Alternativa 2013 Guide

A l t e r n a t i v a 2 0 1 3

t i l l t o m o r r o w ! g u i d e b o o k Postcard of Gdansk in the year 2000; published in 1900.

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Alternativa 2013

guidebook Till tomorrow! > places > works > biographical notes

Ideologies of city planning and the tactics of dwelling 24.05.2013 – 06.10.2013 Hall 90b Artistic Director Aneta Szyłak Curatorial team Aneta Szyłak, Solvita Krese, Maks Bochenek, Jacek Friedrich, Hubert Bilewicz

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A city is never finished they say. The making of a city is always connected to a futuristic approach. The metropolis we envision won’t perhaps be the one we are to inhabit. The planned future of the city implicates all aspects of dwelling: encounters, politics, leisure and access to knowledge. The Alternativa 2013 curators have taken on the urgent subject of city planning and its ideologies as well as the everyday tactics of dwelling and inhabitation in it. Locating its practice in the heart of the Gdańsk Shipyard, Alternativa 2013 is both a result of research as well as a matter of concern for us.

Taking Gdańsk as its point of departure but not limiting the project’s reach to just one location, Till Tomorrow! approaches the subject of city planning as an ideological one. The XIX century defortification of Gdańsk was the first of several subsequent demolitions for both political and economical causes, realized and unrealized modernization plans, which have mirrored often turbulent political shifts. This very particular case study is thus an opportunity to begin a broader debate on the question: What does

alternativa 2013 guidebook

it mean to change a city? And what does the city itself mean? How do the reconstruction of the city, its representation and traces of history, like so much composite palimpsest, influence that meaning? How can it be changed today? What is our, the inhabitants, everyday approach to living in the city?

Here the inquiry towards the city as both public and historic responsibility, as well as the pragmatics of dwelling, becomes a centre of gravity. Today, on a global scale and in shifting intervals, serious modification of cities, linked to the movement of capital, migration, and the redefinition of the idea and location of labour are fundamentally changing our functional understanding of the city. Cities are being strategically re-planned and rebuilt, while at the same time, the dwellers customise their immediate surroundings, reclaiming the city for themselves.

This is also the subject of Gdańsk and the new city quarter, dubbed the Young City, to be built in the Gdańsk Shipyard. Thus the exhibition titled Till tomorrow! Ideologies of city planning and the tactics of dwelling is a show with a view of

the Nowa Wałowa (New Wall) Street being built. Here we will look at the new city centre in construction while insightfully exploring today’s practices and the historic utopias of city planning.

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

What are Alter­nativa 2013?

Alternativa is a cycle of exhibitions and many accompanying events designed to explore new possibilities for art and its role in society. Since the winter of 2010, we have been staging various events. The concept behind it draws upon the political traditions of Gdańsk as well as the new artistic phenomena that started to emerge in the city in the early 1980 s. These were typically related to political, historical and urban contexts. These artistic movements tended to be self – organized, independent and willing to discover unfamiliar spaces within the city.

At first, they explored the Island of Granaries [Wyspa Spichrzów], next came the Lower City [Dolne Miasto], and now the former shipyard where a new, seaside district is being planned.

Alternativa questions the classic form of a festival, being an ongoing program cycle that constitutes a platform for presenting art as well as accumulating and distributing knowledge. It not only exhibits, it

also investigates. We are interested in both, systematic and formal knowledge as well as the informal and extraordinary methods by which it is gained. We believe that contemporary art and curatorial practice do not reproduce knowledge but offers means of acquiring it.

The Alternativa project comprises a range of associated elements: research – performed by artists and curators as necessary for the preparation of exhibitions and other events; mobility – with reference to artists, intellectuals and curators; production – of new works, new publications, new exhibitions; preservation and ­distribution including creating ­databases, digitalization, archiving, ­websites; discussion – debates, conferences, workshops, panel discussions; presentation – contemporary art exhibitions, performance; being together – workshops, concerts and other events.

This guide will provide you with an introductory note to the exhibitions, comments on works and artists’ biographies.

For information on accompanying events, including lectures, workshops, performance, film projections as well as forthcoming publications, please regularly check the websites: www.wyspa.art.pl www.alternativa.org.pl www.facebook.com/ AlternativaFestival.

The exhibition staff will also be happy to answer any questions you may have.

We hope that we will be able to invite you soon to the next ­Alternativa.

Aneta Szyłak

Artistic Director of Alternativa

Grzegorz Klaman

President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation

places

6 places

alternativa 2013 guidebook

The Gdańsk Shipyard

The Young Gdańsk City was founded in the vicinity of today’s Solidarity Square in Gdańsk 1380 Juvenis Civitatis Gdanczk. However, for more than five centuries nothing but timber yards stood there, because this area, as a foreground for fortifications of the Gdańsk fortress had to remain undeveloped. It was as late as the mid-19th century when within this waterside area ship – building workshops started to operate. They soon gained the status of the Royal Shipyard and then the Imperial Shipyard. A bit farther to the north the slipways of Ferdinand Schichau’s Shipyard were built. Eventually, both shipyards were merged into one organism, known from then on as the Gdańsk Shipyard, which later also occupied some grounds on the neighbouring Ostrów Island. Between 1920 and 1939 the Gdańsk Shipyard was subject to war reparations and operated under the name of The International Shipbuilding Company. 60% of the shipyard belonged to allied countries, 20% to the Polish Government whereas 20% was owned by the Free City of Danzig. After the war it was transformed into

a state – owned company named the V.I. Lenin Gdańsk Shipyard. Events which took place within the former Gdańsk Shipyard were recorded in the history of Gdańsk, Poland and the entirety the Europe forever. It was the cradle of Solidarity, a place strikes broke out in 1980, the August Agreement was signed in the Health and Safety Room there. The Gdańsk Shipyard was where Lech Wałęsa, the later laureate of the Noble Prize and the President of Poland, worked and struggled. It houses the Monument to the fallen Shipyard Workers, the so called Road to Freedom commemorating events which took place in the Shipyard, as well as a fragment of the Berlin Wall.

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Wyspa Institute of Art

The Wyspa Institute of Art is situated on the premises of Młode Miasto [the Young City]1, about 15 minutes walk from the Main Railway Station in Gdańsk, in the vicinity of Solidarity Square, appearing Road to Freedom and directly by the newly designed Nowa Walowa Street. It is located on the plot neighbouring the city. A building made of brick emerged in 1940. It once housed the Shipbuilding School. A pragmatic, compact body with an uncomplicated composition featuring typical northern-German architecture indigenous for its time – the building has a high, tile-covered roof and a simple interior layout. The present building constitutes half of a bigger, symmetrical concept which no longer exists2. It is situated just by the shipyard wall, in the direct vicinity of some rows of houses in Jaracza and Robotnicza Streets. In the already approved Spatial Development Plan for the grounds of the former shipyard the main communication artery of the Young City will run in front of the building. Thanks to this location the Wyspa Institute for Art will be seen by the wider public immediately after the open-

ing of the Shipyard’s gate, even before new investments were launched here. The design of the Institute’s interior is a curatorial and artistic concept by the venture’s initiators.

The new, independent art institution entered the building of the former vocational school with exceptional tact, with reverence when approaching the remains of the legendary shipyard. Its new function fascinates with its unpretentiousness and openness – both physical openness, which prevents us from detaching from the surrounding spatial and social context, and the openness to the freedom of art which transforms the decomposed spaces and is able to confer a new, lyrical meaning upon them. The Wyspa Institute of Art is the first Polish institution of international standing dealing with issues of contemporary artistic culture, managed by a NGO. Its character and programming concept stem directly from the specifics of the place where it is situated; from its history and tradition on the one hand and from an assumed future on the other. The idea of funding the Institute is a consequence of an observation that the strategy of regen-

erating post-industrial grounds and buildings through art really works. This is also one of the reasons why the project operates two-way, representing the interests of the culture on one side, while on the other – a widely understandable public interest, and contributing changing the image of the new city district, helping to redefine it by adding to its features: creativity, inspiration, and dynamism.

1 This estate is located in the northern part of downtown Gdańsk. It is a plot of ground about 400 m wide and 1700 m long, situated at the southeast / northwest axis, along the Martwa Wisła bank. The central part of the

estate spans from Solidarity Square up to the riverbanks; It is about a 10 min. walk from the Main Railway station. Along the estate is a national road and numerous local roads, which provide direct access to the grounds. In relation to its initial name from before 620, this area has been ­re-named the Young City.

2 In 1965 the school building was half-­ -destroyed as a result of a gas explosion, which was caused by a defective in some ­acetylene pipes. Five shipyard workers died and six more were seriously injured.

8 places works >

Hall 90B

alternativa 2013 guidebook

A new, unusual exhibitions space of more than 3000 sqm, created as the result of an architectural adaptation of one of the former buildings of the former Gdańsk Shipyard, where

once the main shipyard warehouse was located.

The building is owned by Drew­ nica Development and is part of the Shipyard City complex. It has been

adapted to the needs of Alternativa by the City of Gdańsk

works

1 Archive movies 2 Where She Is At,

Johanna Billing

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12 Sheltering Sky,

Eriks Božis 13 a/ New Coat of Paint!

23 PGE Arena 24 The Two Towers,

Ewa Kruszewska & Aleksandra Polisiewicz photographs, b/ New Coat of Paint! Facade 3 Urban Generation; Studies, c/ New Coat of 25 OS Peace Pentagon, trying to imagine the Paint! Color Maps, world from everyone Maureen Connor Maros Krivy else’s perspective, all at once, Stanza 26 Wind hive, Maja Ratyńska 14 Kinetic light object ‘Balloon’ & Kinetic 4 Wild life is sucking us ­­accent ‘Tower’ , in, Jacek Staniszewski 27 The Shipyard Dance, Valdis Celms MML Studio 5 Anyang Women’s Agenda, Suzanne Lacy 15 Reactivation Centre 28 Marches, Lawrence Abu Hamdan 6 Lendlabor ‘from vacan- 16 Keret House, cy to resource’ , Lisa Jakub Szczęsny 29 At the Height of Enzenhofer & Anna ­­Politics, Cora Piantoni Resch (Lendlabor) 17 It depends…, Seline Baumgartner 30 Greenpoint Project, Marta Rosler 7 Alternativa 2013 Library 18 Two cities / Three ­­futures: architectural 31 History lesson, transcripts, Zbigniew Libera 8 Natural ­­Selection, Kadambari Baxi Katarzyna Przezwańska 32 Comuna Under Construction, Dar 19 Searching for Genius io ­Azzellini & Oliver Loci, Łukasz Bugalski 9 Microbrigades, VariaRessler tions of a Story, Lisa Schmidt – Colinet, 20 The transplantation, ­Alexander Schmoeger Mirosław Bałka 33 Nothing stops the idea & Florian Zeyfang of art, Ewa Partum 21 A subjective history of Gdańsk, Anders Bojen 34 Working Frames, Ginta 10 Shipyard Frogger, & Kristoffer Ørum Maciek Salamon Tinte Vasermane 11 Oh, Anouk De Clercq

22 Wavy Block,

Julita Wójcik

35 Press House,

Katrīna Neiburga

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Archive movies

Every - Day Life in South - Eastern, North - Eastern and Central Poland, 1936

Material achieved thanks to the courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Gdańsk Torn - Down Julien Bryan

Polish Port, Gdynia and Girl - Pupils in Gdańsk

Poland 1936. Scenes of Polish Daily Life in Cracow and Gdańsk

Julien Bryan

Julien Bryan

A presentation of a harbour on the Baltic Sea, the loading of coal onto ships, and the wood store near a shipyard. Documentation of the streets and architecture of Gdynia; painterly shots of boats floating on the sea and the city canals. Next, shots from Gdańsk appear, featuring marching teenage girls in school uniforms, they carry Nazi flags and sing.

Archival material featuring Gdańsk cityscape with caught images of traffic in Długa Street, a traffic policeman controlling automobile movement, women gazing at shop displays.

Frames showing a castle come from Cracow; most probably they were shot from Paderewski Bridge.

A part of the documentation features a Jewish quarter Kazimierz and city squares with passers - by and workmen. There also is a Polish advertisement of The World Fair in Paris in 1937.

Julien Bryan

This documentary begins with a quick image of a shop window in a Jewish quarter of Cracow. Subsequent shots feature the architecture of Warsaw and a Catholic procession with burning incense in the Town of Łowicz, then the film goes back to Warsaw where we can see a cityscape, corner shops, advertising posters of a theatre performance, and a gathering of people.

