25.05-30.09.2012 — GDAŃSK, Poland
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ALTERNATIVA 2010-2012 • May 25th - September 30th 2012 Artistic Director Aneta Szyłak Opening May 25–27, 2012 Save the dates! Wyspa Institute of Art invites you to the series of international exhibitions, numerous artistic events, publications and meetings under the common denominator of ALTERNATIVA, planned for summer 2012. Alternativa is a twoyear pilot program, started in 2010, which aims at the establishment of a recurring large-scale, knowledge-based and politically informed curatorial practice whose distribution will be done through exhibitions, publications, discussions and workshops, as well as radio broadcasts on the premises of the former Gdańsk Shipyard, Poland. Alternativa seeks new tracks for art and its social role. The concept of the Festival relates to the political traditions of Gdańsk as well as to new phenomena in art which started to emerge in Gdańsk at the beginning of the 1980’s. Those movements acted against the political, historical and urban contexts. They were characterised by a tendency to self organization, independence and the discovering of unknown areas of the city. At one time, it was Wyspa Spichrzów, later Dolne Miasto and, now, it is the former shipyard premises. Alternativa is the experimental series of projects, spread over time, offering a platform for the presentation of art and the accumulation and distribution of knowledge. Its function is not only representative but exploratory, as well. We are interested in both systematic and formalised knowledge, as well as the informal and untypical methods of its acquisition. We believe that contemporary art and curatorial practice do not reproduce knowledge but open the path towards it.
The spectacular Hall 90B, newly renovated under artistic supervision of Grzegorz Klaman, will especially be opened for the exhibitions and accompanying events. The Artistic Director of Alternativa, Aneta Szyłak, invited a group of renowned national and international curators to cooperation, who will mount two main exhibitions. For the 2012 Festival edition, curators Leire Vergara, Inês Moreira, Arne Hendriks and Aneta Szyłak will work around the notion of ‘materiality’, whilst Ewa Małgorzata Tatar and Dominik Kuryłek will dig through the Wyspa’s archives, searching for the early artistic practice that have influenced the commitment and forms of work of today’s Wyspa Institute of Art. Krzysztof Gutfrański will continue to work as the Head of Publications at ‘Alternativa Editions’.
•MAIN EXHIBITIONS •‚Materiality’ Curatorial team: Leire Vergara, Inês Moreira, Arne Hendriks and Aneta Szyłak Curatorial assistant: Maks Bochenek Editor of publications: Krzysztof Gutfrański Since the 1960s, the generations of conceptual artists have been struggling with the immaterial and material forms of artistic practice. This project investigates critically into how different generations of artists, thinkers and cultural operators can have reconsidered their approach to materiality and its turbulent political history. ‚Materiality’ is indexing found objects, vernacular architecture and other forms of material culture in particular post-industrial locations. At the same time, it involves contemporary artists into the work on the complexity of the relation between materiality and the location of their practice. ‘Materiality’ is a project of a critical reflection on the issue of ‚materiality’ in contempo-
rary visual culture. The Curators of the project, operating through the means of artistic productions, meetings and online publications, will try to illicit questions about ‚materiality’ in the clash with art and knowledge. Simultaneously, they will try to encourage the search for the answer how these two modes of research can contribute to the ways of gaining knowledge. The project asks a timely question about the current moment when Europe is fighting against various aspects of economic crisis, emphasising the need for the return to material stability. ‚Materiality’ approaches the field of the political from the perspective of material, tactile, concrete and haptic point of view. Each curator will add a different element into the project, just linking particular elements into a cohesive totality: the condition of unfitting, the palimpsest and the layering (Aneta Szyłak); the repairs and nano-technology (Arne Hendriks), the formless (Leire Vergara), the material performativity as well as ‚brown rooms / grey halls’ (Inês Moreira). Bringing together artists, architects, curators and theorists into a team, the project follows a path, opened by Bruno Latour‘s texts ‚Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?’ and ‚Making Things Public’, as well as the oeuvre of Georges Simondon, and the artist Grzegorz Klaman’s ‚Reversed Archeology’ Manifesto. •‚WYSPA. Now is now’ Curators of the project: Ewa Małgorzata Tatar, Dominik Kuryłek Curatorial co-operation: Wojciech Orlik (production), Anna Ptak (Editor of publication) Curatorial assistants: Katarzyna Nalezińska, Marta Świetlik, Wiktoria Kozioł The direct inspiration of the thinking on Gdańsk artistic milieu, concetratred around the Granary Island (Wyspa Spichrzow) since the 1980s, and later around the Wyspa Progress
