken from Homer’s Iliad and The Aeneid by Vergil and apart from the Fontainebleau galleries there is no other equally splendid example. Through 19th and 20th century the palace was slowly falling into disrepair and was eventually purchased by the state when its last owner decided to sell unable to maintain it due to the WWII hardships (at that time Oiron was part of the Vichy zone). The conservation works have been initiated several years later but are still to be finalized. The problem lies in the location which is a fair bit away from the main tourist track (ironically the palace is only several miles away from

Castle in Oiron, exterior shot. Photo: Tomasz de Rosset

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the popular trail of Valley of Loire however it didn’t make it to the top most visited sites of this region and the average tourist hardly ever ventures up to this point. Most people touring famous castles of the Loire Valley come from the general direction of Paris and head west, finishing when reaching Saumur, Brissac or Angers and don’t bother with the small and modest little town situated among the flat, monotonous landscape. Hence Oiron was somehow bound to be marginalized and to miss out on hefty state funds and any financial help toward the completion of the conservational works.

Fortunately for Oiron in 1990 the French Culture and Tourism Ministry decided to step in and help by turning this place into a contemporary art museum where the national collection of modern art (FNAC) would be put on show with the local collection (FRAC Poitou-Charentes) added later on together with the deposits and projects made by the artists while residing at the museum. A renowned Parisian curator Jean-Hubert Martin was leading the project (his previous accomplishments include the famous Magiciens de la Terre, 1989 arranged for Centre Georges Pompidou) and his efforts resulted in a museum being opened in 1993. Its permanent display called Curios & Mirabilia includes works by following artists: Christian Boltanski, Daniel Spoerri, Felice Varini, Guillaume Bijl, Braco Dmitriević, Marina Abramović, Claude Rutault together with the less known or even pretty unknown names.

The temporary exhibition, open airs and various art events take place in Oiron on the regular basis.

Suddenly this obliterated, half-forgotten place has gained a second life as a vibrant and trendy art centre. In 2004 alone the number of visitors peaked to 30 000! The inspiration behind the permanent exhibition, which is a sort of contemporary kunstkammera, was the spectacular if not slightly depleted collection of Gouffier family. The inspiration is only metaphorical and doesn’t aspire to become a reconstruction of the original. This would be not only impossible but also pointless since our world doesn’t consider magical knowledge or supernatural powers seriously. The magical and astonishing powers of a unicorn or some of the minerals, plants or animal remains are restricted to the realm of fantasy or mythology. And so from the start it was obvious the exposition had to have an utterly contemporary feel which would just reverberate the memory of the renaissance idea using only the metaphorical potential of selected works and without succumbing to the deception and make-believe. The chief stipulation for the selection and commission making – apart from the natural ability to correspond with the historical décor of the given interiors – was the linkage with the issues that inspired the collectors and kunstkammera creators all those centuries ago.

The traditional manner of presenting art respecting the chronology was thus rejected; the same was with iconography, art streams, artistic tendencies, nationality or a degree of their decorative attractiveness which would be against the original idea of the exhibition and probably intellectually unsatisfying too. Instead a complex narration has been devised commenting on the main directions and quests that modern science has been pursuing, in appreciation of its influence on art collections of modern era, with the latter often seen as a scientific tool in its own right.

There is a strong fascination in nature present in Oiron, the interest nurtured among the naturalists, humanists and Renaissance cognoscenti – we speak of pre-Linnaeus period when natural world was still inhabited by mysterious and allegorical beings.