The film also documents the work of miners and workers of a refinery in Katowice, along with shipyard workers in Gdańsk and men and women doing their farm works.

This archival material was registered by Julien Bryan during his journey over Poland and Russia in the winter of 1946 – 47. The film features destroyed buildings along the Motława Canal in the city centre – a post - war image reflected in the waters of the river: the remains of buildings with German signs (metal factory, restaurants, etc.). Against the background of ruins inhabitants appear, elderly people and workers removing rubble.

This report on the city torn - down is split by the scenes of rural life in Poland, showing geese on the water, agricultural machines and work in the field.

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Filmy Archiwalne cd.

How Will We Live in Year 2000.

Realisation: Jerzy Kaden Script: Stanisław Hager, Jerzy Kaden Running time: 27 min.

Material achieved thanks to the courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The film, shot in 1971, presents a futuristic urban and architectural vision of Poland at the threshold of the 3rd millennium. Modernity, viewed only through the prism of Corbusierean progress and the slogan city, mass, machine form the famous manifesto of the Cracow Avant - Garde of 1922 but having a much wider impact. Here, bold

visions are going head in head with contraptions looking like from Lem’s books; cosmic material solutions (we are after the first landing of man on the moon). Poland as a country is seen amidst the racing pack of modern countries who are going to set trends not only in building industry but in the entire spectrum of life, as well as individu-

als’ self - realisation in society. In the background, one can hear the call to break with the past. The mundane and the mediocre slide into non - existence. We are creating new reality. In this case – we are breaking with the suffocating petty comfort/ stability of the late GomuŁka era.

Being open to the new, in opposition. What is the new in this case is

Edward Gierek The First Secretary and Leader the Polish Communist Party, who has set ambitious goals before the nation.

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Where She Is At Johanna Billing 2001, video

Completed in 2001, this documentary is a transcending work that takes as its subject a neglected open air leisure centre by the sea near Oslo, Norway. Part of a project designed for the benefit of the inhabitants of Oslo in the 1930 s (by Ole Lind Schistad and Eyvind Mostue in 1934), it is one of the few remaining pieces of functionalist architecture in Oslo. In sharp contrast to the ideals of the thirties about health and well-being, the centre was condemned in 2001 since the state was not willing or was unable to pay for its upkeep. Enhanced by the provocative loop form of its narrative structure, the film centres on a young woman who hesitates on a diving platform and on the minimal reactions of the other sunbathing visitors present. Public and private spheres are probed and intermingled with the camera’s intervention and the subtle drama is quiet and low key, turning the protagonist inward, along with the au-

dience, ­toward her inner thoughts.

The young woman’s behaviour on the diving platform poignantly illustrates the tensions between individual will and power structures that bear down on individuals as standardized social expectations.

Cinematography by: Henry Moore Selde Produced by Moderna Museet Projekt and Oslo Kunsthall

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Urban Generation: trying to imagine the world from everyone else’s perspective, all at once Stanza

2002 – 2005, installation

Urban Generation explores the emotional state of the metropolis and considers the world of universal surveillance. The artwork collects live CCTV feeds from cities around the world in real – time and reworks these video streams into multi – layered visual structures. The channels are always on, and therefore, the work is always changing – it depicts a constant and evolving view of the urban landscape and its inhabitants.

Multiple CCTV cameras are accessed randomly in real time to make this urban tapestry. What you see is an evolving, generative art-

work. These images are taken from the city, and they are happening as you see them, in real time. This online artwork represents many realities that exist in city space. The observed real time surveillance society is reworked into a series of grids.

The data that you see is protected by the data protection act. Here it is remediated into what you see, which is this online artwork that looks is like a filmic experience.

However it’s not a film – it’s a real time experience of the city from multiple perspectives.

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wild life is sucking us in Jacek Staniszewski

1994 / 2013, large scale printout

Wild Life Is Sucking Us In (1994) is a part of the project Wild Life is Us – Dzikie życie to my, which Jacek Staniszewski prepared as a project for a public space, presented on 100 billboards in Warsaw in 1998.

The work is a collage of found visual material, which seemingly transfers us to an anonymous, industrialised metropolis. ‘Urban common day’, as Staniszewski says forces the inhabitants to be continually engaged in life situations, becoming increasingly less and less a question of choice being, rather, an indispensable requirement, instead. The symmetrical composition of the image sucks the viewer in, drawing him into a tunnel where figures float in the air. Here, a city is not an open space but a container, an urban pool in which constantly busy entities, driven by their weird determination, are on the run towards unknown goals.

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15 works >

alternativa 2013 guidebook

Anyang Women’s Agenda Suzanne Lacy

2010 / 2013, video installation

Over 100 diverse women from Anyang City explored how female perceptions and experiences are hidden, and revealed, in the public life / space of Korea. The performance, which lasted over ten days, consisted of a series of conversations located in 15 different public environments throughout the city and covered a range of issues: economic stability, human / environment issues, school experiences, employment opportunities for women, violence, and the future of women in the current national economic downturn. These themes were raised by the women themselves as their shared concerns. The results of these conversations were presented in person to the Mayor and City Council in the form of a women’s agenda for the coming decade. This agenda identified key issues that affect women locally and nationally. An outdoor public exhibition in Hagun Park featured photos of the conversations and a women’s room / room of our own, in collaboration with Raumlabor Berlin’s “Open House” structure, where ongoing intimate and group conversations took place.

The Gdańsk part of the work has been complemented by adding the opinions of Gdańsk female inhabitants and female urban activists.

A Project by Suzanne Lacy.

Photographs by Raul Vega With: Lisa Kim Davis, Kyungnyun Son, Boseul Kim and Jey Hwang Technical Support from: Ki Peum Lee, Chansu Shin, Keipung Sound Company, BowHaus Studio, Dai Nam Kim A performance piece for the Anyang Public Art Project, 2010 Curated by Kyong Park Special thanks to: Eun Cho, Hong Hee Kim, Hye Kyeong Lee, Hye Seung Kim, Hak Hee Kim, Jae Seon Lee, Jeong Rye Park, Hyun Joo Song, Chun Hee Song, Jeong Wook Sohn, Seon Hwa Kim, Joeng Hee Han, Hye Hwa Shim Exhibition support by: Megan Sallabedra, Marina Pinsky and Peter Kirby

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Lendlabor “from vacancy to resource” Lisa Enzenhofer & Anna Resch (Lendlabor) 2012

100% recycling first, (only) then rebuilding. The issue of vacancy in cities is exemplified in this thesis using a part of the Lend district in Graz. The objective is the creation of a vacancy catalogue through field studies and inspection of the sites from various perspectives, based on the working hypothesis There is a vacancy in Lend , in order to enable a discussion of innovative and forward – looking ways for regional restructuring and the city as a resource. Lendlabour is supposed to illustrate the significance of the availability of data concerning vacancy in order to enable the areas to be recycled. From the empirical approximation to the laboratory, factors from economy, sociology, history and the current vacancy discussion in Europe were included in order to recognize existent potentials in the city’s structure and hence to combine new synergies for the useful reactivation of vacan-

cies in scenarios. The opportunity to connect the individual blocks of vacancy, economic and social interests expands our comprehension of design to the social / human dimension.

Work is presented in collaboration with Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw

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Alternativa 2013 library

In the drudgery of searching through flea markets and chain – store sales, I have been looking for a key to the Till Tomorrow! library of commonplace ideas, old and brand – new utopias, and mutually suppressing architectural trends.

I have to be exceptionally careful not to stamp on the basics: how you do cope with a suddenly leaking tap? Which flowers would best suit a glazed balcony? Which way is best for an urban trip? And, first of all, the eternal question: how to pass the time? (and what for?)

alternativa 2013 guidebook

18 works >

Natural Selection Katarzyna Przezwańska

2011, installation (various materials)

A table, which is an autonomous work, a piece of exposition furniture and an exhibition at the same time; Przezwańska has put her finished works (most of all works inspired by nature) on a table, as well as her inspirations, spatial sketches and models of potential projects.

National Selection is a sort of laboratory, which reveals Przezwańska’s creative method to the public. For the artist herself, the Desk is also an attempt to summarize her past works.

Source: webpage of Kolonie Gallery, www.galeriakolonie.pl

alternativa 2013 guidebook

19 works >

Microbrigades, Variations of a Story

Lisa Schmidt – Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger & Florian Zeyfang 2012, installation

In 1971 the first microbrigades were formed to counteract the tremendous housing deficit in Cuba.

Groups of workers were pulled from ordinary enterprises and commissioned to construct four- or five – story apartment blocks, which were distributed according to the needs of workers and their merits within their respective organisations. To involve non – professionals in the field of construction, prefabricated elements had to be adapted to systems combining them with manually assembled parts. Though standard types of buildings were developed and constructed with only small variations, complex neighborhoods were produced which are today highly specific and very different from each other. Between 1971 and 1975 the microbrigades boosted housing supply by finishing 20.000 units per year, until the deficiency of building materials slowed down production and the government reduced the program in 1978. But until today several attempts were undertaken to re – activate the intriguing concept of housing built by the people.

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

Shipyard Frogger Maciek Salamon

2013, computer game

Shipyard Frogger is a modern computer game based on the original Atari Frogger game from 1981.

As in the case of the original, the idea is to help a hero – frog to get to the other side of the highway. This time it’s New Wall Street in Gdansk, which according to the City of Gdansk’s official conception, will separate the shipyard area from the Old Town.

Programmer: Mateusz Wojczal

LEVEL 1

score:

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

oh

Anouk De Clercq 2012, video

Oh seeks to reanimate the ambitious, utopian spirit of renegade architect Etienne – Louis Boullée (1728 –1799). True to the spirit of the utopian architectural tradition Boullée is part of, he is probably best remembered today for one unrealized project in particular: the design for a gigantic sphere – shaped shrine dedicated to one of the founding fathers of modern science, Isaac Newton (1784). Although the historical reference to an unrealized architectural project adds a nostalgic, melancholic twist to Oh, De Clercq nevertheless stays true to her well – documented passion for images of futurity. Oh sees the continuation of De Clercq’s singular ‘poétique de l’espace’ – a richly textured visual investigation of the allegorical tension between inside and outside, real and imaginary (‘virtual’), two- and three – dimensional, analogue and digital, immensity and intimacy.

Oh received a special mention at Videomedeja Festival 2011 C.S.

Animation: Tom Kluyskens Sound: Anton Aeki Acoustics: Johan Vandermaelen Produced by: Auguste Orts With the support of the Flanders ­Audiovisual Fund, CERA Partners in Art, M HKA, SCAM*Brouillon d’un rêve numérique

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Sheltering sky Eriks Božis

2008, installation

Suspended ceilings, laminated flooring, plastic windows, fluorescent lamps- a counterfeit kit for what you need in real life. Doesn’t this hanging ceiling remind you of the sheltering sky protecting your comfort zone while also referring to the atmosphere created by Bertolucci’s film of the same name?

alternativa 2013 guidebook

23 works > Maros Krivy

alternativa 2013 guidebook

a/ New Coat of Paint photographs

b/ New Coat of Paint Facade Studies

c/ New Coat of Paint Color Maps

During the last decade, housing estates in Central and Eastern Europe have been covered in a flamboyant and patchwork mixture of yellow, orange, pink, violet and green colours. The contrast between grey and colourful is of a particular interest

for the New Coat of Paint project.

In the everyday language of the post – Socialist era, housing estates and prefabs have been described as grey . The meaning of greyness bears implicitly negative connotations – anonymity, boredom and desolation.

In this context, colourful façades embody the promise of happiness, which is to be found in the ideals of architectural variety, diversity and singularity. But is today’s utopia nothing more than the undoing of the utopia of modernist and post –

2010 – 2013, lambda print, mounted on dibond

2013, inkjet print, pencil drawing

2013, inkjet print, pencil drawing

war times, the colours undoing the greys, the ideals of singularity undoing the ideals of collectivity?

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Kinetic light object ‘Balloon’ & Kinetic accent ‘Tower’ Vladis Celms

1978, photo – montage

Valdis Celms’ photo-montages – architectural proposals Kinetic light object ‘Balloon’ and Kinetic accent ‘Tower’ (both 1978) are striking examples of such visionary architecture. Tower plays with the authors’ repeatedly used motif – that of the positron, which acts as a vertical ­accent in which the city space becomes the organizing component and contains multifunctional meanings. Balloon, as a giant light object in the sky, suggests, in a similar way, an orientation in the suburban space where all differences are reduced to a monotonous environment. Its ­aesthetic function can be interchanged with the functional – the balloon can also become an informative platform projecting news or the information relevant to the city.

