‘Fallout’ & Le Corbusier Have a Lot in Common: An Interview With Galeria Komputer
Galeria Komputer is a mobile exhibition initiative created by the artists Łukasz Radziszewski and Szymon Kaniewski. Its first project was a retrospective exhibition devoted to Klocuch, a mysterious Polish Youtube phenomenon. In a conversation with Piotr Policht, one of the exhibition’s curators, the creators of Komputer discuss the ideas behind the project.
Piotr Policht: Komputer is a real-life gallery, but also, literally, a computer standing inside it. What’s the point here?
Szymon Kaniewski: From the very beginning, we were not attached to a specific space. The computer is an artefact that can resonate anywhere. So when it came to the Klocuch exhibition, we put it in a basement on Ząbkowska Street, and then we played around in this basement, but Komputer is designed as a visiting gallery. If we put it on Mars, we’ll have a Galeria Komputer on Mars, and if we put it in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, we’ll have a gallery in the Centre for Contemporary Art.
Łukasz Radziszewski: It all comes from the truth of the material that’s the basis of the idea for the gallery. The idea was born in 2015. I really wanted to create some kind of institution where I could showcase art, but I had neither the space nor the funds to run a regular gallery. So I had to look for other solutions. And then I had the thought that a computer can recreate what a gallery is all about – it’s a cube with conventionally white walls, a part of the interior design. It exists in the analogue, as an object, but it also creates lots of possibilities in the virtual space. It was supposed to be a nomadic place from the very beginning. Wherever the computer went, so would the gallery.
PP: Why is the physical space, not just the virtual gallery in the computer, important to you?
ŁR: This specific computer is important for me – it’s my first one ever. I got it from my parents for my First Communion. I later kept it as a souvenir and it always stayed in my room. It no longer cost me anything, but I had a lot of emotional attachment to it, so I thought it'd be playful to create an entire institution around this simple funny object.
SK: If we only did things in the virtual, it'd mean narrowing the experience and cutting off creative possibilities. The exposition and playing with space was always important to us.
ŁR: But we never saw ourselves as curators.
PP: So what would you call yourselves?
ŁR: We are producers. Perhaps because we’re both graphic designers.
SK: I’m a would-be graphic designer.
ŁR: But we did have the skills to create the entire visual side and design the audience’s experience. We see ourselves more as people who creatively approach the visual side of specific exhibitions than those who directly recreate their intellectual background. We take care of the gallery’s programme, we pick the artists and the curator, and we provide support during production.
PP: You write that the foundation of your activities is ‘the design of proper UX communication methods for each subsequent exhibition’. What does that really mean and how does it differ from what other galleries do?
ŁR: We have an address and a very nice venue, but it’s only one of the tools within our entire scope of possibilities. Our starting point is the elasticity inherent in a computer, not the standard display of works in a white cubic room.
SK: We’re interested in establishing complex communication that’s tailor-made for every event – that’s our creative activity connected to the exhibition.
ŁR: We actually think about the viewer, while the artist, who’s responsible for their work, is not obligated to do that, and sometimes perhaps doesn’t even want to do that. We want to lean towards the audience, concentrate on the user experience, and think about how to showcase the given object in an accessible way.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
'Klocuch. Moje jest wygranko' (Klocuch: Mine is a Winny Win), view of the exhibit, interview by Bartosz Zaskórski with Klocuch in outerspace, photo: Zofia Snarska
PP: You also refer to inspirations from outside the artistic world – from games and literature.
ŁR: An important starting point for the idea behind the gallery was the G.E.C.K., or the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, a miraculous artefact from the RPG game Fallout of which we’re both fans. G.E.C.K. was a portable, quasi-mythical object allowing the user to make the post-apocalyptic wasteland liveable. It was an object of desire and had a wondrous influence over reality. On the other hand, we refer to the supercomputer from Stanisław Lem’s short story Przyjaciel [Friend]. It was hidden in a basement in Wilsona Square in Warsaw, but as artificial intelligence, it was able to move from object to object. It had a plan to conquer the world and was on its way to doing so.
PP: How do these inspirations translate into the gallery’s activities?
ŁR: There’s a symbolic aspect to it. Like in Lem, the computer is our centre of operations, but there are also smaller accents, like the gallery’s logo, inspired by the Sole Survivor font from Fallout. The moment when me and Szymon met was very important. I'd just started working at Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts, when Szymon started studying there. It turned out we had shared interests.
