According to the project a tall construction resembling a ski jump or a swimming pool diving board was to be built at the Polish Pavilion. Wasilkowska’s and Kurant’s structure was raised. The construction critically referenced the heritage of the modernistic architecture of certain, presently ruined, monumental sports facilities stood above a sea of white clouds. The clouds were so dense that there seemed to be a bottomless abyss below them. This view was supposed to make anybody who would stand on the top of the jump feel an air of mystery, risk, danger or even fear. Jumping down was, however, safe because a mattress ready to cushion falls was hidden in the clouds. Thanks to this jumping, from Wasilkowska’s and Kurant’s jump induced a feeling of pleasure which contrasted with the fear one felt before leaping. Anybody who came to the exhibition could experience jumping into clouds, which is a celebration of life.
Public architecture
Aleksandra Wasilkowska enjoys working with open spaces. Her installation The Temple (2014) appeared in the Millennium Park in Zielona Góra. Wasilkowska toes the line between the sacred and the profane. The park is both a burial site, containing remnants of graveyard architecture and also a place where people 'answer the call of nature'. Wasilkowska tracked places in the park where memory meets purely physiological needs and marked them by planting flowers.
In 2015, the artist prepared a project for public toilets located in one of Wrocław's parks, using minimalist containers covered in copper plates. Moreover, Wasilkowska chose not to divide the toilets according to gender. She instead developed a pavilion, which suited everyone’s needs, including parents with small children and people with disabilities.
Wasilkowska also worked in Krasnogrudzki Park, where she designed an installation for kids, entitled Ogród Gucia Zaczarowanego (Gucio’s Enchanted Garden). There, she also created a project for the exhibition Szukanie Ojczyzny: Świadectwa I Propoctwa Czesława Miłosza (Searching for the Homeland: Testimonies and Prophecies of CzesławMiłosz).
Wasilkowska's interest in multifunctional spacesthat elude labellingis also found in the Bazaristan project. Bazaristan is an imaginary country, inaugurated in 2012 in a market space onPtasia Street in Wrocław. It's a country ‘founded’ by artists, architects, activists and market vendors. Wasilkowska explores the extremely sensitive space of the market, emphasising not only its commercial, but also sociological dimensions as a place of direct exchanges and interactions situated in the urban tissue. Artistic activities are woven into the usual space of the marketplace:Some of the stands have been transformed into white cubes, others filled with plastic cheese cubes while performances take place between the stalls.
In 2018, Aleksandra Wasilkowska took part in the Public Art Munich project. This edition presented 20 performances related to turning points in the history of Munich, moments that strongly influenced what the contemporary world looks like. Events such as the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919, the Allied invasion and the beginning of denazification, the creation of Radio Liberty, democratic optimism during the inauguration of the Olympic Stadium in 1972, the welcoming of refugees at a railway station in 2015 and the beginning of the ‘Wilkommen Kultur’. All these events did not last long, but changed Germany, Europe and the world forever.
The participants of PAM 2018 were to create projects in the public sphere that would refer to one or many of these changes. The purpose was to see them not on a global scale but on a city scale, using the urban perspective, which witnessed radical ideological, socio-political and symbolic upheavals. Munich is a case study of the modern world.
PAM 2018 presented art covering the broadly understood public sphere. Artists had the opportunity to present their perspective on problems and topics that affect everyone. The PAM Pavilion at the Viktualienmarkt– Munich Market square remained as the only permanent location. Aleksandra Wasilkowska created a flying ceiling, which was installed in the illegally built church at the back of Olimpiastadion.
The East-West Peace Church was illegally constructed in the mid-1950s by a Russian hermit, Timofei, and his wife, Natascha. Seeking refuge in Munich after World War II, the couple built this small temple open to all forms of Christianity. Erected from carton, rubble, wood and paper, its convex ceiling was isolated with silver chocolate wrappers. After it was decided that the Olympic Park would be built in the area, the architect Günter Behnisch not only altered the stadium’s master plan to preserve the church, but also remained inspired by its twinkling, delicate roof. In this way, an unofficial edifice managed to influence one of Germany’s most impressive pieces of architecture.
Aleksandra Wasilkowska’s levitating and migratory ceiling pays tribute to the city as a social organism, where participatory techniques, informal public spaces, pieces of shadow architecture, minerals and inanimate matter play an equally important role as top-down systematised planning. It is a tribute to both a city that organises itself on the basis of interdependence and never-ending negotiations and the imagination of its newcomers, like Timofei and Natascha, who informed and changed the fate of the Olympic architecture, and those who today continue to alter Munich’s urban fabric. Finally, it is a flying ceiling, a cloud of breathing architecture, a sketch for a levitating roof—everything the Olympic Stadium aspired to be.