There is Pegasus-Licorne – a winged horse with a horn stuck to its forehead, by Thomas Grünfeld accompanied by another piece of his: Misfits – the wondrous hybrids where parts of different animals are joined together (for example: horned dormouse, a squirrel with a fish tail or a half-swan half-rabbit) resembling creatures one could find in ancient bestiaries. Those creatures seem to mock our modern classification into orders, families and species and drift toward the realm of poetry and myths. We can see Pensioners by Annette Messager – a gruesome ornithological collection consisting of a display of small dead birds, Hubert Duprat’s Trichipotères which is jewellery produced by the colony of insects and Archéoptérix – a machine to resemble an ancient beast. There are more works based on the natural world explorations and ponderings, some of them have claimed the entire palace chambers. For example Spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta had amassed an irritatingly precise research on non-existent story by a non-existent scientist presenting a discovery of a bogus creature called Cocatrix allegedly inhabiting the rivers of Poitou region. In other room Lothar Baumgarten has filled the space with photos of local fauna and flora in his piece titled Cosmography of Touraine interspersed with quotes from Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais.

There is homage to Leonardo’s mechanical and optical studies – proving those issues were of considerable interest to people of his times – it’s Wolfgang Nestler’s precarious structure resembling a compass needle which is mounted to a corner of a coffee table and refers to problems of balance and bird flight. Walldrawing # 752 by Sol de Witt reveals an obsession with geometrical structures. Felice Varini has employed a visual deception to create one of his ana-morphs whilst Polish artist living in France – Piotr Kowalewski has also built his work around the formula of optical illusion (Identité 4). Yet

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Christian Boltanski, ‘Ecoliers d’Oiron’, 1993. Photo: Tomasz de Rosset

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another scientific problem recurring in Renaissance times is being tackled by Charles Ross – it’s the Sun and its movements shown in his Brûlures solaires. The Sun like a wanton draftsman is making imprints on the surface of Earth. This must be an intentional hint at astronomical science or possibly at passing of time or both. Time and history are another important thread appearing in Oiron. They were epitomized in Christian Boltanski installation Ecoliers d’Oiron – portraits of local pupils mounted in square coffers above the oak panels become a clear reference to the portrait galleries presenting “great men” (uomini famosi). This way provincial school and its “trivial” records are bestowed with significance and the “national” level importance.

In the installation by Bosnian Braco Dmitriević – Triptychos Post Historicus or the Last Battle by Paolo Ucello aristocratic portraits clash with pitchforks and coconuts as an echoing reminder of the bloody medieval rebellion. There is a fictional “nineteenth century” collection presenting range of secular relics

by Daniel Spoerri – with all the artefacts mounted

and accompanied by appropriate certificates.

Since in every genuine kunstkammera there would be room for the supernatural, miraculous, preposterous or exotic. The most precious curiosité - Unicorn’s horn is in the centre of James Lee Byars’ composition. Spoerri came up with a cabinet filled with apothecary vessels containing water from the fountains of Brittany – a reference to the tale of the “living water”. Wim Delvoye had put Dutch-like tiles decorated with the usual white and cobalt-blue windmills inside of a Baroque display cabinet, the only odd thing about it is that the tiles have the round shapes of an electric saw blade. Raul Mareks reuses plates and cutlery hanging on the walls of the palace dining room during the annual bash he throws for the local people and so every plate bears a profile of a face drawn on its surface, the face of whoever is using it during the party. And finally there is exoticness provided by few works by JeanHubert Martin left after his exhibition – which was already mentioned earlier - Magiciens de la Terre. It made the European and North-American civilization

Thomas Grünfeld, ‘Pegasus-Licorne’, 1992. Photo: Tomasz de Rosset

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Braco Dmitriević, ‘Triptychos Post Historicus albo ostatnia bitwa Paola Ucella’, 1992. Photo: Tomasz de Rosset

aware of the contemporary art flourishing in the regions usually associated with tribal artefacts like Africa or South America (Kane Kwei, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Linares).

old and new; managed to highlight splendours of historical architecture and edginess of contemporary art. Most of all this mélange is downright interesting for both professionals and amateurs alike.