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25 works >

alternativa 2013 guidebook

reactivation Centre

The objective of this project was to encourage local society to work out the basic principles of space formation in the Gdańsk downtown area.

The activities comprised the diagnosis of problems in the central district of Śródmieście, finding ways to solve them, and outlined directions for the development of this strategic area of the city with the active participation of the local society and all potential stakeholders of the district’s development.

The situation of Gdańsk’s Downtown, i.e. Śródmieście is rather particular when set against the background of other big centres in Poland. 90% of the developed tissue of the area was demolished as a result of the 2nd World War, this was followed by a huge replacement of inhabitants, who were almost totally new settlers after the war. The rebuilding of the Downtown was, for political reasons, realised in the form of a workers’ residential area the culturally most precious part of the Main Town (Główne Miasto) was reconstructed in a historicist vein, preserving a former urban arrangement to a large degree. The adapted concept for rebuilding and the po-

litical and economic realities of that time deprived the centre of Gdańsk much of its downtown character and functions, which were subsequently dispersed as a result of the creation of the Three – Cities agglomeration.

The spatial marginalisation of this district was additionally aggravated by the introduction of large transit arteries across the area and the withdrawal of public transportation which ceased to serve the district.

All these factors generated series of disputes about, conflicts around and contradictions in the perception of the Śródmieście space. The Centrum Reaktywacji project is an attempt to solve these disputes and determine a common vision of development, as well as the answer to the question: Which direction should the area follow in accordance with its inhabitants’ collective will?

10 workshops have been organised within the framework of the project, in which c. 200 inhabitants and representatives of numerous organisations and institutions active in the area have participated. A joint document of more than 100 pages was worked out and its conclusions were presented to local authorities and self – government units responsible for the shaping of Śródmieście.

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Keret House Jakub Szczęsny

2012, wood (the model), steel, ploycarbonate panels, sandwich panels, and others (the building)

Keret House, a micro – habitat dedicated to writer Etgar Keret and an artist – in – residency place built as a temporary art installation.

Located in a narrow gap between two buildings on the edge of the small and big Ghetto in Warsaw it provided just 14 m2 of useful space with all the necessary functions provided. The structure plays a role as a bonding element: physically, by linking neighbour buildings and symbolically, by reconnecting the writer, whose family perished in the Ghetto, with contemporary Warsaw.

A mock – up of the installation Keret House with two adjacent buildings. Scale 1:50.

Mock - up made by: Kuba Morkowski, Adam Perka.

Courtesy: Polish Modern Art Foundation.

The project was realised thanks to the financial support of the capital city of Warsaw.

alternativa 2013 guidebook

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alternativa 2013 guidebook

It Depends…

Seline Baumgartner 2008, photographic series

It Depends… is the title of an artistic project by the Swiss female artist Seline Baumgartner, carried out during her three – month residency at Wyspa Art Institute in the summer of 2008 when she was learning about the city, doing research on its historical, social and political changes.

As a result of that research, she created a piece referring to the prefabricated residential districts of the 1960 s and 1970s in Gdańsk. Le Corbusieur was an important figure

who influenced the shape of these modern housing estates he had once claimed that a house is a machine for living. His Modulor (proportionally based on the measurements of human body) proved to be the ideal design for living space units in these buildings.

This involved the use of prefabricated plates – a simple and cheap construction element permitting a faster construction of multi – storey buildings – meant that numerous families could be accommo-

dated in a relatively small area, thereby freeing up more area for greenery.

Baumgartner became concerned with grasping the relation between the inhabitants of the blocks of flats and their sense of loneliness and / or the feeling that they shared in a large commune. She concentrated on their subjective attitude to the architectural structure of their flats and blocks, and the personal ties they formed with their private territories, which is what a flat rep-

resents. These standard blocks in prefabricated housing estates, were created on a mass scale in house factories, such as Gdańsk Factory of Houses “Kokoszki” , have for years been subject to small interventions, such as the glazing of balconies, the introduction of colours, decorative potted plants placed out on balconies, all of which are manifestations of people’s individual tastes, as well as their need to add warmth and individualise the small living spaces, in which standardisation had embraced the proportions of the flats giving them similar, segmented bookshelves and cupboards, and leisure furniture. Today, these huge areas of blocks of flats continue to be a mosaic of manifested individualism, contradicting the aesthetical conception of uniformly large architectural objects – a rebellion against the ideals of standardisation.

The project was carried out in co – operation with ProHelvetia.

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Two cities / Three futures: architectural transcripts Kadambari Baxi

2010 – 2013 , video – installation

Two cities / Three futures: architectural transcripts is an audio – visual montage reinterpreting two monumental sites: the cst station in Mumbai and ground zero in New York. Current photos contrasting under – construction, in – conservation, disrepair or status quo architecture are embedded within videos that incite one to look twice. With an expansive historical view films and images are collated and re – scripted to look back over new and old architecture; public relations and propaganda; heritage, memory and memorial industry; rebuilding & reconstruction. Using updated montage techniques the project fluctuates between a documentary

and a scrapbook, a public relations brochure and an opinionated blog.

Three unusual architectural tours are interspersed that posit conflicting realities and the collective dreams of global cities simultaneously in crisis and transformation.

At times the tour takes the form of something that indicts architecture with outrage at its failures. Other times it re – inscribes architecture with ideas for possible redirections.

In the end what emerges is a way to see architecture in relation to multiple other ways.

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Searching for Genius Loci Łukasz Bugalski 2013, presentation

Towns and cities have evolved and been shaped for hundreds of years; exposed to various urban factors.

Over this period many overlapping strata have conditioned them: geographical, landscape – related, historical, cultural, social, symbolic, as well as customary and legal ones, and political and defensive ones, along with the effects of spatial planning itself. While working on my master’s thesis, I prepared copious analytical materials, going far beyond the regular requirements.

From this, a story about spatial changes of one of the most important fragments of Gdańsk came to light, which is worth documenting on paper and circulating to others.

This work is an attempt at a reading of a specific genius loci – the spirit of a place, as well as the processes which occur in a city, which create and shape it. It is also adds a voice to the discussion as well as a proposal to tackle what, in the nearest future, what can be brought to cities and their spaces.

The work makes use of a diploma dissertation written under Professor Piotr Lorens, MSc,Eng. PhD, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Gdańsk University of Technology.

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The Transplantation Mirosław Bałka

2013, in – situ intervention

In his latest work, Mirosław Bałka interferes with the actual space of the Gdańsk Shipyard, which once was part and parcel of a modernist myth of productivity and industrialisation. It is here, where the biggest changes in the city have occurred, and that hasn’t yet become a construction site, but is more of a successive demolition of the historical tissue of the city’s industrial district. Bałka installs Perspex replacements of broken, missing, corroded or simply stolen downpipes of Shipyard buildings. Like their predecessors they also maintain the same function of carrying water downward from gutters but…they are invisible. This transparency complicates matters for any would – be ardent scrap – metal collector who is determined to remove anything he can find. The artist’s intervention even reaches as far as a stolen metal pipe which was cut off from the building of the Wyspa Art Institute in the time when the artist visited Gdańsk.

The Transplantation is intended to allude to the symbolism of glass houses – a key motif in Stefan Żeromski’s novel Przedwiośnie. This

book was written in response to the important political moments of the first dozen years of the 20th century, including Poland’s regained independence and the country’s recovery after the ruination of the war, along with the revolutionary movements and people’s forced migrations. It is also a presentation of modernist ideals which Severyn Baryka implanted in his son Cezary, hoping that his son would return to his homeland and commit himself to building its’ future. He convinces his son that his friend had built a factory of glass houses on the coast, reclaimed by Poland after the Treaty of Versailles.

Those houses were, as we would call them today – ecological. They efficiently used solar and water energies in sustainable ways; the transparent houses of happy people. This is probably one of the strongest metaphors of 20th century Polish literature. Here, the grand narrative of that time is reflected as if in a single drop of water: a big modernisation plan, revolution as a method for installing justice, equality and well – being in the country. It is also one of the reasons why the Żeromski’s imagined placement of glass houses

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is in the coastal area – an important industrial centre of the ‘new’ Poland.

A city, in turn, is pre – fabricated, ready – made and ideally planned.

The urban utopia – the lens – focusing dreams of a regained country not only politically but jointly – socially and economically, too. As we know, Cezary Baryka failed to find this city on his return to Poland. Therefore, when we talk about glass houses we are talking about a local idiom of disappointed ideals.

In a sense, Żeromski, thanks to the energy of his metaphor, shows the influence of matter upon the definition of ideological reality. Materials are not only the object and product of technology but, above all, the significance which defines a city, its message and the moods of those who abide in it. And what kind of city is possible? A city of participatory compromise? Architecturally dominant? One of political will?

These buildings where the artist’s intervention takes place, were built shortly before or at the beginning of the war, and are now scarce fragments of what the great shipyard once used to be. The demolition of

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the physical tissue is an act of dismantling the remnants of something which once defined the city on a level while perhaps not spectacular, proves to be very elementary.

Here a question arises: Should we give up urban utopias of justice and happiness, expressed in a possible materialisation of the city? And if so why? Could not the myth of glass houses be filled with a new sense?

A.Sz.

Mirosław Bałka’s Transplantation is a special project realised within the framework of a two-year, European Materiality project.

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A Subjective History of Gdańsk Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum 2013, video

The Subjective History of Gdańsk is a ­video dedicated to the history of Gdańsk, as seen from the perspective of ­Marcin a former shipyard worker, who ­suffers from Alice – in – Wonderland – Syndrome – a neurological disorder ­causing size distortion, scale confusion and altered body image. The video focuses on the physical characteristics of Gdansk: its size, weight and appearance,

comparing past and present events, buildings and people and examines how the concept of scale can be used as a framework to reimagine the future.

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Wavy Block Julita Wójcik

2005 – 06, hook – crocheted object: cotton yarn, metal construction, a wooden table, 115 × 800 × 30,5 cm

The Falowiec (Wavy Building) is a portrait of an optimistic Utopia.

A falowiec building in Obrońców Wybrzeża street in Gdańsk is the longest residential building in Poland. It was built between 1970 – 3, during the time of Communist Poland – known as PRL , in the time of a housing shortage, when house – building was a priority. A monstrous building was erected, becoming something impossible for a human to embrace. Numbers speak for themselves: 850 metres in length, 16 entrances, about 6000 inhabitants (the size of a county), and 11 storeys plus 3 bus – stops located in front of the building.

The artist undertook a duel: an individual against a superindividual. The hook – crocheted of the mock – up of this building took her half a year. She used more than 10 kilos of yarn, producing an 8-­metre long mock-up-tablecloth. She placed her Falowiec on the table of a height typical for coffetables. In 2005, the facade of the wavy building was repainted pink, which in the diminished scale of the crocheted mock makes it look like a pastry. The technique with which

she created the sculpture alludes to the time of shortages during PRL. A hook and yarn were the tools which permitted creative people to make their own clothes and objects of everyday use.

The work is in the collection of the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art photo by Jacek Niegoda

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PGE Arena

The decision to organise the Euro Cup in Poland and Ukraine unleashed a real eruption of desires and hopes, some of which were also linked to the building of the new stadiums. Notwithstanding sport achievements, the PGE Arena Gdańsk remains the most beautiful sports object in this part of Europe. Built between the years 2008 – 2011, the stadium is supposed to reflect the history and character of Gdańsk. The sheathing of the construction is made of 18.000 polycarbonate plates in six hues of yellow which evoke associations with amber, while the girders of the construction look like a ship’s framing. Thus, the stadium makes references to Gdańsk ’s past as a port, it is a notation of memory; simultaneously, its architecture constitutes a conspicuous outlook to the future. The stadium, as Joanna Warsza says1 , is more of a machine than a building, being the node for car traffic, energy and media. The function of this construction is to 1 J. Warsza, “Miejsce, którego nie było” [in:] Stadion X – miejsce, którego nie było.

Reader, ed. J. Warsza, Warszawa 2009, p.11.

streamline moving people, concomitantly making a presentation of suitable consumer goods – in this case related to sport. This technocratic machine is a high – performance unit which, next to its sports functions, ensures comprehensive leisure services and entertainment.