SK: To be fair, at first we spoke mostly about video games and craft beer, but it turned out there were quite a lot of these common interests and that we had similar views on art.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Galeria Komputer in Brimstone, collage, photo: press materials from Galeria Komputer
ŁR: We spoke a lot about clothes and fashion. We analysed the way Kanye West sells, how Virgil Abloh, Gosha Rubchinskiy and Tyler the Creator operate. At the time, Supreme and Golf Wang were trendy and we analysed them intensely, but drops from brands like that are obsolete now.
SK: At some point, Komputer became a brand itself. Whatever we wanted to do, it could function under that name, we didn’t even use the word ‘gallery’. If we created a StarCraft mod, we would have done so under the name of Komputer, just like we would have done with a new clothes drop. I think we took it from Supreme, which was able to do a brick with ‘Supreme’ written on it, a ‘Supreme’ ashtray, a ‘Supreme’ balloon… In its experimental stage, Komputer was capable of being associated with any subject – we could collide it with something like in a hadron collider and look for a Higgs boson.
PP: Are you looking at these strategies from a market perspective? You’re not a typical commercial gallery, but what Supreme does is turbocapitalist.
ŁR: Truthfully, we never really cared about monetising our activities and they were never aimed at profit. At least so far, it’s just been playing freely with these mechanisms. On the other hand, we have specific plans aimed at profiting from our activities, but they’re not about the traditional creation of a portfolio of artists whom we could represent as gallery owners, at least not at present.
PP: Why not?
ŁR: First of all, to do some things well, you have to devote yourself completely to them. Creating a portfolio of artists is a huge responsibility, which, in my view, isn’t something treated seriously by many gallerists. Various artists have told me many times about disappointments and permanent economical scarcity resulting from the fact that the gallerist, to put it straight, doesn’t seem to be putting two and two together. I don’t want to repeat this situation. That’s why we came up with an idea to work with artists in a different, more relaxed way.
SK: The situation with representing artists is also uncomfortable, because we’ve always been annoyed by the hermetic nature of the art world. We want to work with the artist in a different way, for example by creating cool designer objects, so that their art doesn’t have to be locked down in a gallery and so that the artist can send their message outside.
ŁR: We feel there’s an altogether new space, one that could be in agreement with the rules of the market.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Galeria Komputer, collage, photo: press materials
PP: So in your view, the Polish art market isn’t saturated at all?
SK: The art market in Poland is more or less like this: you either don’t buy anything, because you can’t afford it, don’t know a thing, and don’t exist as a potential buyer, or you are a serious collector creating well thought out collections. What’s missing is the middle class.
PP: There have been attempts at opening the market to a greater scope of potential collectors, such as the Cheap Art Fair in the Raster Gallery.
ŁR: I like referring not to the post-transformation period, but to historical models. In the post-war reality, it was the state that guaranteed a living for the artists, not only by purchasing works for the collections of some Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych [Art Exhibition Office], but also by organising state-supported Pracownie Sztuk Plastycznych [Visual Arts Workshops] where artists created ‘designs for the people’. You could also go as far back as the constructivist period when the artists created similar organisations on their own and tried to convert their work into more usable forms. We don’t want to be a gallery that fills the void and creates a more egalitarian, cheaper art, nor do we want to enter into conflict with other galleries. We work with artists on a different level, we’re more of a small, private substitute for initiatives like Pracownie Sztuk Plastycznych.
PP: Moving away from gallery strategies, what’s on the horizon for your shared thematic interests?
SK: Since the very beginning, we were most connected through futurology, which has many faces, such as the Soviet watches from the Space Race period that are collected by Łukasz, or sustainable design, but also video games. Contrary to what you’d expect, Fallout and Le Corbusier have a lot in common.
ŁR: For many months now, we’ve been working on a new project together with Tymek Bryndal. Tymek wants to send a rocket into space with a message to alien civilisations in its black box showing every image of aliens ever created by humans – a kind of reverse Voyager 2. Art about aliens, for aliens. It’s difficult to send anything into orbit, but we’re getting there thanks to a collaboration with a certain Polish startup, Google for Startups, and the European Space Agency. At first, we were worried that this would lead to a pause in the exhibition schedule…
SK: This project is like a new album by Dr Dre. Everybody’s waiting for it, but it might never get released.
ŁR: We agreed that this was a good description of our approach. We don’t have to hurry and generate exhibitions every month. We devote full attention to every project. As well as the finale of Tymek’s space mission, we’re planning some new presentations in the coming months.
PP: Sticking with futurology – various people are working on AI today, so if Komputer could become a supercomputer from a Lem short story, would you want it to run your gallery?
SK: The entire world could be governed by AI. If Komputer were the first real AI, I would die in peace, knowing that I’ve left the planet in good hands.
Interview conducted in Warsaw in Polish by Piotr Policht, Sept 2019; translated by MW, Sept 2019
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]