Foundation, lounched in the 1990, is the ideological manifesto of Grzegorz Klaman entitled „The Reversed Archaeology” (1992), based on the artist’s earlier writings and activities. The eponymous archaeology means the production of new situations and the avoidance of dead conventions by ‘the attempts at using what is bygone, found, dug-out from the point of view of today’s man, entangled into culture, which he only partially understands, and civilisation with both serves and destroys at the same time‘. A close reading of said text permits the reader to pinpoint these categories which were the most important for the Wyspa of the 1980s and which recur in the practice of this fluctuating institution, being each time redefined in an encoutered context. Klaman in his text turns our attention, among other things, to the categories of place and time as factors determining the appearance of a carnal subject. He emphasises relations between those who co-participate in a creative activity and their active public — the participatory value of art. He writes a out an open „message” instead of a closed idea, the awareness of a context and the acquisition of such awareness in the archaeological research, as well as the objective of such an activity itself, which is not as much the production of an artwork but — a community. The mode of the organisation of this community, determined by an artistic activity, decides upon its ethical and aesthetic sense, producing a new understanding of the categories of artist, artwork, viewer. All these aspects can be found in the landart, intimate interventions proposed at the Granary Island, which we now want to have a look from the eco-critical and ecological perspective, as understand by Bruno Latour; the concept of the archaeology of knowledge and the genealogy of power produced by it — as writes Michel Foucault, important for the Gdańsk milieu of the 1990s; the corporal philosophy of the
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subject of Elizabeth Grosz who, similar to Klaman’s one, is produced by times and space as much as the subject produces those two by his presence; and the theory and practice related to institutionalised criticism, which practice has inspired us for years. ‚The evoke space, site — The Granary Island — is only a model, an abbreviation of some wider quest in a different space, different land,the mythical land of artistic fulfilment which proves to be close in a way-ward way, because it is just below our feet, being the only one which can be possibly realised here and now.’ Following the premises of the then activities of Wyspa, we will begin from the formulation of the conditions in which we have to work and look at the categories previously pinpointed again in the reality of the Wyspa Institute of Art today. The working method in Wyspa and with Wyspa will be the so called ‚grounded theory’, widely applied in social sciences, which presumes that those who understand reality best are the actors involved in this reality and rejects the funcionalist application of worked-out systems for the case of a close analysis of sources; in our case: video records, archival photographs, printouts, survived realisations, press materials, theoretical and historical criticism, recorded interviews and scene reconstructions. The ‚Wyspa. Now is Now’ Project will comprise four integral parts: an exhibition prepared on the basis of the archives of the Gallery of Wyspa Institute of Art, artistic realisations of young artists, prepared either on the premises of the Shipyard itself or on the basis of the archival material at the exhibition; a publication joining the features of a historical criticism, Wyspa Dictionary and Atlas, and an educational programme. Having the exhibition in mind, we bear in mind the Brechtian concept of the dislocated perception of the viewer from a passive identi-
fication towards a critical participation, as well as the work with affections — a mood or aura — also understood as media, in order to make the exhibition a certain aesthetical manifesto. The uncertainty and contortion of meaning create suspense which, however, does not pertain to the further development of a story but to what happens within ourselves, when we are trapped in the gap between the image and the reality onto which this image has an impact (after Mieke Bal).
•UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS •‚re.act.feminism #2, a performing archive’. Archive, Exhibitions, Workshops, Performances, Talks, Research ‚re.act.feminism #2, a performing archive’ is a mobile project that will be presented in 6 European countries between 2011 and 2013. The first exhibition has been already opened on 7 October 2011 at Centro Cultural Montehermoso in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque region in Spain. The base of the project is its continual expansion, mobility and the constant up-dating of the archive collection, comprising, among others, critical works of the 1960s and 1970s and the early 1980s, as well as contemporary pieces. Its selected version concentrates mostly on gender-critical, feminist and queer issues, presenting about 120 artists. The research within this field focuses on artworks from Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the US and selected countries in Latin America. One of the main goals of the project is to make performance documentation. This domain of art is exceptional because of its ephemeral character, therefore, the prepared documentation will make its accessible in such a great volume and variety to the wider public. Additionally, it will offer a wide cross-generational spectrum of this art, which will
facilitate the trans-cultural dialogue. The archive contains performance documentation and video performances, photographs, artist interviews, texts and scores. Concomitant exhibitions, lectures, concerts, presentations and screenings will be presented within the project framework. •‚Costume Party’ Maryam Jafri, solo exhibition On 3rd of February 2012, there will be an opening of a solo exhibition ‚Costume Party’ by Maryam Jafri. The project consists of a threescreen video-installation. Jafri is an artist working in video, performance and photography. Informed by a research-based, interdisciplinary process, she makes artworks which use the visual code akin to the language of film and theatre. Her works are the series of narrative experiments, oscillating between a script and a documentary, a fragment and a whole. Jafri holds a BA in English and American Literature from Brown University, an MA from NYU /Tisch School of The Arts and is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She lives and works in New York and Copenhagen.