The operation of the Arena is subordinated to the supreme goal of the profitability of sport and tourism, along with the optimisation of utility spaces. Moreover, ranked among the most easily recognised sport objects, the PGE Arena Gdańsk has become the symbol of the region by virtue of the synecdoche principle; its marketing sign serves as a magnet for tourism. A.M.

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two towers

Ewa Kruszewska & Aleksandra Polisiewicz (aleka polis) 2013, 3d animation

What does looking at actually mean? If we use this word to name the act of watching animation that reconstructs unrealised architectural designs for a transformation of Gdańsk in accordance with the spirit of real and national socialisms at the turn of the 1940s, we most probably think of an operation predominantly concentrated on the building and reinforcement of manifest relationships that distinguish between Our and Their histories.

We – the representatives of a new, free world and they – totalitarian rulers and their subordinate architects and urban planners. What is the most important in such an act of looking is the political dominance of liberalism, built in opposition to the totalitarian power; liberalism which supports liberty and diversity, liberalism where one refrains form ethnic cleansing and allows for the autonomy of the urban tissue.

The research on the National-Socialist and the Real-Socialist plans for the refashioning of cities and towns, initiated by Aleka Polis and continued in collaboration with Ewa Kruszewska, began with a different practice of looking – that of some-

one who is lost in a city and gazes at concrete buildings and shapes, with the sense of helplessness and being overwhelmed by massive solids, strictly geometrical shapes, simple crossings, and the lack of green areas. This looking was more of a sensual activity, compounded by heat which, like in Camus’s L’Étranger, makes one experience a city as a de-

sert. These observations have their follow-up in the scrutiny of urban utopias and dystopias, as well as concrete research on the planned transformation of Warsaw, developed by architects linked to both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes.

The towers which appear in this edition of the work are a virtual reconstruction of the planned re-

fashioning of the Granary Island in Gdańsk, accommodating the Gauleiter’s headquarters (1941) and, in work no. 2, the ideas from an urban-planning and architectural competition for the project of downtown Gdańsk from the period when the Socialist Realism dominated (1953). Aleka Polis and Ewa Kruszewska juggle with these two

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buildings, making apt allusions to the two towers from volume two of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

One of those towers, Minas Morgul, became the stronghold of the Nazguls, the knights of the shadow whose only aim was to gain the ring of power, the other one is like Isengard, converted into the stronghold of the Wise, the Man of Skill, who was training soldiers to fight on the dark side there. Both towers were built by people and both finally became the nests of evil. It is just in the space between these two towers that a journey occurs, becoming the space of fight for its participants not only against external enemies but, also, their own thirst for power, authority and acclaim. In case of Gdańsk, the towers with their aggressive altitudes, domineering the city’s churches and the hall, and closing the most important axes of the historic part of Gdańsk, both architecturally and socially, commit an ideological appropriation of the city space.

Looking at the unrealised Gdańsk towers, we can either gaze or view, adapting either a distant outlook at urban policy, strictly subordinated to Fascism or Communism, or we

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can analyse their architectural and urban preconditioning and confront them with the contemporary time.

Additionally, we can do a research on the contemporary embodiments of power, using the metaphor of the originators of the project. Towers have always been a symbol of power.

Built predominantly to control others and to manifest authority con-

spicuously, towers have many a time proved to be symbols of a fiasco, which befalls these people who have forever struggled for perfection, being themselves very far from perfect.

As illustrated by, say, the history of the Tower of Babel, such buildings will sooner or later become more of a pivot of dispute and fight; nevertheless, as shown by Derrida’s and

Benjamin’s writings, they can be symbolically converted into the metaphors of greatness, with an element of contention as one of its components and a tendency to search for union as the other.

Collaboration, text: Ewa Majewska Words of gratitude to Wyspa Progress Foundation and Jacek Friedrich

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Sos Peace Pentagon

Maureen Connor & Instytut Pobożnych Życzeń 2012 / 13

339 Lafayette Street in New York City, known as the Peace Pentagon, has served as a home base for dozens of activist groups and progressive organizations working for peace for over 40 years. Because it is in need of major repairs, the organization’ Friends of 339, issued a call for design proposals, by way of a competition to answer the question: How can a building mobilize for peace and justice?

In the proposal, SOS repurposes an obsolete ocean liner, which would replace the existing building as the headquarters for the Peace Pentagon.

SOS, literally (almost) a fish out of water, an imperilled but not yet sinking ship of fools – with passengers and crew still foolish enough to set a course toward social justice-this building draws attention to its occupants’ values. The repurposed ship has been rescued from the ship breaking industry, one of the most destructive consequences of globalization. With the outsourcing of production to China, India and other Southeast Asian locations, all kinds of ships, including battleships, and cruise ships are frequently recon-

figured to transport goods and materials between Asia and the West.

Often barely seaworthy, these ships are a lucrative source of income for their owners. And their last journey beaches them on the shores of Bangladesh, India or Pakistan where they are taken apart by unskilled labourers who risk disability or even death because of unsafe working conditions.

SOS mandates that the initial renovation as well as continued maintenance of the ship / building be performed by Bangladesh labourers who are taught the necessary skills by out – of – work shipbuilders from defunct American shipyards. collaboration: Christian Bjone [architect], Ramsey Fendall, Andrea DeFelice, Holly Senter, Tom Nimen [artists and designers], & George Cairns, of the Royal Institute of Technology, consultant on Shipbreaking in Bangladesh. http://www.maureenconnor.net http://theiwt.com

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Wind hive A study for the possibilities of gaining green energy from windnozzle phenomena at Młyniec estate in Gdańsk

Maja Ratyńska, co - author of the installation: Konrad Zientara 2007, presentation of installation

In gaps between buildings the speed of wind increases. There are local legends about gusts so strong one can bend towards it and not fall over, that you could even lay down on them. The wind power station is an answer to how to turn this gnawing phenomenon into an advantage.

The turbines were chosen after multiple point measurements of local wind speed. They are meant to work at variable wind conditions and are very quiet.

The hexagonal framework ­design provides an effective and ­attractive way to mount the turbines in the gap while bearing the site’s urban plan.

The chosen localisation is not only one of the most wind energy-rich points. Due to the vital and cultural centre of the site’s neighbourhood, the close vicinity of city transportation and the elegant honeycomb shape it becomes a landmark, which can help to counteract negative stereotypes about wind power stations and be the new symbol of the site.

This was submitted as a Master’s thesis for the Design Institute at Art Academy in Gdańsk.

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The Shipyard Dance mml Studio 2013, video

The concept of the Shipyard’s Dance clashes two bygone Utopias with the current reality of the historical and symbolical space of the Gdańsk Shipyards. The Dance was inspired by everyday activities, performed by shipyard workers as part of their regular professional duties, as well as the current, wavering condition of the local industry, which has been subjected to the fluctuation of the contemporary ­market.

Inspired by the studies of American scholar Frank Gilbreth (1968 –1924) who worked out a scientific method for the analysis of basic workers’ motions, MML used a mock-up, constructed for production needs – a black interior with a white grid, retaining the proportions of the Modulor invented by Le Corbusier in 1942, which he applied as a canon of measures and sizes in his architectural studies.

This object permitted the artists to study with precision the workmen’s motions and their cataloguing by means of video and graphic forms. This, in turn, facilitated the creation of a certain kind of glossary, an inventory of shipyard figures

which served as the basis for the created choreography.

The de – contextualisation of the original place, its function and significance of the shipyard’s motion creates a new, performative dimension. The prototypical solo part, prepared in together with the dancer and choreographer Rafał Dziemidok, is the synthetic composition of certain selected and optimised daily motions of the shipyard workers, done not for economic but aesthetical reasons, though. This choreography, created thanks to the observation on the premises of the former Shipyard and the experience of people working there is not only the archive of a physical and motorized memory of the Gdańsk Shipyard but, also, an attempt at an emotional, non – verbal communication with its current, unstable condition.

Idea: MML collective {Gilles Lepore, Maciej Mądracki, Michał Mądracki} Choreography: MML i Rafał Dziemidok Dance: Rafał Dziemidok Music: Igor Kłaczyński

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Marches

Lawrence Abu Hamdan 2008, audio - visual installation

11 May 2009, London

Dear Antonio Di Stasi, We are very much looking forward to working with you for our event A Time to Make Ten Shoes in the Teatrino della Colle­giata on the afternoon of the 3rd of July. Thank you for your interest in this project, your patience is greatly appreciated as I know that we are asking for something quite strange.

The event A Time to Make Ten Shoes is one part of a larger project called Marches which has been running since 2005. At the centre of the Marches project is a series of performances that take place on the streets of towns and cities. These performances are choreographed marches in which a small group of 10 performers march along planned routes through urban districts.

These routes are p ­ rimarily designed to include the most interesting acoustic / architectural dimensions of the town, connecting large halls, domed ceilings, glass walls, narrow corridors, piazzas, crowded spaces etc. The only costume the performers of Marches wear are specific shoes adapted for greater sonic ef-

fect – the very shoes we will design and build together. Using combinations of hollow stiletto heels, thick (uncoated) wooden heels, tap plates and hobnails to create strange shoes that, when stamped, emit a sound that works to acoustically define the architectural space through which the wearer travels.

The performance of these marches will happen at unscheduled times throughout the 3rd, 4th and 5th of July in the streets Santarcangelo as part of the festival di Santarcangelo, however, our event in the Teatrino della Collegiata is a shoemaking workshop that will only happen one time during the festival (the 3rd July) and will be open for the public to attend.

During this event we will work together to build and adapt the shoes for the ten performers taking part in Marches. I have arranged for each of the performers to bring an old pair of leather-soled shoes that we can alter. I will also provide all the necessary attachments for the shoes (hobnails, tap plates, heels etc) but I will need your ­expertise and advice in connecting these sound-magnifying implements to

the shoes. Some simple equipment may also be required such as shoe hammers, glue, drills and others necessary for the job, I hope this will not be a problem.

Our event / workshop will last the time it takes us to alter the ten pairs of shoes, once the last pair has been fully transformed the event will be over. I expect that each shoe may take around 8 –10 minutes in total (including the time for the glue to dry).

Thanks so much and I look forward to meeting you.

All the best, Lawrence Abu Hamdan

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At the height of politics Cora Piantoni 2013, wideo

The industrial climbing cooperative Świetlik was founded in 1983 in Gdańsk and worked at heights in factories all over Poland. The film shows a re-enactment of a typical Świetlik working situation in an industrial setting. Świetlik was a network of oppositional activists and individualists, a starting point for life-long friendships, a laboratory for independent working methods and political ideas.

The Świetlik members were a group of people who wanted to change the system. Climbing in high altitude was a physical risk. This was reflected in the personal risk the workers took in maintaining strong connections to the opposition. The climbers I have interviewed represent different views within Świetlik. They talk about their experiences within the company, their support of the opposition, the blending of their private and professional life and how their past experiences form the basis for their participation in today’s society and politics in Poland. Former Świetlik members can be seen as a group of architects who deconstructed the old structures in the 1980 s and started planning and constructing the new Poland at the beginning of the 1990s.

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Greenpoint Project Martha Rosler

2011, photography series

Greenpoint is one of the oldest parts of Brooklyn, New York situated at the westernmost tip of Long Island.

In the beginning Greenpoint was an important industrial center with shipyard, glasshouse, pottery making facility, petroleum refinery and sewage treatment plant- industries polluting neighborhood.

Greenpoint is considered a home for many immigrant communities from Europe. In XIX c. immigrants traveled here from Ireland and Germany; in 1860s they were followed by Italian, Polish and Russian migrants.

The middle of XX c. is the arrival time of citizens from Puerto Rico and towards the end of XX c. a new wave of Polish political migrants is recorded. Contemporary migrants come from Central and South America, North Africa and South Asia.

From the mid 60s. We observe exodus of the white middle class and confinement of local unemployed population. Locality of Greenpoint is funded on the lack of public transportation and creation of infrastructure for heavy truck transportation.

In the following decades a large part of small business disappeared, however, polluting industry remained.

In the 90s. Inhabitants organized themselves to postulate refinement of neighborhood, though economic stagnation remained.

