Oskar Hansen, A Dream of Warsaw, Foksal Gallery Foundation, 2005, photo by: Jan Smaga. Courtesy Foksal Gallery Foundation Warsaw
7 Polish artists active on the international scene weave together a narrative of significant historical sites in Poland, where the unwanted visitors of the socialist regimes of the past have left behind colossal, indelible relics that are symbolic of the powers that shaped recent history. These structures are impossible to ignore, even years after the political ideology of the past has been wiped away
The artists create stories through various techniques with the aim of opening up possibilities for alternative narratives of the metropolis. These tales revive the ghosts of the past, examining the fabric of the city from the perspective of a local - and of a visitor from outside. Each of the artists has experienced both sides of the coin at some point in their careers and carries that experience over into the works of art in the show. The narrative takes off in the 1950s, founded on the ideology of the Stalinist era and examines the meaning of its symbols and codes.
Curated by Agnieszka Kulazińska from the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, the exhibition features six artists from Poland, alongside the Israeli artist Yael Bartana, closely affiliated in her most recent projects with Poland's recent political history, on show across the globe under the title And Europe Will Be Stunned... All the artists in the show are products of the 1970s, part of the young generation of ambitious artists from across Poland. The exhibition features works by Janek Simon, known for his interactive installations, objects, video, and performance art, Kama Sokolnicka, who uses wide range of techniques and media strategies to create works on the processes of territory and memory, and Robert Kuśmirowski, who uses performance, installation, objects, photographs and drawings to reconstruct existing images of culture to make a statement on ambiguity, transiency, disappearance and death. Aleksandra Went and Alicja Karska are an artistic duo that pose questions in their art about the evolution of architecture and public space.
"It will last like the love for a child. It will last like Polish-Soviet friendship", wrote the Polish poet Jan Brzechwa in describing Warsaw's Palace of Culture in 1952, Stalin's unwanted gift for the "brother nation" of Poland. The Polish–Soviet friendship has long since fizzled, however, yet the Palace remains as a symbol of that difficult point in history and a point of contention among numerous Poles who either despise it or accept it for what it is. The same goes for two municipal buildings raised in Gdańsk’s Old Town, designed to be calling cards of the new, communist order, were unwanted visitors too, but eventually became inscribed into the city landscape. The show refers to the connotations within the concept of hospitality, typically associated with a kind turn, but sometimes hospitality is extorted and it is in such cases that visitors are unwelcome and unwanted. The relics that these visitors leave behind remain embedded within the fabric of the city, shaping the landscape and, perhaps, the collective mentality of the city's inhabitants.
Legendary Polish architect Oskar Hansen created his own Dream of Warsaw as a manifestation of his vision of a metropolitan utopia. As a sort of futuristic joke, he created a spatial model of a building which would draw attention from the Palace, serving as a counterbalance to it - a sort of television antenna or other technological gadget. For Hansen, the Palace is a "a trauma and a coffin, a socialist realism pyramid, a gigantic altar which killed the city". Conscious of the fact that a toppling of the structure is unlikely, he has created an alternative "impossible space" that would crowd and overshadow the unwanted visitor.
After the destruction that World War II brought on, the authorities took it upon themselves to rebuild these historic cities "from scratch". Warsaw and Gdańsk were rebuilt according to a socialist ideology that set the stage for a new sort of "Polish city" on the ruins of the past. The 10th Anniversary Stadium was literally erected from the ruins of Warsaw, with the debris of the destroyed city used for the construction. The stadium was a monument to the 10th anniversary of communist rule in Poland. It was a place of official celebrations, later the site of anti-government protests, the most dramatic event being the act of self-immolation committed by Ryszard Siwiec in protest against the Warsaw Pact military invasion of Czechoslovakia. Falling into disrepair after the political transformation the site became the biggest outdoor market place in Europe and the multicultural heart of Warsaw, where immigrants from all over the world gathered together to sell contraband and facsimiles of everything from handbags and trainers to caviar and cigarettes.
Yael Bartana, whose grandparents came from Poland, set her video Nightmares at the stadium, drawing upon the motifs of propaganda to create a fictional character of the new Polish left who calls upon the millions of people of Polish-Jewish heritage to return to Poland. The voice of the leader reverberates within the empty stadium - empty, but for the ghosts of the communist past. The film was made several months before the stadium was ultimately demolished and a new, hi-tech stadium was built on its ruins in time for Poland's hosting of the Euro 2012 footbal championship.
Janek Simon's animation Take-off provides a humorous answer to the question of what to do with these unwanted visitors, depicting the buildings and towers of the city of Kraków taking off into space like rockets. It is a symbol of a cleansing of the city of its history and the embedded ideologies. And yet the "cleansed" panorama is a vision of a city destroyed anew. Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went's Cityproject is a series of photographs that mimics the construction of a metropolis from sugar cubes - geometric shapes that resemble the typical structures of modernism. Neat white cubes are then sloshed into a ruin with a splash of water, challenging utopian claims of durability and representing the inevitable weathering and destruction of every object, no matter how solid. Kama Sokolnicka's Disappopint of View is a sort of visual essay focused on the disappointment experienced by today's man with contemporary reality on a physical, ideological and political level. When one's existence is rooted in illusions, disillusionment is inevitable.
The exhibition takes place at the LJMU Cooperas Hill Building between the 15th of September - 25th of November 2012 as part of the City States Liverpool Biennial Festival, coordinated with the Liverpool John Moores University. The Liverpool Biennial takes place over ten days every two years as the largest international contemporary art festival in the UK, presenting a varied programme of exhibitions and projects rooted in the exploration of the urban space and its rediscovery over generations. It attracts close to 600,000 visitors each year. Sally Tallant is the Artistic Director and CEO. Liverpool Biennial was conceived and founded in 1998 by James Moores (with Jane Rankin Read, Lewis Biggs and Bryan Biggs) and presented the first Liverpool Biennial in 1999.
Curator: Agnieszka Kulazińska
Featured artists: Oskar Hansen, Alicja Karska & Aleksandra Went, Janek Simon, Kama Sokolnicka, Robert Kuśmirowski, Yael Bartana
Organisers of the Polish exhibition: Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Partners: City Culture Institute in Gdańsk, Polish Cultural Institute in London.
For more information on Unwanted Visitors at the Liverpool Biennial, see: liverpoolbiennial.co.uk
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Liverpool Biennial, Adam Mickiewicz Institute