Hopefully even such cursory and selective account of Oiron’s exposition suffices to testify that the objective here was not to recreate the original interiors but to interpret the approaches, interests and intellectual desires of those who might have lived here, projecting them into our own, contemporary reality. It’s perfectly clear that contemporary art whilst expanding its limits to explore mysticism of our everyday lives, exoticism, bucolic fun, but also reaching to variety of scientific subjects – proves it’s more than capable to meet such expectations. As Jean-Hubert Martin advises us: “It’s best to use present continuous when speaking of Oiron, not past tense”. It must be said that Oiron has turned out to be an extremely fortunate idea. To showcase modern art in the historic, palatial interiors – chiefly associated with preservation of old and bygone and seen as a place of remembrance – gave spectacular effects blending

This article is a result of the author’s trip to Oiron which took place in autumn 2008 and it was written with a significant help of the Château d’Oiron, Curios & Mirabilia website: www.oiron.fr.

And the following books and publications: JeanHubert MARTIN, Jean GUILLAUME, Frédéric DIDIER, Guy TORTOSA, Château d’Oiron et son cabinet de curiosités, Paris: Centre des monuments nationaux/ Edtions du patrimoine, 2000 ; Thierry CREPINLEBLOND, De Mantoue à Oiron: retour sur une hypothèse, [in:] Agnès BOS and others, Materiam superabat opus. Hommage à Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Paris: RMN, 2006, pp. 390-395.

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LES ABATTOIRS. ONE ORGANISM THREE INSTITUTIONS Anna Kompanowska

The old, city slaughterhouse in Toulouse (façade). © Archive municipal, Toulouse

On the left bank of the Garonne, once inhabited by poorer Toulousians (unlike la rive droite which was popular among the bourgeoisie), there is a genuine cultural centre, an institution that serves three functions – as a museum, an art gallery and a centre for contemporary art. Opened in 2000 on the initiative of the Mayor of Toulouse, the Regional Council of Midi-Pyrénées as well as the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC), Les Abattoirs provides a perfect example of putting a former municipal slaughterhouse, an integral part of its natural surroundings, to a new use and thus giving it a new lease of life. The exceptional nature of this place undoubtedly results from its comprehensive approach to art. The Modern Art Museum, the Centre for Contemporary Art (previously in Labège) and the Regional Collection of Contemporary Art (le FRAC) of Midi-Pyrénées are housed under the same roof.

Thanks to successful renovation of the outside and the material of which it is constructed (red brick), the building has preserved its industrial character and completely integrates itself with the architecture of Toulouse (the famous pink city).

The main building is surrounded by a curved row of additional structures in the same style, containing a library with a reading room (also for children), a mediatheque, educational rooms, an archive and offices. On the outside, one can view installations, sculptures and mosaics displayed within the frames of temporary exhibitions. The Museum adjoins a park – a popular spot for families wishing to take a walk or picnic. The recreation area features installations referring to the history of the building, which are both interesting to see and attractive for children to play with. The gate separating the Museum from the park stands open, and photographic exhibitions, concerts or other events frequently staged in the park constitute a natural “extension” of the Museum. Facing the Garonne, the building and the park form a cultural-recreational complex regularly visited by the locals

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Exterior panorama of Les Abattoirs. © Les Abattoirs, press materials

Integrating the institution with the cityscape, as well as adapting the whole site for artistic and cultural purposes, was a complex process.

Renovation works started in October 1991 when the Association (L’Association pour la création de l’Espace d’art moderne et contemporain de Toulouse et Midi-Pyrénées) was founded to create space for contemporary and modern art in the premises of the former abattoir. For the duration of the renovation and adaptation, the façade of the building accommodated Sandrine Curti’s work entitled The Blue House (la Maison bleue). The piece had impressive dimensions and involved black-andwhite cows, 2 to 6 metres high, against blue walls; it signalled that a museum was being established there, but also served as a link between the past of the place and its future function. As the works progressed, the blue background became dirty and the cows acquired less realistic colours: yellow and

red, forming a huge abstract image referring to the former character of the renovated building. The institution was inaugurated on 23 June 2000, but various educational, performative and informational activities had taken place there long before that.