•THE ORGANISER •The Wyspa Progress Foundation/Wyspa Institute of Art (Gdańsk, Poland) www.wyspa.art.pl Established in 1994, Wyspa was active in the open space of the city of Gdańsk for ten years. It has been consecutively accommodated on the premises of the former Municipal Bathhouse (Laznia), at the Wyspa Gallery in Chlebnicka Street in Gdańsk and the Mock-up Room (Modelarnia). Wyspa is the oldest non-profit art organization in Poland that pioneered committed art and art active in public space. Since 2004, Wyspa has run a quasi-institution - Wyspa Institute of Art - located on the premises of a former ship-building college on the area of
Gdańsk Shipyard in Gdańsk. Wyspa is a laboratory of the new thinking of the public role of art and its operations reach to the expanded fields of knowledge and public domain. Wyspa pulls together the torn tissues of uncompleted narratives, social fabrics and material remains. Wyspa has mounted a number of international exhibitions both on its own premises and abroad – in Sweden, Finland, UK, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Ukraine, Belgium among others. It also enjoys a history of making high quality art publications and, since 2010, it holds its own label ‚Alternativa Editions’.
•CURATORIAL TEAM 2012 Leire Vergara is an independent curator who lives and works in Bilbao. She is an editor and member of Bulegoa z/b, an independent office for art and knowledge, recently opened in Bilbao. From 2006 to 2009, she worked as the chief curator at Sala Rekalde, Bilbao. During that period of her curatorial practice, she paid special attention to the production of commissioned projects that encouraged new ways of transcending the limits of the white cube. She also developed a strong commitment to art education through various conferences, workshops and meetings that were pivotal to the exhibitions programme. From 2002 to 2005, together with Peio Aguirre, she co-directed the independent art production structure D.A.E (Donostiako Arte Ekinbideak) with its base in Donostia- San Sebastian. She has contributed as a writer to a number of art and cultural magazines and catalogues. She is a PhD student in the Curatorial/ Knowledge programme, in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, London. Inês Moreira is an architect, a researcher and curator based in Portugal. In her work she has experimented with
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collaborations between architecture, contemporary art and speculative/oblique research on contemporary culture. In recent years, she has been developing curatorial research on space, under the title „Performing Building Sites: curatorial research in/on space”, which proposes a critical epistemology in the field of curatorial studies—working within the Curatorial/Knowledge research Group, the Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths College. She was a Cultural Programmer of Architecture for the European Capital of Culture 2012, in Guimarães, Portugal, and a Deputy Programmer for Art+Architecture (from February 2010 to March 2011). She is now curating a number of projects interfacing architecture and cultural studies. She coordinated the Laboratório de Arte Experimental of Instituto das Artes/ Ministério da Cultura, Lisbon (200305); was co-founder of the independent art group ‚Plano 21’ Associação Cultural, and a part of the team of ‚Terminal Project’ (2005); she is also the founder of the experimental curatorial project ‚petit CABANON’ (2007); and a resident curator at Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporâneo in Badajoz, Spain (2007). Inês has been collaborating with Universidade do Porto since 2006, where she curates events and designs exhibitions (Depósito 2007, Pack 2007, Mapa 2007, Rescaldo e Ressonância! 2009). She was co-curator of the public gatherings of Evento2009, Public Art Biennial, Bordeaux, France. Arne Hendriks is an artist and curator from Amsterdam. His practice is based on speculative modes of research in the grey areas between design, art, history and science. His recent projects include ‚The Incredible Shrinking Man’, speculative research into the implications of downsizing the human species to 50 centimetres, ‚The Instructables Restaurant’, the world’s first fully open-source eatery, ‚The Repair Manifesto’, investigating and reviv-
ing the art of repair, and ‚Hacking IKEA’, on the personal customization of consumer products (in cooperation with Platform21). His most recent research project ‚On the Ruins of Work’ explores what work is, what it has been, and what it could become. Aneta Szyłak curator and art theorist, co-founder and currently the director of the Wyspa Institute of Art—an intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture in the former Gdańsk Shipyard, and VicePresident of the Wyspa Progress Foundation. Her projects are characterized by powerful responses to cultural, political, social, architectural and institutional peculiarities and include in 2010 ‚Estrangement’ (with Hiwa K) at The Showroom, London, 2009; ‚Over and over again 1989–2009’, at Wrocław Centennial Hall, 