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Warsawa Field Trips
Ghost-places are those classical stages haunted by
the return of the displaced. Either ruins or shopping malls - ghosts
have a fondness for the theatrical scenery of museum-like history
just as much as for the landscape created by neoliberalistic architecture.
We will go on excursions with our Warsaw colleagues into the dark
forest, in the pitch black of night at places where the excluded
or illegal meet, and to traumatized places, whose story is hardly
tellable.
No.1 The Forest / No.2
The Night / No.3 Jarmark Europa 1 & Sir
Maniek / No.4 Jarmark Europa 2: Trip to Asia
/ No.5 The Warsaw Ghetto / No.6
Memory Places / No.7 Warsaw`s Height
Photo: Hanna Buratowsky
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No.1 The
Forest
A Remake by Paweł Althamer
27. August, 10 p.m
In 1993, Paweł Althamer received a diploma from
the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw,
where he studied under Grzegorz Kowalski. For his diploma project,
Althamer smoked three funny cigarettes, had strange sensations,
escaped from the studio, left the academy, took a bus to the nearest
forest, got undressed and ran into the woods. Join him at his remake.
Althamer is a sculptor, performance artist,
creator of installations and video artist. He lives in Praga, Warsaw.
Althamer knows the city very well: by walking all over town, by
documenting the artistic activities of area residents, and through
his projects in cooperation with neighbours. He even lived for a
short while in a tree-house, erected opposite the windows of Foksal
Gallery Foundation.
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| House in the Tree, Paweł Althamer,
2001, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw |
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No.2 The Night
A night tour through the city that alters one's state of awareness
by Klaus Weber
30. August 10 p.m.
Klaus Weber lives in Berlin. He creates installations, performances,
and art in public spaces. His projects in public spaces are temporary,
simulated accidents that work on social imagination. Two of his
projects:
- the fungoid sculpture Brutstube in Berlin is about the
sidewalk mushroom, a mushroom that can generate enough power to
lift asphalt pavement. Weber experimented with the cultivation
of this mushroom and set up a public laboratory for 6 months,
collecting, archiving, and cultivating spores and later distributing
them throughout the city - with a particular emphasis on the shiny
sterile new quarters of Potsdamer Platz.
- the Fountain Loma Dr / W 6th St. is an one-day-only
public fountain, in which a car was apparently driven into a fire
hydrant in downtown Los Angeles. The hydrant was opened by remote
control and ejected a vertical water jet at ten-minute intervals.
Two retired police officers were hired to direct passers-by and
traffic, as if there had been a real accident.
Klaus Weber will also give a talk ( 28. August 6 p.m.) and presentation
on his projects.
www.k-weber.com
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No.3 Jarmark Europa
1 & Sir Maniek
(a self-declared fantasy architect)
by Mikołaj Długosz
27. August, 5 a.m.
28. August, 5 a.m.
'Jarmark Europa' is a huge market-place located in the national
stadium of Warsaw. According to CBl (Centralne Biuro Śledcze,
the Polish secret service for internal affairs) there is a turnover
of over 12 billion zlotis (ca. 3.13 billion euros) every year, and
there are 20 thousand people either buying or selling things in
the market. The traders come from several countries including Lithuania,
the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Georgia,
Pakistan and Senegal. The stadium was built in 1955, from the debris
left over from the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In the 1960s and 1970s
it was used by the communist regime for several propaganda mass
events. In 1989 the market was established there by the Damis corporation.
Mikołaj Długosz,
photographer, especially interested in discovering the area in which
he was born and still lives - Warsaw.
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No.4 Jarmark Europa 2:
Trip to Asia
by Anna Gajewska and Joanna Warsza
27. August, 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.
Many of the traders at Jarmark Europa are Vietnamese: immigrants
who are almost invisible in the daily life of Warsaw. This tour
will take us to their world, starting at the Powisle tram station
where you will be given a map, an mp3 player with instructions to
follow, and a big plastic bag filled with underwear to be delivered
to one of the bazaar's stalls. A series of meetings, talks, situations,
and misunderstandings will occur, and the excursion will end up
in a Buddhist temple around the corner. A trip to Asia is aimed
at showing up our lack of knowledge about the local Vietnamese presence.
Trip to Asia Jarmark Europa, Warsaw 2006, Photo
by Adam Sienkiewicz
Anna Gajewska, actress, film director and author of Warszawiacy
(Warsawers), a documentary about the Vietnamese community in Warsaw.
Joanna Warsza, dance critic, performance curator, producer of the
Akcje events in TR Warszawa (2005/06).
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No.5 The Warsaw Ghetto
by Piotr Rypson
27.August, 11 a.m.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established
by Nazi Germany in the General Gouvernement during World War II.
In the three years of its existence, starvation, disease and deportations
to concentration camps and extermination camps decimated the population
of the ghetto from an estimated 450,000 to 37,000. The Warsaw Ghetto
was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the first mass
uprisings against Nazi occupation in Europe.
Piotr Rypson is an author, curator, and art critic who lives in
Warsaw. His publications include sound cassette editions of Polish
Futurist Poetry and documentary film scenarios on the history of
human signs and visual language. His books include Pyramids, Suns,
Labyrinths: Polish Baroque Visual Poetry, Warsaw, 2000; Books
and Pages: Avantgarde and Artists' Books in Poland in the 20th Century,
Warsaw, 2000; Krzysztof Wodiczko: Public Art, Warsaw, 1995.
He also hosts a TV program on the visual arts, and curates of numerous
exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
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No.6 Memory Places
by Łukasz Gorczyca
04. September, 2 p.m.
05. September, 2 p.m.
Having been virtually annihilated in the middle of the 20th century,
the city of Warsaw was reborn in a totally different, modern guise.
We take a walk here to hidden places, cold-war shelters, and the
ghost-inhabited spaces of pre-war Warsaw in the middle of the city.
Łukasz Gorczyca lives in Warsaw. He is an art critic and,
together with Micha¸ Kaczyński, runs the Raster Gallery,
an independent art space established in 2001, exhibiting and representing
emerging artists from Poland and abroad. Raster's program is based
not merely on visual art but also on screenings, discussions, literature
events, concerts, and informal meetings focused on the local community.
www.raster.art.pl
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No.7 Warsaw's Height
by Bogna Świątkowska
27. August, 8 p.m
28. August, 8 p.m.
Warsaw, why are you the way you are? Maybe Warsaw is situated on
a 'water vein'? Water veins have a documented influence on all levels
of local stress. To find out more about this possible epicentre
of bad energy through the city of Warsaw, we take a tour at sunrise
to its highest points: the tops of buildings, big objects, rooftops,
high bridges and the one and only Warsaw hill, Kopiec Czerniakowski
(120 meters high), which was artificially built after World War
II. After locating these points on a Warsaw city map, we will then
head out to photographically document our research.
Bogna Świątkowska, journalist, curator, publisher and
cultural activist. Since 1985 she has worked at several radio (Radio
PiN, RMF FM, RADIO JAZZ) and TV stations (Polish Public TVP1 &
TVP2, Warsaw TV Center WOT) as well as for different newspapers
(Przekrój Weekly, Machina Monthly, brulion cultural quarterly).
In 2002 she became the founder of the Bang Change New Culture Foundation.
www.bec.art.pl
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Photo: Hanna Buratowsky
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