The architecture of this unique building, combining three different functions, does not overwhelm

A façade of les Abattors during repair works. © Archive of Les Abattoirs

the viewers as they enter to find themselves in a large hall with Picasso’s curtain The Minotaur’s body dressed as Harlequin 1, the most valuable object in the Museum, at the far end. This huge work was commissioned for the performance of Romain Rolland’s 14 Juillet at the Théâtre du Peuple in 1936.

Pablo Picasso, La dépouille du Minotaure en costume d’arlequin, 1936.

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The old, city slaughterhouse in Toulouse (façade). © Archive municipal, Toulouse

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The visitors in the main hall of Les Abattoirs. Š Florence Tassart, press materials

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Its dimensions are indeed astonishing (approx. 8 x 13 metres), and so is the iconographic richness and imagination of its creators (it was co-authored by Luis Fernandez, Picasso’s friend); it was renovated and made available to the public in 1994.

During the International Art Festival, which takes place every May in Toulouse and is co-organized

by Les Abattoirs, the hall is where one can find information on festival events. From the main hall, visitors may enter side galleries, all of which are in an ascetic modern style and fail to suggest the historical function of the building in any way. The bright space full of daylight both on the ground floor as well as on the first floor encourages viewing of the place on one’s own at a leisurely pace, regardless of any official routes.

With a collection of 4,000 works, the Museum counts among the best and the most dynamically developing institutions assembling contemporary and modern artworks in France. The traditional way of presentation, including very discreet descriptions of works, makes individual viewing a most enjoyable experience. The display of the permanent collection can be temporarily reduced, depending on the dimensions of temporary exhibitions. Far from being overwhelming, the space of the building seems to be very well used as, apart from expositions, there is also a restaurant, a bookshop and a mediatheque here. A visit to the Museum, the final element of which is watching an interesting film – a recording of Franz Gertsch and

Susan Hiller’s creative process, may thus culminate in dining with one’s friends.

The Museum is a fairly new institution, but intensive promotion has made it readily recognizable in the city. It is often visited by families as it offers many educational actions as well as guided tours of exhibitions (tours are organized twice a week plus one Sunday per month and are free of charge). The nearby park, the river and the recreational nature of its surroundings attract not only art lovers but also strollers wishing to see the sculptures displayed outside. Apart from Les Abattoirs, many other municipal institutions are involved in activities promoting contemporary art; under the auspices of the mayor’s office they organize the International Art Trade in Toulouse, a one-month programme of meetings, concerts, exhibitions, projections and workshops.

Maintenance and preservation of artworks making up the collection is just one task of the Museum; another objective of Les Abattoirs is to obtain new works. The modernist part of the collection (le fonds modern) is focused on artists active since the 1950s, exponents of numerous modern trends in art that emerged after the Second World War (Lyrical Abstraction, Art Brut and Informalism).

Apart from Picasso’s curtain (displayed for only 6 months per year because of conservation reasons), works from Anthony Denney’s collection as well as from Daniel Cordier’s collection (deposit of Centre Georges Pompidou) can be viewed. Pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Henri Michaux or Andy Warhol feature in the collection next to works by Naïve artists and ethnographic artefacts.

The collection of contemporary art (le fonds contemporain) provides a bridge between the modernist and the most recent artistic activities, with special emphasis laid upon artists from the south of France, Italy and Spain. Apart from native artists (Robert Filliou, François Morellet and Ange Leccia), works by creators from Africa, America or Eastern Europe can be found here. The collection is extended according to several thematic lines, facilitating the understanding of aesthetic questions addressed by contemporary art. One of them is the relationship between culture or human beings with nature, the introduction of organic elements into artistic production and redefinition of the established idea of beauty.

The aim of the institution is not only to build up a collection but also to gather information on art (mostly from the Midi-Pyrénées region) and make it available to the public. As a consequence,

A staircase. © Jean-Marie Monthier, © ADAGP, press materials

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Picasso’s Curtain. Š Jean-Marie Montier, Š ADAGP, press materials of Les Abattoirs

documentation is crucial, making the Mediatheque a significant element in the structure of the institution. This is a place where art is explored, taught and popularized to different groups of viewers. Exhibition catalogues, monographs, books and films are free to use in reading rooms; the archive of the institution including all photographic records is also stored here.

