Andrzej Pągowski, from the archives of the Poster Museum In Wilanów, photo: www.stopklatka.pl
Project "1980" has been created with the intention to remind the public that politics and ideology without a link to art and culture are short-lived. Art is fuel for change as the imagination of directors, writers, artists give birth to scripts, ideas, statements transposed through imagery, words and sounds that come to life. This is what took place in 1978-1980, when suggestions from movies, drawings, posters, paintings from backstage started feeding the subconcious of the masses with aneed for another world, mocking totalitarianism, provoking, tickling, biting, proposing solutions. The event is organized in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement.
For an entire week, Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw will become an open air gallery. The show is mainly a politico-cultural overview and a reminder that everything surrounding us carries the announcement of changes, new ideas, notions, events, successes and failures. The exhibition puts a particular emphasis on three major fields of visual culture: films, posters, and press imagery (also including Internet materials). Movies, drawings, posters and photography present and represent, as through a distorting glass or an actual report document, great ideas and important events.
The foundations of the Project are based on a calendar of events, as selected episodes serve as a "table of contents", a memoire of the times. The follow-up to Project "1980" will be the film and art Project "1981", which opens next year, and the summary of both events will be published in a book/album, in the form of a multimedia diary, documenting events of the specific era and more.
On Thursday, September 16, the assembly hall of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw hosts the inauguration of the Project with the participation of President Bronisław Komorowski and the honourary patron of the venture, Speaker of the Polish Senate Bogdan Borusiewicz. The event will be hosted by Agnieszka Odorowicz, director of the Polish Film Institute, and professor Ksawery Piwocki, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. It will launch the week of the open-air gallery on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street, ending on September 22. The exhibition of the best posters of the years 1979-1980, organised with the support of the Poster Museum in Wilanów will be displayed on the "fences" surrounding the buildings of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Polish Film Institute. 6 screens will present the Film Epopee (Epopeja Filmowa), featuring fragments of feature movies, documentaries and animation films, mixed with drawings, photographs, paintings, reports from exhibitions and cultural events.
On Saturday, September 18 a mural will be painted on a wall on Krakowskie Przedmieście - "1980" Thirty Years Later is a live work in progress, documented on video. That same day, the coordinators of the project invite visitors to share their own pictures from 1980. A scanner will be placed at the gate of the Academy of Fine Arts for participants to share private photographs, family pictures, and more various prints documenting the reality of 1980. All of these will be screened simultaneously on the walls of the building. The presentation of this interactive exhibition will be held on Saturday until 9PM, and the following day, on Sunday 19 from 12:00PM to 6:00PM.
The whole street of Krakowskie Przedmieście is transformed into an open-air cinema multiplex, featuring screenings of the most notable movies of the era, by such directors as: Stanisław Bareja, Feliks Falk, Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Janusz Kijowski, Andrzej Kondratiuk, Wojciech Marczewski, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Piotr Szulkin, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi.
Poster art displayed will feature such artists as: Henryk Tomaszewski, Andrzej Czeczot, Jerzy Czerniawski, Andrzej Krauze, Lech Majewski, Jan Młodożeniec, Marcin Mroszczak, Andrzej Pągowski, Franciszek Starowieyski, Waldemar Świerzy, Mieczysław Wasilewski.
The "Guide" to the Project "1980" draws on the archives pictures of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, the National Library, the Library of the Warsaw University, the National Museum in Krakow, the Polish Press Agency, and the Arkada publishing house. However, a major part of the documents used In the exhibition comes from private collections (photographs, drawings, newspapers cuts) and the archives of artists and photographers. Also featured are selected pages of the weekly newspapers "Kultura", "Szpilka" and the daily "Trybuna Ludu" from 1980.
Project "1980" was created by Studio KT, the Polish Film Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts In Warsaw, based on a concept by Krzysztof Tchórzewski and Dorota Folga-Januszewka with the participation of a team of artists, designers, directors, art historians, such as : Krzysztof Baumiller, Paweł Deliś, Edward Dwurnik, Olaf Eysmont, Dorota Folga-Januszewska, Maciej Z. Januszewski, Marta Kosnowska, Dorota Kozielska, Maria Kurpik, Antoni Sambor, Maryla Sitkowska, Krzysztof Tchórzewski.
Source: www.stopklatka.pl.