Situation have started to change in the recent years. Demographic trend consisting in migration to big cities is still present but hearts of metropolis are occupied with banks and headquarters of corporations. Creative class is looking for its place around city centers. For New York this place would be Williamsburg which is now full up. Artists and hipsters are currently choosing Greenpoint. Despite the financial crisis development of the district persists- new lofts are being built next to XIXc. housing, small business thrives.

Marta Rossler as a 25-year-old resident of Greenpoint records changes and confrontations closely and transfers them into the medium of photography and document. In current project she presents inhabitants of Polish Greenpoint with focus on people that came there to work and live. The second object of her interest is the changing landscape of shop windows which defines ones image of the district as well as it describes changes happening in it.

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History lesson Zbigniew Libera

2012, The work is shown transposed into a large – scale printout on blue – back paper

Libera plays with the visual memory of his viewer. Consciously, or not, we read frames, compositions, representations, analogies. We know that we have seen them somewhere.

If Positives haunted our memory of press photo, History Lesson, which is part of to the series New Histories, makes projections into the future.

Yet, this future is told using as a tool all these things which have encoded the fear of the coming things visually. Libera knows that the memory of

images creates phobias, anxieties, nightmares. In his History Lesson, our reading is fast; we’ve known about it, we have been told about it, we have read about it in novels, we have seen it in disaster films.

Several horse – riders appear against the background of a deserted, completely looted block of flats.

They are silent, upright and tense – perhaps a scouting mission. We read this image in a single glance, this is an urban dystopia, a deserted

world, after a catastrophe or a war.

A world where nothing is what it used to be.

However, if we continue our search to learn where Libera took this picture, new strata of meanings open for us. The scenery of this photograph is Borne Sulinowo. In 1945 – 92, the place was the venue where the Soviet Army stayed and the area was excluded from Polish jurisdiction. 15 thousand soldiers of the Contingent of the Six Vitebsk –

Novogrod Mechanised Guardian Division of the Red Army abode here. After the Russians left Poland, the town, which was a military zone up until then, was completely demolished and despoiled and was finally enveloped back into the civilian sphere. In 1993, its re-settlement began.

That’s how Borne Sulinowo became a metaphor for a re-made town. It had a military history before, so the thought of how this fact predetermines its future haunts us.

Questions like: What does it mean to reclaim the space of a town? To re-inhabit it? Who are these invaders / riders wthat we are looking at?

Who are they really? What does it mean today to appropriate, to despoil, to consider something as one’s own? A.Sz.

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Comuna Under Construction

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler 2010, wideo

We have to decide for ourselves what we want. We are the ones who know our needs and what is happening in our community Omayra Peréz explains confidently. She wants to convince her community, located on the hillside of a poor district of Caracas, to found a Consejo Comunal (community council). In more than 30,000 Consejos Comunales the Venezuelan inhabitants make decisions about the things which concern them collectively via these assemblies.

Omayra is supported by the activists of the nearby shanty town Emiliano Hernández, which has already had a Consejo Comunal for three years. Under the governmental program Barrio Adentro the inhabitants have managed to get a doctor who treats everyone free of charge. They also received money to renovate their houses and replaced over a dozen corrugated – iron huts with new houses.

All of these activities and a lot more have been organized via the Consejo Comunal. By local self – organization several working groups have been established on

topics chosen themselves and decisions are made in assemblies.

Several Consejos Comunales can form a Comuna and finally a communal town. The film Comuna Under Construction follows these developments throughout the hillside of the shanty towns of Caracas and the vast and wet plains of Barinas in the countryside. The councils are built from below and alongside the existing institutions and are supposed

to overcome the current State through self – government.

Relations between the grass roots organizations and the institutions are marked by cooperation as well as conflict. But the Consejos Comunales also have internal difficulties; participation has to be learned.

Both progress and setback mark the difficult process of people actually taking back the power of deciding for themselves about their own lives and environment.

Concept, film editing, production: Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger, Oliver Ressler Sound, sound editing, supervisory editor: Rudi Gottsberger Production assistant: Adriana Rivas Image editing: Markus Koessl, David Grohe Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien; Stiftung Umverteilen; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung; Solifond der Hans Böckler Stiftung; Fraktion die Linke im EU – Parlament; Bundestagsfraktion die Linke; Netzwerk e.V.

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Nothing Stops the Idea of Art Ewa Partum

A.Sz.

2012 /13, installation

When the time comes for an idea to be realised, nothing can stop it. Ewa Partum says Nothing stops the idea of art, this art the time of which has come. It is like revolutions or other social movements pursuing freedom which cannot be stopped either.

This installation is in the vein of Ewa Partum’s projects, alluding to street signs. It was straight away in her early installation The Legality of Space (1971), that she used street signs in the context of an individual’s freedom in the city space.

A considerable part of her output are important commentaries on the presence of the female subject in a public space. Her latest installation from 2012 uses a physical barrier installed horizontally on roads, streets and lanes. It forces drivers to slow down or else they risk damaging the underside of thier cars. Simultaneously, however, it is a manifestation of one’s mistrust in the street user,, who becomes an unpredictable component of a situation of motion and change. Partum indicates that art exceeds borders, does not follow any principles established once and for all; it is unpredictable in its nature, impossible to

control. The role of art goes beyond any system, avoids all limits, regulations and procedures. Time, a proper moment when a great political and/ or artistic idea is being realised is the key notion here. A.SZ.

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Working Frames Ginta Tinte Vasermane 2012, video installation

In non – narrative videos I compose and choreograph theatrical-performative scenes, which play with the relationships between bodies, architecture, the space of the frame and their limits and elasticity. While setting up human bodies both in architectural space and in the space of the video frame as sculptural elements, I stage an existence with its own logic and rules.

Movements are composed in a specific rhythm and become irrational and possible at the same time.

The arrangements of body positions are expressive of, and play with, the inner conditions of an observer placed in diverse social conditions, spaces and structures.

With light irony and poetic methods I play with a subject through staged scenarios. There’s a questioning of who we are and what we do in specific locations.

All the videos are connected to each other in order to create a narrative network and are set up in a multi – channel installation in the space.

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Press House

Neiburga

KatrĪna Neiburga

2011, 3 – channels video

My interest in Press House was born in 2009 when I was doing a light installation project for the Staro Riga light festival. Using 176 spotlights and a custom made light score I lit the dark and abandoned building, which had been built during Communist governing period as a source of light. Recently video footage from the event was scored for a music video to accompany the music of Gas of Latvia. Since then I have built up an interest in the history of Press House, in the people who once worked there – either happy with themselves or terrorized by censorship, they spent an impressive part of their lives there.

I have very special personal memories about the building as well since both my parents worked there.

During my school days I edited the school’s newspaper – Glasses which was under the care of children’s poetess and publisher Inese Zandere and was printed by Press House. Its cigarette smoke – filled cafes, huge elevators, seemingly infinite stairs and labyrinths of rooms were my childhood playgrounds. I involved a lot of former Press House employees in this project, from concierge

to director and managing editors of magazines and newspapers. Their stories restore the feel and look of the former days. The work has a poetic documentary narrative of the memories concealed in both the human mind and the abandoned building. A slow – moving camera explores spaces abandoned long ago and greets the people who once worked there. This is a video installation on three synchronized screens with surround sound, what helps to create a multi – layered story, which will let me transfer the weird, spooky and unbearable feeling that everything passes and which is the main impression one comes away with after having visiting Press House.

Sound: Andris Indāns

biographical notes Dario Azzellini

Jacek Friedrich

Mirosław Bałka

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Seline Baumgartner

Igor Kłaczyński

Kadambari Baxi

Solvita Krese

Hubert Bilewicz

Maros Krivy

Johanna Billing

Ewa Kruszewska

Maks Bochenek

Suzanne Lacy

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Gilles Lepore

Eriks Božis Łukasz Bugalski Valdis Celms Anouk De Clercq Maureen Connor Rafał Dziemidok Lisa Enzenhofer & Anna Resch (Lendlabor)

Zbigniew Libera Maciej Mądracki Michał Mądracki Katrīna Neiburga Radosław Orzeł Ewa Partum Cora Piantoni

aleksandra polisiewicz (Aleka Polis) Katarzyna Przezwańska Maja Ratyńska Oliver Ressler Martha Rosler Maciek Salamon Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger & Florian Zeyfang Jacek Staniszewski Stanza Jakub Szczęsny Aneta Szyłak Ginta Tinte Vasermane Julita Wójcik

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Dario Azzellini

Mirosław Bałka

lives and works in Berlin, New York, Caracas and Linz. He is a lecturer at the Institute for Sociology at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. He is also a writer and documentary director. He holds a PhD in political science and a PhD in sociology. His research and writing focuses on social transformation, migration and racism, self – administration and workers’ control with extensive case studies in Latin America. He has served as Associate Editor for Wiley – Blackwell (2009) and was the primary editor for Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, and the new left in Italy, for The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to Present.

He has published several books, essays and produced documentaries about social movements, the privatization of military services, migration and racism, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela.

was born in 1958 in Warsaw, he works in Otwock and Warsaw. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (1985), where at present he runs the Studio of Spatial Activities in the department of Media Art and Stage Design. As an artist he is active in the field of sculpture, drawing and video. In his work he takes up problems related to the fragility of human existence, and also to the history of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

Between the years 1985 –1989 he worked together with Marek Kijewski and Miroslaw Filonik in some of the Consciousness Neue Bieriemiennost. He has had several hundred individual exhibitions on all continents, among them numerous broad retrospectives of his work; from 1990 he has participated in the most important international exhibitions,

www.azzellini.net

Seline Baumgartner

such as: Metropolis, Berlin; Possible Worlds, London; Documenta IX, Kassel; Biennales 1 and 15 in Sydney; Rites of Passage, London; The Carnegie International 95, Pittsburgh; Distemper, Washington DC; 24th Bienal de São Paulo; 1st Liverpool Biennial; Between Cinema and a Hard Place, Tate Modern, London; SITE Santa Fe, Ostalgia The New Museum, New York, 44, 50, 51 and 55 Venice Biennale. In 2009 he carried out the project How It Is as part of the Unilever Series in Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London. He is the author of a monument to the victims of the Estonia ferry, Stockholm, 1997. He is also a member of Akademie der Kunste, Berlin.

was born in 1980 in Zürich, and is a New York based artist. Her artwork takes a critical view of social and political issues. Baumgartner uses video, sound installations and sculptures to carefully observe the patterns and grammar of individuality. By radically reducing all the aesthetic elements and splitting sound and image, the artist creates a quiet and often surreal atmosphere in her videos. Baumgartner’s works have been shown in Europe and the United States, including: Aargauer Kunsthaus, Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Museum of Fine Arts Thun (Switzerland), Museum Palazzo Ducale, (Italy), Wyspa Institute of Art, (Poland), Dumbo Arts Festival, New York. Seline Baumgartner has received awards, fellowships and artist residencies in New York, Poland and India. Her videos are included in the Goetz Collection, Munich, DE, Collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the Kanton Zürich.

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Kadambari Baxi

Hubert Bilewicz

Johanna Billing

is an architect and educator based in New York. Her collaborative practice is engaged in expanded architecture and media projects that incorporate design research, new technologies and global cultural relations. Recent work exhibited internationally includes Citizenship by Design, based on the aesthetics of international passports; Triptych – Apps, electronic spatial interfaces for trans – lingual play; Two Cities / Three Futures, an audio – visual montage revisiting the CST Station in Mumbai and Ground Zero in New York. She is a co – author of two books (with Reinhold Martin): Multi – National City: Architectural Itineraries (Actar, 2007), and Entropia (Black Dog Publishing, 2001). She is a professor of practice in architecture at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is also a founding member of WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?), a recent coalition formed to address humans rights issues in architecture.

is an art historian and academic teacher. He works at the Institute of Art History at Gdańsk University.