Well designed educational activity, openness to various audiences, including individual viewers and student groups, youth, families and the disabled are invaluable assets of Les Abattoirs. Apart from guided tours, lectures, debates, meetings with artists, designers and culture creators, the institution also offers trainings, interdisciplinary workshops and quite exceptional, as they are not found in other institutions, guided tours for the blind.

The Museum and Art Centre in Toulouse is a real artistic melting pot, a place of encounters, activating the public and supporting artists. I believe that it is its intense activity and willingness to participate in the life of the city that makes the place unique.

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THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRES OF BERLIN RESIDE IN HISTORICAL MONUMENTS Alexandra Hołownia

The enthusiasts of contemporary architecture are not satisfied with Berlin. In contrast to other European cities, no architectural wonders are erected here. In Berlin, the most common practice is to renovate the already existing buildings and to adjust them to new needs. Dominated by Prussian edifices, the German capital sustains the tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By mythologizing the virtues of the Romanticism époque, it completely ignores the achievements of the twentieth century. It eagerly recalls Prussian emperors. In the year 2002, Berlin celebrated the 110th anniversary of the birth of Wiktoria Luisa, a Prussian princess. The year 2012 marked the third centenary of the birth of the Prussian kaiser – Wilhelm the Great, and both Berlin and Brandenburg prepared festivities for the occasion. Looking at the museums of Berlin, as well as at contemporary art institutions, such as: Contemporary Art Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum of Photography – Helmut Newton Foundation, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Contemporary Photography Foundation C/O Berlin, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Daimler Contemporary, one can clearly notice that they dwell in antique, historic buildings, which have

Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum of Contemporary Art. Exterior shot. Photo: A. Hołownia

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Interior of Hamburger Bahnhof. Photo: A. Hołownia

an emotional impact on viewers, evoking a nostalgia caused by yearning for the power of monarchy.

The building currently hosting Museum of Photography – The Helmut Newton Foundation, located at Jebensstraße 2, right across from the Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station, was built in 1908/09, based on the plans of Heino Schmieden and Julius Boethke. The opening of this impressive, neo-classical edifice was inaugurated on 2 September 1909 and was attended by Kaiser Wilhelm II. It held a casino for officers, a restaurant, guest rooms, a few ballrooms, a tsar room, a bowling room and a shooting range. An uninteresting external façade contrasted with the beautiful interiors that mirrored the époque. Both the walls and the ceiling were adorned with various paintings in Pompeian style, antique pillars and ornaments characteristic for fin de siècle. The tsar room had a surface of 650 sq. m and was 11 metres high. During the war the edifice was ruined. In 1950, the Senate of Berlin bought and renovated the building, with the objective to hold a library, a gallery of twentieth-century art, and storage rooms for the gallery’s collection. Since 2004, the old casino for officers, located at Jebensstraße 2, has acted as Museum of Photography – Helmut Newton Foundation. We may currently see a permanent exhibition there, describing the life and works of Helmut Newton, who was born in Berlin.

In addition, the exhibition showcases the works of his wife – Alice Springs, also a photographer. An interesting programme of expositions presented on the surface of 2,000 sq. m, each year attracts millions Interior of Hamburger Bahnhof. Photo: A. Hołownia

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of visitors from around the world to The Museum of Photography – Helmut Newton Foundation.

The Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, founded by Klaus Biserbach at the beginning of the 1990s, has found its headquarters in a rundown margarine factory, located at Auguststraße 69. The protected, baroque town house, dated mid 18th century, has been renovated. An architect from Berlin, Hans Düttmann, created an exhibition space measuring 400 sq. m on the ground-floor. In cooperation with the architect Johanne Nalbach, the American minimalist Dan Graham designed a modern, glass pavilion Café Bravo, situated in the backyard. Kunst Werke owns a surface of 2,000 sq. m, giving it the capability of organizing exhibitions on five floors. In March 2013 The International Forum for Visual Dialogue – now C/O Foundation Berlin, lost its residence in the legendary Postfuhramt (Post Office), located at Oranienburger Straße 35 in the Berlin-Mitte quarter. This historic edifice, built in 1881, had been the residence of the Berlin Post Office for a hundred years. After the unification of Germany, between the years 1995 and 2012 it had served as a place for contemporary art exhibitions. The Berlin Biennale took place there in 2001, amongst other exhibitions. Between 2006 and 2012 Postfuhramt had lent their space to The International Forum of Visual Dialogue C/O Berlin. In the old Post Office, star photographers from all over the world have been presented, such as: Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz, Magnum, Martin Parr, Bettina Reims, Jeff Wall, and

Museum of Photography, Helmut Newton Foundation. Photo: A. Hołownia

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others. Currently, Postfuhramt is being adapted into a hotel and private apartments by investors from Israel.

In 2013 C/O Berlin signed an agreement with the Senate of Berlin, leasing the empty Amerika Haus (American House) for 24 years. The house is situated in the Charlottenburg quarter, not far from the Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station. Amerika Haus was built in 1956/57, based on the plans of an architect called Bruno Grimmek, and was erected to commemorate an international construction exhibition Interbau. The building epitomized the transnational relationship between the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany, and from World War II up to the year 2006 it was an American cultural and information centre in Berlin. It contained a cinema, a library, and exhibition spaces. It hosted, amongst others: Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Willy Brandt. Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright and Lyonel Feininger showcased their artwork there.

Unfortunately, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the American institutions increased their security. A high fence was erected, the front windows had thick curtains, and monitoring and alarm systems were installed. Only visitors with an invitation could visit Amerika Haus. Having opened a new Embassy on Parisian Square, the Americans bequeathed Amerika Haus to the Berlin municipality.

At present the C/O Berlin is in the process of renovation, installing ventilation, insulating walls, and adjusting the space to exhibiting requirements.

A celebratory inauguration of C/O Berlin’s activity in Amerika Haus is planned for the fall of 2014.

The Museum for Contemporary Art Hamburger Bahnhof, handed over for public use in 1996, belongs to one of the most attractive art museums in Germany. In 1840, the architects Friedrich Wilhelm and Ferdinand Neuhausund designed a classicist mansion for a railway station. In 1851, trains to Hamburg, Szczecin, Potsdam and Silesia departed from Hamburger Bahnhof (Hamburg railway station).

In 1884, after 37 years of use, Hamburger Bahnhof was closed. All railway traffic in the direction of Hamburg was taken over by Lehrter Bahnhof – a railway station situated nearby. Hamburger Bahnhof was, in turn, taken over by transport companies.

Most of them stayed there even after the railway traffic had been totally shut down. On 14 December 1906, the front part of the former Hamburger Bahnhof railway station was dedicated to Royal Museum on Traffic and Construction, later renamed as the Museum on Traffic and Construction.

In 1944, the museum was badly damaged. However, the collection was saved by lucky coincidence. After the war, all the railway equipment found in Berlin, together with the Hamburger Bahnhof mansion, were handed to the administration of the Russian management. The edifice was fenced, thus making

‘Us and Them + Sex and Landscapes’, exhibition view, Helmut Newton Foundation. Photo: Gerhard Kassner

access to it impossible. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Hamburger Bahnhof was taken over by the Senate of Berlin. The exhibits from the old Museum of Communication and Construction were bestowed upon the Dresden Transport Museum, and on the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. In 1990, the Senate of Berlin decided to renovate the building of Hamburger Bahnhof, which was falling apart. In November 1996 a celebratory inauguration of Museum for Contemporary Art Hamburger Bahnhof took place. The exhibition space amounted to 13,000 sq. m. The unique height of the walls, combined with the modern glass ceilings provided ideal conditions for exhibiting works of art. The museum collection comes from the private collection of Erich Marx, containing the works of: Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Anselm Kiefer, and Joseph Beuys. From September 2004 up to the year 2021 we may view a collection of Minimal Art there, owned by Friedrich Christian Flick. The collection is placed in a concourse, built especially for the occasion, and linked to the Museum for Contemporary Art Hamburger Bahnhof.

