Anna Orlikowska, still from the movie "Terminal Game", 2007, video, 11', photo Contemporary Art Foundation "In Situ"
The exhibition in St. Petersburg focuses on the cult of death, which the artist's see as particular to Polish culture.
All of the works presented in the Krasnoye Znamya Centre for Culture were created by Polish artists who consciously refer to the issue of death and to the ritualised forms of coping with death prevalent in Polish culture. The cult of death and of the corpse, according to curators Marcin Krasny and Katja Szadkowska, are the most important defining factors of Polish culture.
At least since the 19th century Polish identity has been built - literally - on corpses - the curators remark. - It is through corpses that we identify ourselves, corpses give us a reason to live and we use corpses to argument historical causes.
The curators of the exhibition point to Polish romanticism and to the history of a nation deprived of a country as to the source of this fascination with death:
Starting with the mightiest voice of Polish romanticism, "Dziady" by Adam Mickiewicz, the author of which used the name of a pagan ritual of talking with the dead as the title of his drama, Polish culture was filled with memories and displays of the cult of national uprisings, partisans sacrificing their lives, corpses, funerals and blood.
The creators of the exhibition reveal the existence of this sick fixation with death even in the present day: in the spectacular departures and funerals, in the group worshiping, in the recurrent cult of relics (especially those associated with John Paul II, but also with the Smoleńsk catastrophe), the ritualized partings with public figures: with the pope-Pole and later with the president and part of the political elite of the country.
The monument designed by Michał Frydrych for the Piłsudski square in Warsaw (a place, which is often used for honouring national celebrations) refers to these aspects of Polish culture. Frydrych's project will never be realized - because of technical reasons as well as emotional and social ones. It involves merging all of the martyrological monuments of the capital into one huge whole resembling a snowball. The very bottom of the structure would be made up of the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, which is located in the square. According to Frydrych if such a monstrosity would really be built, one would "feel that in Warsaw the dead have finally made room for the living - which after all was the sense of the sacrifices made by those, whose monuments form the Ball".
Hubert Czerepok's video film Repeating Memory (2011) also addresses a grim topic. The artist recreates in it the events of 1941, when the Nazis organized the first transport of prisoners to Auschwitz. The movie refers to the trips of survivors of the Holocaust to the former concentration camp, which are organized every few years by the Society of Care over Oświęcim. "It won't be a documentary or historical film portraying this tragic journey in a literal style", Hubert Czerepok said about his work prior to the first screening. It is to be a kind of a dark etude, which will try to show through its images, spirit and sounds the atmosphere of a journey to an extermination camp, to the "heart of darkness".
Zuzanna Janin undertook the challenge of raising the topic of death in an individual sense in her project I've Seen My Death. In 2003 the artist tried to make the impossible happen: she wanted to witness her own funeral: In the press she published obituaries with the date of the funeral and later she staged a ceremony, which was attended by mourners, the artist made up as an old woman and a few of her family members and friends, who were privy to the conspiracy. The performance and the video-installation, which was created on the basis of it, raised much controversy and Janin experienced many problems as a result of breaking a strong taboo.
The exhibition also includes one of the first documentaries made by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Chorus shows the functioning of a funeral parlour in the seventies and the routine conversations between clerks and customers - the families of the dead - about stamps, certificates and kinds of coffins. It's a portrayal of the complicated and soulless bureaucracy of a socialist state, in which there is no room for compassion for the loss of the ones other people care for.
Can the particularity of the Polish vision of death and the rituals that accompany it be understood anywhere outside of Poland? Can they be understood in Russia? Or maybe the national identity of Poles isn't the only one based on the cult of death? Maybe that is also the case with other nations too, only to a slightly smaller extent? These are the questions the curators are asking.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Polish-Russian). The publication contains illustrations by Mariusz Tarkawian created for the presented works.
The exposition consists of paintings, photographs, objects, projections, models, video installations, drawings, watercolours. The exhibition is presents at the Krasnoye Znamya architectural complex in Saint Petersburg.
Artists: Hubert Czerepok, Wojtek Doroszuk, Pola Dwurnik, Michał Frydrych, Maurycy Gomulicki, Zuzanna Janin, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Szymon Kobylarz, Grzegorz Kowalski, Jacek Malinowski, Anna Molska, Anna Orlikowska, Aleka Polis, Zbigniew Rogalski, Mariusz Tarkawian, Zbigniew Warpechowski
Curators: Marcin Krasny, Katya Shadkovska
Organizers: Contemporary Art Foundation "In Situ" and CC Krasnoye Znamy
Exhibition open from the 28th of September to the 12th of October 2012.
Vernissage: 27th of September, 19:00
CC Krasnoye Znamy
24 Bolszaja Raznoczinnaja street
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Source: www.insitu.pl, own materials