2008; ‚Translate: The Impossible Collection’ at Wyspa; ‚Chosen’ in Digital Art Lab in Holon (Israel), in collaboration with Galit Eilat, 2006; Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space at Wyspa, and the group show, ‚You Won’t Feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia’ in Kunsthaus Dresden (Germany). Earlier projects include: ‚Dockwatchers’ (2005, Wyspa), ‚Palimpsest Museum’ (2004, Łódź), ‚Health & Safety’ (2004,Wyspa), ‚Architectures of Gender’ (2003, Sculpture Center, New York). She has lectured at many art institutions including Copenhagen University, Bard College, New School University, Queens College and NYU, both in NYC, and worked as a guest professor at the Akademie der Bildende Kunste in Mainz, Germany. She is a PhD student in the Curatorial/ Knowledge programme, in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, London and Copenhagen University. Ewa Małgorzata Tatar and Dominik Kuryłek are art historians and critics, editors and curators who have worked collaboratively since
2003. Interested in institutional critique and curating as a methodology of art history, they have realized a number of exhibitions together, as well as publications such as ‚Guidebook’ (2005-2007) and Paulina Ołowska’s ‚Café bar’ (2011) at the National Museum in Krakow. To date and in total, they have published around 200 texts in the press, anthologies and catalogues. Krzysztof Gutfrański is a curator and art historian. He is the curator of Studio and Kitchen—an open space at Znaki Czasu CCA in Toruń. He has collaborated with Warsaw’s New Culture Foundation Bęc Zmiana as a curator of the interdisciplinary art/ science series Expectative, editor of the liberal arts quarterly Format P. He is also co-curator of the Hell of Things project in Bytom, at Kronika CCA (2009), as well as curator of the Athletic Cinema research program at Galeria Entropia, Wrocław. He has published texts in various web and printed magazines and several other publications. Gutfrański specializes in innovative forms of art publication.
•WYSPA PROGRESS FOUNDATION BOARD •Grzegorz Klaman: President of Wyspa Progress Foundation •Aneta Szyłak: Vice-President of Wyspa Progress Foundation
•ALTERNATIVA 2012 TEAM •Aneta Szyłak: Artistic Director of Alternativa, Director of Wyspa Institute of Art •Maks Bochenek: curator •Mirosław Górczyński: archivist and data coordinator •Aleksandra Grzonkowska: head of artistic production
•Krzysztof Gutfrański: editor in chief •Błażej Kroplewski: implementation manager •Radosław Orzeł: public relations •Piotr Szmyt: guest relations and marketing •Marta Szymańska: office manager and volunteers and trainees.
•USEFUL INFORMATIONS •Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday 11 am – 7 pm FREE ENTRY for all the events and exhibitions. •Address: Doki 1 / 145 B 80-958 Gdańsk Young City (former Gdańsk Shipyard grounds) •Access: Tram: main Railway Station, stop Plac Solidarności: 8, 10 Bus: Jana z Kolna: 108, 112, 118, 120, 123, 151, 154, 167, 168, 175, 186, 189, 213, 275, 313, 367, 384 direction Wałowa: stop Łagiewniki: 130, 178, 184 Bus from the airport to the main railway station: Dworzec Główny: 210 (day line ), N3 (night line) Gdańsk is easy to reach by plane via direct flights from Alicante, Barcelona, Bergen, Berlin, Birmingham, Bremen, Bristol, Brussels, Cork, Doncaster-Sheffield, Dortmund, Dublin, Edinburgh, Eindhoven, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Göteborg, Hamburg, Haugesund, Helsinki, Cologne, Copenhagen, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Malmo, Milan, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Poprad, Prague, Rome, Stavanger, Stockholm, Trondheim and Turku as well as major Polish airports.
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FURTHER INFORMATION • www.wyspa.art.pl
It’s also possible to visit us by ferry from Helsinki, Nynäshamn, Karlskrona, Oxelösund, Rostock and Visby.
•Organizer:
www.alternativa.org.pl
•Contact for visitors: Piotr Szmyt, piotr.szmyt@wyspa.art.pl
•Press information: Radosław Orzeł, pr-wyspa@wyspa.art.pl
•Editors of brochure: Aneta Szyłak, Aleksandra Grzonkowska, Radosław Orzeł •Design: www.berszmisiak.com •Photos: Marta Szymańśka, Marek Frankowski
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•Partners:
•In cooperation with:
Gdańsk Stocznia / Młode Miasto SKM Stocznia
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This work programme has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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The project has been carried out within the framework of RECUPARATING THE INVISIBLE PAST and with the support of the Culture 20072013- programme of the European Union.
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The project re.act.feminism #2 is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and ERSTE Stiftung, Wien, supported by cine+ & n.b.k.
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•Media patrons:
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Photos: Marta Szymańśka, Marek Frankowski
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Wyspa Institute of Art — 2012