He has taught at the Gdańsk Academy for a dozen years. A graduate of art history (Warsaw University) and museum – management studies (Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń). He also has post – graduate diplomas in the pedagogy of talent and creativity from Nicholas Copernicus University, as well as in gender / queer studies from Jagiellonian University. He has dealt with the issue of architecture from the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. He has developed an interest in artistic pedagogy and the border between art and education. Currently, he is investigating the history of Gdańsk’s artistic milieu after 1945. He is especially interested in various (artistic and non – artistic) types of art entanglement. He has written several dozen scholarly papers, edited a book on the architect Włodzimierz Padlewski, and co – written an art handbook for middle school students (13 –15 years of age).

born in 1973, lives and works in Stockholm. Billing makes videos that weave music, movement and rhythm – placing subtle emphasis on the individual within various representations of changing societies. Connecting the modes of performance with a strictly film – like language, Billing in some places directs the participants and in others places a series of improvisations around the notion of performance and the possibility it holds to explore issues of the public and the private. The protagonists in Billing’s videos all play themselves but take part in staged situations that oscillate between documentary and fiction, as a multi – layered interpretation of a place. Recent major solo exhibitions include I’m Gonna Live Anyhow until I Die, the MAC, Belfast (2012); I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Modern Art Oxford, Moving In, Five Films, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, (2010); Tiny Movements, ACCA, Melbourne, I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Camden Art Centre (2009); Taking Turns, Kemper Museum, Kansas City; This Is How We Walk on the Moon, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2008); Forever

Changes, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Keep on Doing, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2007) and Magical World, PS. 1, New York (2006). She has participated in survey shows such as the 4th Auckland Triennial, Last Ride in a Hot Balloon, Auckland (2010); Documenta 12, Kassel (2007); Belief, Singapore Biennale (2006); the 9th Istanbul Biennial; the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005); the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). From 1998 until 2010 Johanna also ran the ‘Make it Happen’ record label with her brother Anders, publishing music and arranging live performances.

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Maks Bochenek

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Eriks Božis

Łukasz Bugalski

is an art historian, a graduate of Art History from the University of Gdańsk and the Museum of Curatorial Studies at Jagiellonian University; currently a Ph.D. Art History candidate at the University of Gdańsk, a lecturer at the Chair of Intermedia of the Gdańsk Art Academy, and a curator at the Wyspa Art Institute in Gdańsk. An art critic, and co – founder of the Modelator blog, he is also an exhibition curator: Shoenberg! at the Wyspa Institute in Gdańsk; Re – Designing the East at VKW in Stuttgart. Socrates at Duchamp’s at the Wyspa Institute in Gdańsk. He has published in Obieg, Visual Communication, Springerin.

have worked as a collaborative team based in Copenhagen since 2001.

They studied at Goldsmiths College, London and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. During the last couple of years they have worked on rewriting the history of specific places in order to rethink their meaning and at the same time attempting to produce alternatives to the prevailing political, aesthetic and theoretical dogmas.

By rewriting the common narratives and mythologies of the world, they seek to infect society with new types of stories that can move between established genres and media. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Skulpturi, Copenhagen; Beaver Projects, Copenhagen; The Aarhus Art Building, Aarhus; The Flux factory, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Alternativa, Gdańsk; Mutations III; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; FILE, SESI’ Cultural Centre, Sao Paolo; Kurs, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde. They initiated the internet projects: ‘Radiant Copenhagen’ and ‘Topographies of the Insignificant’ and are co – founders of Haandholdt, a new platform for art on mobile devices.

is an artist based in Riga. His artworks are mainly focused on perception of space and urban exploration. He works in photography and installation and has participated in many international shows: Next to Nothing (Tallinn, 2009); Contemporary art festival Survival Kit 1 (Riga, 2009); Homo Urbanus – Homo Sapiens?(Amsterdam, 2008); 11. Venice Biennial of Architecture (2008); Trajectories (National Art museum, Riga 2008); Suspense (Apollonia Art Exchanges, Strasbourg, 2005); Real Utopia (Graz, 2003); The Baltic Times (Galerie im Taxispalais, Insbruk; Contemporary Art Museum, Zagreb, 2002); Baltic Security!

(Arlanda Airport, Stockholm, 2001); N.E.W.S. (Visby, 2000); Port of Art (Kotka, 2000); Manifesta 2 (Luxembourg, 1998); Moderna Museet Projekt (Stockholm, 1998); Personal Time. Art of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 1945 –1996 (Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 1996).

is a Gdańsk denizen who since 2007, has studied Architectural and Urban planning at the Gdańsk University of Technology. Currently, he is working under Piotr Lorens, (M.Sc., Ph.D., Eng. Arch.) on his master’s thesis on the revitalisation of the ‘representative zone of Gdańsk’ Strefa Reprezentacyjna Gdańska. Studium Rewitalizacji.

He won a contest held by the City of Gdańsk, which tackled the negative aspects of the New Słowackiego Street project, for his constructive criticism of the idea itself, namely that the main artery should run through the city centre. He is committed to the work of an unofficial scientific circle at the Faculty of Architecture of GUT, dubbed the “Visual Arts Circle” . He commenced studies at the Painting Atelier of Professor Jacek Kornacki at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 2011. He has participated, among other things, in the collective exhibition Naga Prawda (Naked Truth) in 2012. .

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Valdis Celms

Anouk De Clercq

is an artist and designer and the author of kinetic art and visionary environmental projects in the 1970’s in Latvia. Together with a few other like – minded fellows in the ‘70’s he did projects which contained the most innovative and avant – garde reflections in the Latvian art of that period. Not only visuality, but also references to constructivist and environmental art, along with theoretical and conceptually justified design were the basis of these works. Valdis Celms’ works have simultaneously encompassed visionary and multifunctional proposals – sculptures of light / centres organising urban space which generated the movement and visual experience of the contemporary city and

people, and plans for utopian ideas to be realised in the public space.

They combined visuals and complex technological solutions – both grounded in concept and theory.

Both his individual works, as well as the series, created together with the informal Emmisionist group – were a few of the rare examples of the actual reflection and analysis of the social and urban context during the Socialist period in Latvia. With this interest they reveal surprising parallels with the Situationists’ ideas from a decade earlier.

born in 1971 in Ghent. Studied piano in Ghent and film at the Sint Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design. Her films explore the audiovisual potential of computer language to create possible worlds, many of which have a strongly architectonic character.

She has received several awards, including an award from the Future Imprint International Animation Competition, Taipei (2003), the International Backup Award of New Media in Film, Weimar (2004), and the Illy Prize at Art Brussels (2005). Her works have been shown in the Tate Modern, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Transmediale, Ars Electronica, Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, among others. Anouk De Clercq is affiliated with KASK, the School of Arts University College, Ghent as an artistic researcher.

She lives and works in Brussels.

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Maureen Connor

Rafał Dziemidok

lives and works in New York. Her work combines installation, video, interior design, ethnography, human resources, feminism, and social justice. Personnel, her project about the workplace (since 2000), and the collective: the Institute for Wishful Thinking (IWT) (since 2008) produce interventions that explore the attitudes and needs of both individuals and institutions. Venues have included Momenta Art, Brooklyn; the Austrian Cultural Institute, NY; Akbank, Istanbul; Alternative and the Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland; IASPIS, Stockholm; Tapies Foundation, Barcelona; and the Queens Museum of Art, NY, among others. The Institute for Wishful Thinking, currently a self – declared Artist – in – Residence for the US Government she is working to place artists-in-residence in as many government agencies and departments as possible. Her feminist work from the 1980 s and ‘90s, has been includ-

ed in numerous publications and exhibited in venues such as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Mass MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; the Museo Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MAK, Vienna; Porticus, Frankfurt; ICA, Philadelphia; the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Biennial, among many others. She has been funded by Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts among others. Professor of Art at Queens College, CUNY since 1990 she is now Co – Director of a pilot MFA program in Art and Social Practice in collaboration with the Queens Museum of Art. http://www.maureenconnor.net http://theiwt.com

was born in 1971. He is an independent dancer, actor and choreographer,. He collaborates with various troupes such as the Dada von Bzdulow, a dance theatre in Gdansk (Poland), and Yvette Bozsik (Hungary). Since 1997, he has been creating solo performances (Departure – Arrival, Separateness, Yes, yes, yes, yes etc.) and duets (with Patrycja Kujawska, Dreams of the Fleecy River with Magdalena Jedra, etc). Dziemidok participates in various art projects (File 01 with Made Inc., Arrow of Time with Dorota Brodowska and Miroslaw Zbrojewicz, Several Witty Observations Dada von Bzdulow, 2moreless TRAVA). His choreographies have been presented in numerous contemporary performance spaces as well as in festivals in Poland and abroad. The artist dances and choreographs for movies and theatre plays. In 2007 he received a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Since 2005, he has been a member of the artistic group KONCENTRAT, whose latest play, ‘Lamentacje’ , premiered at the 11th Body / Mind Contemporary Dance Festival in Warsaw (Poland, 2012).

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Lisa Enzenhofer & Anna Resch (Lendlabor)

Jacek Friedrich

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

MA, Ph.D. He graduated from the Art History department at Jagiellonian University; he works at the Art History Institute at Gdańsk University. His studies concentrate on the relationship between art and politics, ideology and social life. He has written more than 100 scholarly and popular – science papers in Poland and abroad, including several books, e.g. Gdańskie zabytki architektury końca XVIII wieku, Gdańsk University Publishing House, Gdańsk 1995 (2nd. edition 1997); Neue Stadt in altem Gewand. Der Wiederaufbau von Danzig 1945 –1960, Böhl Verlag, Köln – Weimar – wien 2012; Walka obrazów. Przedstawienia wobec idei w Wolnym Mieście Gdańsku, Słowo / Obraz / Terytoria, Gdańsk 2013 (in progress). He also came up with the idea for and was the co – creator of the exhibition and catalogue: Niechciane dziedzictwo.

Różne oblicza architektury nowoczesnej w Gdańsku i Sopocie, Laznia Contemporary Art Centre, Gdańsk 2005.

is a London based artist. In 2012, he had two solo shows featuring new commissioned work The Freedom Of Speech Itself at The Showroom, London and The Whole Truth at CASCO, Utrecht. His ongoing project Aural Contract has been recently exhibited at Arnolfini, Bristol (2013) and the Taipei Biennial (2012). Other works include Model Court presented at the Chisenhale Gallery, London (2011) and Marches for Artangel, London (2008). His hybridized practice means that he has written for Cabinet Magazine and the 10th Sharjah Biennial and is part of the group running the arts space Batroun Projects in North Lebanon. Abu Hamdan is a Ph.D. candidate and tutor at the department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College.

are two young architects who are focused on urban planning and research into public space and vacancy. They are the founders of Lendlabour, which is a free collective based in Lend, Graz. For the diploma thesis Lendlabor – from vacancy to resource completed in February 2012 they received the GAD Award for the 3rd best diploma thesis from the University of Technology, Graz, 2012 and the Rudolf Wurzer Price for spatial planning 2012 (advised by the University of Technology, Vienna). From March 2012 on they have presented their diploma thesis at two symposiums in Graz and participated at the street festival Lendwirbel, Graz, with the urban art Project Leer(t)räume. Their main current project is the curation of the exhibition stadt.leerstand.stadt featuring the topic ‘from vacancy to resource’ as well as the re – use of vacant spaces to create new ideas, always in the context of the collective memory of the city and the main thesis of Lendlabor: “100% recycling first, then rebuilding” . The opportunity to connect the individual blocks of vacancy, economic and social interests expands their issue

to extend design to the social – human – dimension. They also teach at the University of Technology, Graz, and are on the Faculty of Architecture at the Institute for Architecture and Landscape as University Assistants. From June 2012 on they will be cooperating with the City Planning Department of Graz on developing a new urban planning tool focused on vacancy in the city

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Igor Kłaczyński

Solvita Krese

Maros Krivy

is an art curator and critic based in Riga. Since 2000 she has been the director of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (LCCA).