In 2008 Friedrich Christian Flick bequeathed to the Berlin Museum for Contemporary Art 160 paintings and installations made by: Marcel Broodthaers, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth, Isa Genzken, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rodney Graham, Pipilotti Rist, and others.

Postfuhramt, Oranienburger Street. Photo: A. Hołownia

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THE WOZOWNIA ART GALLERY IN TORUŃ – TAMING THE PILLARS Marta Smolińska

Nowadays, galleries, contemporary art centres or museums are willingly located in post-industrial architecture, as its large spaces are ideal for displaying installations, objects and large-format paintings. Meanwhile, the Wozownia Art Gallery in Toruń is an example of a military storage building adaptation, where the original purpose of space has been definitely changed. While visiting exhibitions presented in the Wozownia, one can without hesitation say that art has not only demilitarised this building, but also assimilated, according to its own needs, its specific construction, resting on rows of wooden pillars, and got into a fascinating symbiosis with it.

In fact, the gallery occupies the building of the former Prussian artillery carriage house, built in neoclassical style in the 1920s. This edifice is unique in Chełmno Land, dating back to the first period of enlargement of the Toruń Fortress in the times of the Prussian annexation. It is entered in the register of monuments. The Wozownia, built in the years 1819–1821, was the depot of artillery vehicles and cannon carriages. The building was founded on the medieval stone-and-brick walls of the original cellars and perfectly integrated with the residential and business urban structure of the southern part of the Old Town. The Wozownia’s scale, size and stylistic form were consistent with the late Baroque and early Neoclassicist décor of neighbouring burgher tenements. The interior area, both the ground hall and the upper one, which is less spacious, is characterised by extraordinary divisions of space, which is a result of supporting the ceilings by rows of wooden pillars, arranged in six bays that carry three horizontal trusses. Endeavours to hand the building over for exhibition purposes were already started in the 1970s by the then director of the gallery, Marianna Olechnicka, however, this eventually took place only in 1997.

Thus the particularity of the Wozownia’s interior consists of supporting its ceilings by the rows of

The building of Wozownia before adaptation.

Photo: Archives of Wozownia Gallery

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Katarzyna Podgórska Glonti, ‘Found. Retained’, 2008. Photo: Archives of Wozownia Gallery

dark, wooden pillars, that branch off under the ceiling. In the hall on the ground floor, these pillars are high and monumental, while in the hall on the first floor, with a lower ceiling – much smaller, more squat in proportions. Their dark silhouettes expressively divide the space and seem to reign over it absolutely. Therefore, every action, every arrangement of expositions in the Wozownia must take place towards the pillars, taking into account their expressive presence that could not be ignored.

And, always from the beginning, one needs to solve the question of the line of reference to these columns – to pretend they do not exist, to engage them into the concept of display and possibly “neutralise”, or perhaps to exploit and emphasize their presence. For there should not be a struggle between the exposed works and the existing environment; they should come into existence in it under the most favourable conditions for them, so when the massiveness of pillars would efface itself.

Therefore, an arrangement of the exposition is a different experience each time; this difference is constituted on the basis of the individuality of works selected for display and their nature perceived now towards the pillars. Sometimes, projects created earlier unexpectedly begin to interact with the Wozownia’s context, as if they have been made just for it. Another situation occurs, when these pillars are treated as a challenge, as equal partners, for

which, toward which, and through which the works are prepared especially for the Wozownia’s interior – especially for one particular presentation which is not likely to occur elsewhere.