Since 2009 she has initiated and curated the annual Contemporary Art Festival “Survival kit” . She is curator of a number of large scale international exhibitions – Mobile museum (2007); Urbanologic (2007); Archeology of reality (2006); Trassepassers. Contemporary art from 80ties at the National Art museum in Riga (2005); The body in Baltic photography, Berlin (2005); Latvian participation at the 26th Bienal de São Paulo biennale (2004); co-curator of the exhibition Faster than history, Kiasma, Helsinki (2004); re:public, Riga (2003). She is among the initiators and co – organizers of two large scale transnational art projects and research platforms: republicart (2003 – 2005) – that explores and promotes interventionist and activist practices of public art and transform (2005 – 2008) – research into political and artistic practices of institutional critique.

is an Invitational Professor of Urban Studies in the Faculty of Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. He obtained a Ph.D. in Urban Studies from the University of Helsinki and graduated with degrees in Sociology (Charles University, Prague) and Photography (Silesian Univesity, Opava). He had solo exhibitions in Krakow (2011) and Tallinn (2013) and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. Maros was the winner of the sittcomm.award (2011). His publications include “Don’t plan! The use of the notion of ‘culture’ in transforming obsolete industrial space” (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2012) and “Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of architecture in the works of Gordon Matta – Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher” (The Journal of Architecture, 2010).

born in 1978 in Tarnobrzeg (Poland), he began his career as a musician and composer in 1997. He partakes in various progressive and experimental music projects. In 2003 he composed music for a theatre play entitled Dzieci energii directed by Jakub Palacz. He began his cinematic work in 2005, writing music for an experimental short movie Czuwex directed by Maciej and Michal Madracki, followed by Pawel Orwat’s Wyrok and Slawomir Shuty’s Panoptykon . He composed the soundtrack for an animated film ‘Kto by pomyslal’ by Ewa Borysewicz, which won the best animation award at the 29th festival in Koszalin and was presented at numerous international festivals. He is also in charge of the soundtrack of The Work of Machines , a documentary movie, using sounds collected in situ. The film won the Grand Prix in the international competition at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film (FID). In 2009, he started a long – term collaboration with Wilhelm Sasnal. He created the sound track for Swineherd , Sasnal’s first feature movie, and his subsequent productions: ‘Opad’ (2010)

and Kacper (2010). Their latest collaboration, It looks pretty from a distance’, won best Polish film in 2011 at the New Horizons festival in Wrocław (Poland) and was included in the official competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012.

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Ewa Kruszewska

Suzanne Lacy

Gilles Lepore

an architect, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Warsaw University of Technology, distinguished in 2004 (together with Jarosław Kozakiewicz) in the competition for the design of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toruń and in 2010 (in co-operation with an architect Kazimierz Górski) in the competition for the design of The Ulm Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in the Sub-Carpathian Region at a place of Markowa. She participated (with J. Kozakiewicz) in the Koncert Życzeń (Request Show) exhibition in Zamek Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2005).

Since 2003, she has run her own studio of architectural design.

is the Chair of the Graduate Public Practice Program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Her work includes installations, video, and large – scale performances that frequently focus on social themes.

Recent work: The Tattooed Skeleton, at the Museo Nacional Centro Reina Sofia, Anyang Women’s Agenda, in Korea, The Skin of Memory Revisited at the Medellin Biennale and Three Weeks in January for Silver Action for the Tate Modern. Also known for her writing, Lacy edited the influential Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, published in 1995 by Bay Press and has recently released Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974 – 2007 by Duke University Press.

Suzanne Lacy: Spaces Between is a monograph by Sharon Irish, published by the University of Minnesota Press.

born in Porrentruy (Switzerland).

He is a graphic designer / film author / director. Having graduated from Ecole d’Arts Appliqués de Bienne (Switzerland), he received, in 2002, the Federal Design Scholarship and an ‘atelier’ in Krakow (Poland). In 2003, he shot his first short film, THE CAGE (an animated film produced in Jerzy Kucia’s atelier in Krakow), presented at more than 30 festivals throughout the world, it received various awards and was shown in contemporary art spaces (CCCB, Barcelona (Spain) / Musée des Beaux – Arts, Moutier (Switzerland) etc.). Between 2004 – 2005 he did art scholarship on the subject of Swiss French – speaking cantons, has an atelier in Brussels (Belgium), he produced a book of illustrations, which in 2008 received the Alphonse Mucha Award at the biennale of graphic design in Brno, Czech Republic. Lepore regularly works on art projects and collaborates with Stéphane Montavon and Gilles Aubry on the projects Belju (2009, received the Mediaprojects Scholarship of the Federal Office of Culture) and Cairo Talking Heads (Les Ecoutis le caire, 2010). In prepara-

tion with Stéphane Montavon and Antoine Chessex he produced: ‘Bolidage’ (2013), a performance project for tuned cars and a pipe organ with the festival Belluard Bollwerk International in Fribourg (Switzerland); ‘L’Appeau’ , an audiovisual opera project is scheduled to see the light of day in 2014. In 2008, Gilles Lepore joins Maciej and Michal Madracki (Poland) under the moniker MML, to create experimental films. The most recent film of which is: The Work of Machines (Praca Maszyn, 2010), which won the Grand Prix of the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film (FID) as part of the international competition.

He works in Boécourt (Switzerland) and Krakow (Poland).

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Zbigniew Libera

Maciej Mądracki

is one of the most interesting and important Polish artists. His works – photography, videos, installations, objects and drawings – piercingly and subversively (in an intellectual way) play with the stereotypes of contemporary culture. His shocking video pieces from the ‘80 s (among others Intimate Rites and Mystical Perseverance) preceded body art by 10 years. In the mid-‘90s, Libera began to create Correcting Devices – objects which are modifications of products which already exist – objects of mass consumption (among others Universal Penis Expander and Body Master. A Play Kit For Children). He also designs toys that he has transformed – works that reveal the mechanisms of upbringing, education and cultural condi-

tioning, the most famous of which is Lego Concentration Camp. From that moment on, he was one of the pillars of critical art, (also in the institutional sense). Despite the development of his career he is still closely connected with independent circles. In recent years he has also been preoccupied with photography, especially the specificity of press photography and the ways in which the media shape our visual memory and manipulate the image of history (works from the series Positives and Masters, 2003).

born in 1984 in Krakow (Poland), he graduated from the Institute of Audiovisual Arts, of Jagiellonian University, and currently studies in the Krzysztof Kieslowski film school in Katowice (Poland). He is the author of numerous short documentaries and fictional movies. In 2006 and 2007 he shot a report from the Krakow Film Festival, which was presented at the 47th edition of the aforementioned festival. Maciej Madracki regularly works as an assistant director on various productions and since 2010 has been a part of the MML collective together with his brother, Michal Madracki, and Gilles Lepore. Their first collaboration was ‘The Work of Machines’ , a documentary film which premiered at the Marseille Festival of Documen-

tary Film (FID, 2010) and received the Grand Prix in the international competition. His thesis film, ‘Wild Planets’ , was included in the competition of the most recent New Horizons festival in Wroclaw (Poland), and had its international premiere in Paris (France) at the International Festival Signes de Nuit in 2012. This year he received a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. He is currently working on a new film project with the MML collective, to be filmed in 2013 in Morocco.

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Michał Mądracki

KatrĪna Neiburga

born in 1979 in Krakow (Poland).

He is a writer, scriptwriter and author of various literary forms, as well as a graduate of Jagiellonian University. In 2003, he presented a multidisciplinary project entitled ‘Died, live and died’ , in collaboration with Anne Pery, a photographer from France, in which he stages the performance ‘Borsuk Journey’ (Berlin, Paris, Marseille) which was later featured in the festival “Month of photography_2003” in Krakow.

Between 2003 and 2005 he worked on the project ‘Kurhan poetyczny’ , mixing sculpture with literature.

In 2005 he directed his first short film, ‘The Pilgrim’ , shown at the 10th ‘Modern Polish Cinema’ festival in Wroclaw and at the European travelling festival ‘Train Europe 2006’ (Berlin, Maribor, Pecs, Kosice,

Krakow). In 2006 Michal Madracki published a novel, ‘Juggler’ , and wrote a theatre play ‘Requiem for a broken pipe’ (2008). The texts were included in various collective publications. He also writes numerous screenplays for short films produced by the Krzysztof Kieslowski film school in Katowice (Poland). In 2010 he collaborated with the MML collective to create ‘The Work of Machines’ , a documentary film which received the Grand Prix in the international competition at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film (FID, 2010). He is currently working on a new film project with the MML collective, to be filmed in 2013 in Morocco.

born in 1978, is one of the most well – known figures in video art in Latvia. Her works consistently reflect both what it means to be human as a general condition as well as what it means to be human at a certain point in time. Pulled through a humanistic filter, Katrīna Neiburga’s art expresses to the viewer that which is close and comprehensible: domesticity, revelry, loneliness, femininity, sorrow and happiness. She also uses her montage skills as a VJ, working on performances with the Latvian electronic – music group, Latvijas Gāze.

Parallel to her exhibition work, she continues to work in the field of stage design. In 2009, Katrīna Neiburga received the Purvītis Award – a notable honor in Latvian visual art; indeed, she has gone down in history as the very first laureate of

the newly – established award. Neiburga received the award for two video works – Topology 29 (2007) and Solitude (2007). The latter was exhibited at Moscow’s 2nd Contemporary Art Biennial and is now part of the collection at Finland’s Contemporary Art Museum, KIASMA. Neiburga’s works have been well – received in Scandinavia, resulting in exhibition opportunities and even a nomination in 2008 for the largest Northern – European art award – ARS FENNICA. Katrīna Neiburga studied in the B.A. and M.A. programs at the Latvian Academy of Art’s Department of Visual Communications (until 2002), and also spent a year at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Art (1999 – 2000).

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Radosław Orzeł

Ewa Partum

Cora Piantoni

Aleksandra Polisiewicz (Aleka Polis)

is a journalist, editor of cultural websites. Since 2010, he is professionally linked to the Wyspa Art ­Institute. Co-editor of a radio broadcast Numery pierwsze. A member of the Wars poetic group and the musical – visual concept Projekt 2 sztuki. He was the laureate of a national competition held by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily (Moje 20 lat wolności), organised to mark the anniversary of the first free election in ­post-war Poland which took place on 4 June 1989.

was born at Grodzisk Mazowiecki in 1945, she belongs to the elite group of the most important figures of Polish conceptual art. She debuted with her first conceptual works as early as 1965. Her work is pioneering in the field of Polish feminist art, especially as an analysis of the female subject in a public space. Since 1983, Partum has lived and worked in Berlin. She has participated in many important exhibitions of contemporary art, such as Iconoclash (ZKM Karlsruhe), Intense Proximity, Paris Triennial (Palais de Tokyo, Parisż), Wack! Art of Feminist Revolution (MoCA w Los Angeles and MoMA PS1 in New York), Manifesta 7 a Rovereto, and Sydney Biennial and many others. Partum’s works are in the collections of many important contemporary art institutions, such as Tate Modern, Kontakt.

Art Collection Erste Group / Erste Foundation, Centre de Georges Pompidou, Generali Foundation, and – in Poland: inter alia, in the collections of the Museum of Art in Łódź, the National Museum in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Wyspa Progress Foundation in Gdańsk and the Contemporary Museum in Wrocław.

was born in 1975 in Munich (Germany). Artist, photographer and filmmaker, who works with oral history and re – enactment. Through extensive research, she has focused on the end of the Cold War and the political changes in Eastern Europe. She is interested in political situations and their effect on people’s everyday life, on survival strategies and resistance movements. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich and the University of Art and Design, Zurich where she lives and works.

She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows internationally, in Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany, Holland and Switzerland.

In 2004 she was awarded the Bavarian State Sponsorship Award for Photography and in 2010 the HWP – Grant by the Bavarian Ministry for Research and Art and was as artist – in – residence at Klenova / CZ, Dresden and at WYSPA, Gdansk.

a graduate of the Art Institute of Silesian University in Cieszyn, a post-graduate student of Art University in Poznań. She makes videos, documentary films, animation, dealing with digital art, performance and painting. She is the author of the virtual reconstruction of Warsaw, in accordance to unrealised Nazi plans, called Wartopia. Her (post)critical works open the field for reflection on how an identity is constructed in a space controlled by widely understood power. Aleka Polis’s works evade any propaganda-oriented interpretations; they are her quest for critical strategies with a full awareness of a possible failure.

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Katarzyna Przezwańska

Maja Ratyńska

born in 1984 in Warsaw. In her work she makes reference to modernism in a way that has never been seen in Polish art up until now. In contrast to the Polish artists who debuted in around the year 2000, Przezwańska no longer sees modernism as aesthetic fetishism, the picturesque ruins of a fallen utopia, or a sentimental journey to the concrete – gray lands of her childhood years. Just the contrary: Przezwańska’s work refers to modernism in its heroic period, still filled with optimism, hope and… sunny colors. In this regard, it extends to include architecture directed towards the individual, adapted to their personal needs, and lays claim to totality. Przezwańska’s work allows us to view from a distance the hold in which Polish public space finds itself. Her most lively characters are the shells of socialist – modernism, which do not allow themselves to be forgotten:

demolished and decaying, burdened with the memories of Communism, but most of all, consistently ignored by historical conservators, they function as a myth, one which cannot be filled with content. On the other hand, Poland’s architectural landscape also includes the universal architectural elements of glass and steel; the style – less style of the global village. Against the backdrop of the outlined architectural map and now the proposals of Katarzyna Przezwańska, there is potential which cannot be ignored.

is a designer interested in artistic recycling and eco – education who holds a M.A. from the Art Academy in Gdańsk, and was a former resident of Artists’ Colony at Gdańsk Shipyard. As Design Studio MRKK – together with architect Konrad Zientara – they claimed: We are interested in broadly understood space and human life environment, and so we see architecture, design and art as elements of the same domain. We want our space to be beautiful and comfortable, also simple, and to be a part of the ecosystem.