Every artist and curator, while preparing an exhibition at the Wozownia, must therefore deal with its unusual interior and come up with a way to “tame” the pillars, which are the dominant element in both halls of the gallery. It seems that especially interesting in such spaces are the exhibitions which do not try to blur the history and structure of the Wozownia, but – on the contrary – manifestly expose it and enter into various dialogues with it, recalling the original military-and-storage purpose of this edifice.

In 2000, Jerzy Olek, while presenting the exhibition Bezwymiar iluzji [The Dimensionlessness of Illusion], distributed his photographs in the Wozownia’s upper hall in such a manner that they were almost invisible and integrated with the pillars. Thus, the viewers were looking for the works of art in the room, which at first glance was apparently empty, and had to notice the surrounding architecture itself.

Then, in 2007, in the lower hall, an exhibition of Jan Berdyszak, entitled Słupy i reszty [The Pillars and the Rest] was held. The goal was to expose the wooden pillars as places where all kinds of rest: empty bottles, pieces of paper from a shredder, materials

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Jerzy Olek, ‘The Dimensionlessness of Illusion’, 2000. Photo: Archives of Wozownia Gallery

etc., accumulated. Hence, the pillars played a key role in turning the attention to what we usually consider a negligible waste. Their monumental construction has somehow ennobled the leftovers by designating their place in the gallery space.

One year later, in the exhibition Odnalezione, utrwalone [Found. Retained], Katarzyna PodgórskaGlonti displayed meticulously folded clothing between the wooden arms of pillars, the cubes of fabric tightly filling the “openwork” structure of pillars. The variety of clothing colours contrasted with the dark tint of the wood. And the clothes themselves – in combination with the pillars that are marked by a long history – stimulated memories to set off on long journeys in time. Thanks to the

Jerzy Olek, ‘The Dimensionlessness of Illusion’, 2000. Photo: Archives of Wozownia Gallery

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concept of Podgórska-Glonti, the memory storages of timber and clothes complemented each other, creating a new nostalgic wholeness.

Therefore, the peculiar interiors of the Wozownia – if someone is able to tame them – are a great source of inspiration for creating surprising artistic situations and inscribing his or her own works into the context of the former military storehouse building.

Jan Berdyszak, ‘The Pillars and the Rest’, 2006/2007. Photo: Archives of Wozownia Gallery

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A building of ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe. Photo: Jerzy Olek

CoCA in…

Review of Contemporary Art Centres and Museums quarterly Publisher: Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” in Toruń ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland Editorial office address: ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland tel.: 692 393 567, 795 141 678 e-mail: info@csw.torun.pl Editorial board: Malina Barcikowska, Mateusz Bieczyński, Natalia Cieślak, Dobrila Denegri, Ewelina Jarosz, Jacek Kasprzycki, Anna Kompanowska (Issue Editor), Paweł Łubowski (Editor-in-Chief), Sławomir Marzec, Marta Smolińska, Krzysztof Stanisławski, Jerzy Olek, Ola Mosiołek Graphic design: Max Skorwider (Art Director), Paweł Łubowski, Wojciech Kuberski Collaborators: Christine Coquillat (Paris), Magdalena Durda, Daria Kołacka (Basel), Roman Kubicki, Zuzanna Mannke (Essen), Anna Markowska, Olga Sienko (London), Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski, Grzegorz Sztabiński, Miško Šuvaković (Belgrade) Translations: Monika Ujma, Hanna Piątkiewicz, Zofia Smith Proofreading: Ian Corkil, Paweł Falkowski, Katarzyna Radomska Editorial board reserves the right to shorten articles and correspondence, and to give them titles. Unsolicited materials will not be returned. Editorial board is not responsible for the content of advertisements.

Advertisements and promotion: Aleksandra Mosiołek aleksandra.mosiolek@csw.torun.pl Subscription: e-mail: ksiegarnia@csw.torun.pl Printed by: ARTiS Poligrafia s.c. ul. Granitowa 7/9, 87-100 Toruń ISSN 2299-6893

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