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Oliver Ressler

Martha Rosler

lives and works in Vienna and produces exhibitions, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, global warming, as well as forms of resistance and social alternatives.

His projects have been featured in solo exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Kunstraum at the University of Lüneburg; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Krakow and The Cube Project Space, Taipei. Ressler has participated in more than 200 group exhibitions, including the MASSMoCA, USA; the Itaú Cultural Institute, Sao Paulo; the Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdańsk; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven and at biennials in Prague, Seville,

Moscow, Taipei, Lyon and Gyumri. A retrospective of his 15 films is taking place at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève throughout 2013. A travelling show on the financial crisis, Its the Political Economy, Stupid, co – curated with Gregory Sholette, is currently on display at Pori Art Museum in Finland. www.ressler.at

is an artist working in multiple media, including photography, video, performance and installation. Her work is often centred on the public sphere and landscapes of everyday life – actual and virtual – especially as they affect women. Projects have focused on housing and architecture, on the one hand, and sites of passage and systems of transportation, on the other. Other works, from bus tours to sculptural recreations of architectural details, are excavations of urban history. She has for many years produced works on war and the “national security climate,” connecting everyday experiences at home with the conduct of war abroad. In video, photo-montage, public posters, and collaborative actions she has challenged the precepts of the national security state. Rosler has had numerous solo exhibitions. An archive exhibition of her ground-breaking 1989 New York exhibition cycle If You Lived Here… on housing, homelessness, and the urban environment, was recently shown in New York, Utrecht, and Barcelona. The Martha Rosler Library, consisting of over 7500 books from Rosler’s collec-

tion, toured nationally and internationally (2005 – 2009). Rosler was a founding member of United Nations Plaza School, Anton Vidokle’s project in Berlin, Mexico City, and New York. In November 2012 she conducted the Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Maciek Salamon

Lisa Schmidt – Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger, & Florian Zeyfang

Jacek Staniszewski

was born in 1984 in Gdańsk (Poland). A Man of Many Talents: a visual artist, freelance graphic designer, illustrator, he is also the founder, vocalist and songwriter of Gówno (the first Polish rodeo/ punk rock band). He also creates animated films and music videos and has won a few prizes for his work including: Northernawaves (Iceland), Stranger Award (Amsterdam), Con Can (Tokio). He is also a member of the Krecha art group (making an art zine “Krecha”). He also runs his own gallery: Galeria Gablotka in the Gdańsk shipyard. He also occasionally paints and creates installations and sculptures.

are architects and live in Vienna; Florian Zeyfang is an artist from Berlin. They have collaborated on exhibitions and projects since 2001.

Within the artist / architect / curator collective RAIN they curated several exhibitions, including 4D – 4 Dimensions, 4 Decades (Havana Biennial 2003); Supermover (Fotofest – Houston, 2002); HALLWAY (MAK – Vienna 2001); This Is My House (MAK: Schindler House Center for Art and Architecture – Vienna / Mackay Appts – Los Angeles, 2001). Since 2008, Schmidt – Colinet, Schmoeger, and Zeyfang have conceived sculptural and architectonical installations for group and solo exhibitions, working with wood, concrete, slide projection, video, and other materials. Together with Eugenio Valdes Figueroa, they published Pabellon Cuba, an extensive reader on art, architecture and film in Cuba (Berlin: b_books, 2008).

was born in 1957, he graduated from the Faculty of Applied Graphic Art at the Gdańsk Academy, where he studied in the years 1977 – 84. Currently, he has the degree of Associate Professor, PhD and runs his own atelier at the Faculty of Applied Graphic Art at the same Academy in Gdańsk. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad. In the years 1987 – 94, he presented his works in the series of solo exhibits: Dread Object (1987 – S Gallery, Sopot and Promocyjna Gallery, Warsaw; 1989 – Wostock Gallery, West Berlin, and MCK in Leningrad; 1994 – PGS, Sopot and Delikatesy Avantgarde in Gdańsk). He also participated in group exhibitions: 1985 – Young Artists from Gdańsk at the Institute for Polish Culture, Paris; 1988 – Radical Realism/ Concrete Abstration National Museum, Warsaw; 1991– Magii and Mys-

www.macieksalamon.com

tics Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 1994 – Skarbek / Staniszewski / Visconti Tacheles Gallery, Berlin; 1998 – The View from Poland African Window Museum, Pretoria (Republic of South Africa). Since 1986, he has made over 500 posters for exhibitions, theatre performances and concerts. He has designed record and CD covers for music bands and soloists, such as: Bielizna, Apteka, Blenders, Ścianka, Mordy, Kury, Łoskot, Leszek Możdżer, Olo Walicki Kaszebe. In 1998, his 3 projects of the series: Wild Life Is Us – Dzikie Życie to My were presented on 100 hoardings across Warsaw. His works are in the collections of, inter alia: National Museum in Gdańsk (the contemporary art branch), The State Gallery of Art in Sopot.

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Stanza

Jakub Szczęsny

is an internationally recognised artist, who has been exhibiting worldwide since 1984. Recurring themes throughout his career include: the urban landscape, surveillance culture, privacy and alienation in the city. Stanza is interested in the patterns we leave behind as well as real time networked events that can be re – imagined and sourced for information. His mediums include; generative artworks, paintings, installations and public artworks. His works of art have won prestigious painting prizes and twenty international prizes and art awards including: Vidalife 6.0 (First Prize), SeNef (Grand Prix), Videobrasil (First Prize). Stanza’s art has also been rewarded with a prestigious Nesta Dreamtime Award, an Arts Humani-

ties Creative Fellowship and a Clark bursary award. His artworks have been exhibited globally with over fifty exhibitions including: Venice Biennale: Victoria Albert Museum, Tate Britain, Mundo Urbano Madrid, New Forest Pavilion Artsway, State Museum, Novorsibirsk, Biennale of Sydney, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo Mexico, Plymouth Arts Centre, ICA London, Sao Paulo Biennale. Educated in fine art at Goldsmiths College in the early Eighties he later went on to study at Greenwich University and Central Saint Martin’s Art College London.

Stanza returned to Goldsmiths College as an AHRC arts research fellow. www.stanza.co.uk

is an architect with a lot of experience in advertising and press illustration. Co – founder of Centrala, a designer cooperative from Warsaw. While maintaining a regular commission – based practice he is involved in many public space projects that address the hidden conflicts in various locations in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. He was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude and currently teaches in the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts where he is part of the Design department and in the Warsaw Institute of Technology, in the Architecture department.

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Aneta Szyłak

Ginta Tinte Vasermane

is a curator and writer, co – founder and currently the director of the Wyspa Institute of Art and since 2010 the artistic director of Alternativa. After co – founding and running the Laznia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art (1998 – 2001) she pursued a career as an independent curator and researcher.

Since 2004 she has been responsible for running Wyspa – the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture – in the Gdansk Shipyard. In 2005, she received the Jerzy Stajuda Award “for independent and uncompromising curatorial practice” . Szylak has a long interest in located practice and her exhibitions are characterized by a strong response to cultural, political, social, architectural and institutional particularities and include: Materiality for Alternativa (with Arne Hendriks, Ines Moreira and Leire Vergara 2012), Buildings and Remnants (Fabrika Asa, Porto, 2012 with Ines Moreira); Estrangement for Alternativa (with Hiwa K, 2011); Labor and Leisure for Alternativa (2011); Estrangement (with Hiwa K) at the Showroom, London (2010); Over and Over Again at the

Centennial Hall, Wroclaw (2009); Chosen in the Digital Art Lab in Holon (with Galit Eilat); Translate: The Impossible Collection at Wyspa (2008); Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space at Wyspa, You won’t feel a thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia in Kunsthaus Dresden’ and Artur Zmijewski: Selected Works at Wyspa (all in 2006); Dockwatchers (2005, Wyspa); Palimpsest Museum (2004, Lodz Biennale); Health & Safety (2004, Wyspa); Architectures of Gender (2003, SculptureCenter, New York) and others. She has taught and lectured at many art institutions and universities including the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem, New School University, Queens College and New York University, Florida Atlantic University, Goldsmith College in London, Copenhagen University, and worked as a guest professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste in Mainz, Germany. Currently she is finalizing her Ph.D. thesis entitled Curating Context. The Palimpsest at Goldsmiths College in London and Copenhagen Doctoral School, Copenhagen University.

born in Latvia, an Amsterdam – based artist. She received her M.A. from the Netherlands Film Academy(2012) and B.F.A. from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy(2010). Solo exhibitions include Nomad Window, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany (2012); and Working Frames, Service Garage, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2012). She has been nominated for Rene Coelho prize (2010) by the Dutch Media Art Institute and participated in a residency at Wall house, Groningen. She also works in the field of motion picture, sculpture, architecture, performance, and social commentary. www.gintatinte.info

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Julita Wójcik

born in 1971 in Gdańsk, she lives and works there. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. This year, she received the Paszport POLITYKI and the SZTORM ROKU 2012 awards. She received grants from the Minister of culture in 1995 / 6; 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007. She was a grantee of the Foundation of Culture in 2001. She has had residencies, among others, at Art in General, New York, USA in 2006 and Visegrad Found 2010. Her works are in the following public collections: the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Art in Łódź, the National Museum in Warsaw, the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, the Zachęta of Contemporary Art in Szczecin, HorseCross in Perth, Scotland, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. Wójcik is known as a chronicler of provincial household aesthetics.

Referring to everyday life, she blurs the border between reality and art in her work. The artist’s works are colourful and her effects are achieved by minimal means, such as Potato Peeling (2001) in a gallery or the reading of Strzemiński’s The-

ory of Vision aloud to cattle in the field (A Mystical Landscape, 2007).

Sculptures featuring prefabricated buildings are the product of an allegedly female activity: crocheting.

Crocheting, sweeping, gardening, installing mini – ponds in public places, and building feeding trays or flying kites are not associated with art directly but with the experiences of the daily life of a bygone epoch, now passing into oblivion. These simple activities gain in rank only when inscribed in an artistic context, which ennobles them, on the one hand, and deprives art of its elite value, on the other. By blurring the border between the artistic and the mundane, Wójcik offers us a humorous image of the human condition.

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Alternativa

Artistic Director Aneta Szyłak Curatorial Team Aneta Szyłak, Solvita Krese, Maks Bochenek, Jacek Friedrich, Hubert Bilewicz Production Maks Bochenek Public relations Radosław Orzeł, Malwina Toczek Publications Krzysztof Gutfrański, Aleksandra Grzonkowska, Adam Mandziejewski Graphic design Tomasz Bersz organization office Zuzanna Malicka, Małgorzata Zamorska-Misztal Archive Mirosław Górczyński

Alternativa Guidebook

Volunteers and trainees Klaudia Jarecka, Kasia ­Lincer, ­Dagny Liszek, Katarzyna ­Machulska, Zuzanna Piwnik Technical support ERROR Exhibition staff Dorota Kucharczyk, Przemysław Kędzierski, Adam ­Mandziejewski, Karolina Pochwatka, Joanna Kawicka

ISBN 978-83-935174-3-5 Gdańsk 2013 Wyspa Progress Foundation – Wyspa Institute of Art ul. Doki 1 / 145 b, 80 – 958 Gdańsk www.wyspa.art.pl

Work’s captions

(unless otherwise noted)

Aneta Szyłak, Mirosław Górczyński, Adam Mandziejewski, artyści i kuratorzy Editor-in-chief of Alternativa Editions Krzysztof Gutfrański Editors Aleksandra Grzonkowska, Adam Mandziejewski, Aneta Szyłak English version proofreading Judson Hamilton Translations Marzena B. Guzowska Graphic design and DTP Tomasz Bersz

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Organizer

Partners of Mirosław Bałka Transplantation projektu

Partner of the Educational Program Honorary Patronage

Partner of the Shipyard Dance

Partners Partner of the Views of Power

Media Patron v

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