Exhibition catalogue June-August 2016

Page 1

Aurélien Froment / Krzysztof Pijarski. Moiré TEXT AND ITS PERFORMANCE 4.06–21.08. 2016


Engineering and Grammar


Spheres covered with wool and ending with a loop, wood­ en cubes and cylinders turned in hands, shifted, distri­ buted into spatial constellations and arrangements. Mov­ ing from basic shapes and figures to multi-layered struc­ tures, from simple matter to a network of relations and links. Individual events are assembled into biographies (of artists, architects, historians, inventors…), rules of gram­ mar are made from single sentences. Three new exhibitions at Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art confront engineering and gram­ mar. While in the systemic sense the former serves the use of qualities of matter, energy, and objects to construct products (machines, appliances), the latter seems something more than a permanent set of rules and regulations governing a particular language. Generative function of grammar opens the way for the creation of words, sentences, state­ ments, linguistic rules, but also for looking for ex­ ceptions and gates to avoid those rules. We can also talk about engineering and grammar of images, language, and meaning – and this possibility is a shared, yet unspoken, leitmotif of the three exhibitions. Their curators and artists employ art – its various means and gestures – to investigate complex and extensive issues: the fascination with the issue of identity, history, and cultural construction of biography, decay and erosion of matter, body, and estab­ lished forms of expression, fluidity of the meaning of text that is subject to execution and repeated recreation. 3


Aurélien Froment / Krzysztof Pijarski. Moiré

curators: Lidia Krawczyk, Karolina Vyšata, Magdalena Ziółkowska


The shimmering effect of moiré produced by the exhibition by Aurélien Froment and Krzysztof Pijarski, is a result of the dialogue that developed between the two artists, as well as between them and the Gallery, focusing on spaces that shape our memory. Considering the common points in the work of the two artists, we have created a set of six terms that seem crucial for the semantic analysis of works presented at the exhibition. (Point of) contact, arrangement, tools, choice, after, translation – Froment and Pijarski have reacted to these terms with and through images which, in turn, have been transferred by the curators into the realm of language.


(point of) contact Aurélien Froment, Non Aligned, 2016 Somnath Mukherjee, Ferdinand Cheval, Amadou Badiane. Senegal, Dakar, Hauterives, Calcutta, Dublin. Cultures, cities, nations, identities, races, reli­ gions. It is difficult to be non aligned, for the points of contact of these elements are never the same, while their diverse contiguities, codes, and cultural forms emphasise tension points and their knotty weave, rather than a unified form. Meanders, nooks, and surfaces overlap one another, creating ornaments of meanings and images. Aurélien Froment creates stories about figures who function on the margins of our reality and whose attitude seems to illustrate the culture of contra­ diction and flow. We cannot stop the process of accumulating connections stemming from frequent contacts of cultural experiences. Our perception of the world and representation of stereotypical cultural facts become doubt­ ful. What is hidden beyond this contiguity of signs and visions? Ethnic trance, a mad dance of races and sexes. Somnath Mukherjee travelled 98 000 kilo­ metres on his bicycle to transport from India to Africa Bollywood dances, mix­ ing at the same time various cultural practices and forms in a local diaspora. In his Non Aligned Froment interprets Mukherjee’s work in Senegal to reflect on what is beyond our sight, on the rules of grammar determining our under­ standing of what we see to which we might refer in this case, on where we can find their repository, whether they are merely local, or perhaps we expe­ rience universal and mechanical social dances of elevation and ecstasy.

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Krzysztof Pijarski Workshop (#1) 2013

Aurélien Froment Tombeau idéal de Ferdinand Cheval 08-05 2014 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris


arrangement Aurélien Froment, 21 Incomplete Soleri Windbells, 2015 Order as the governing rule. Each detail assigned to an adequate place: streets, houses, details of architecture and carefully selected materials, effi­ ciency, systematicity, carte blanche. Everything should be started anew. The city policy rests on the idea of ordering its own history by piling up monu­ mental stories. As their idée fixe, utopian cities contained very rigorous rules pertaining both to the description of built environment, as well as of the social order. Aurélien Froment is a researcher and a perceptive observer of structures that organise our culture. He selects the phenomena that, on the one hand, have an impact on the machinery of societies, and, on the other, constitute a spectacular proof of the evolution of systems of architecture, even if they are always in the sphere of unfinished projects. In a series of works dedicated to the ideas of the architect Paolo Soleri, who in Arcosanti, Arizona created an (unfinished) project of architecture without degrading impact on the envi­ ronment, Froment addresses the issue of taking a challenge of building a real and functional utopia. Continuously improved with his disciples (thus giving rise to the Arcosanti Alumni Network group), the initiative was based on the idea of building the city for 5000 inhabitants which thanks to the use of ex­ clusively natural materials and adaptation to the requirements of the ecosys­ tem of an Arizona desert was to minimalize the use of energy. 21 Incomplete Soleri Windbells is a work consisting of elements made from the same clay, which – just like the future city – remain in the state of incompleteness re­ vealing their fragile, aesthetic attractiveness, as well as the accompanying sensuous sound.

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AurĂŠlien Froment Cultural Form of the Seventh Gift 2013 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris

Krzysztof Pijarski Lives of the Unholy #11 2013 9


tools Krzysztof Pijarski, Stoss, 2016 Match tools with professions: work of art archivist desk on a platform archaeologist spatula photographer chisel teacher stage sculptor white bound folder director camera art historian If we take away their tools, who those art craftsmen will become?

AurĂŠlien Froment Of Shadow of Ideas 09-07 2014 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris 10


Stoss, a photographic installation dedicated to Veit Stoss, is a study of the ar­ tist’s fluidity that escapes precisely defined patterns. The artist’s identity, or perhaps the identity of both artists, are dismantled by one of them with the use of scientific methods, curating strategies, and photographic camera. The maker of St. Mary’s Altar, a remarkable Pole, a citizen of Nuremberg and Krakow, German born and bred… is a silent protagonist of historical analyses and ideological ex­ planations, who for the previous decades was posited on the pedestal of history. Pijarski takes pictures of photographs, objects, and works he finds in archives, he visits anti-aircraft bunkers and inaccessible attics, he disturbs the order of an or­ ganised archive, exposes often unobvious relations and hidden connections, and then puts them in motion (hence the title, which is phonetically associated with altar’s author surname, for the word “sztos” in Polish means hitting a billiards ball with a cue). By tracing them, he becomes an archaeologist, he finds and discovers objects and tools that are cleaned from dust and reproduced to ask: who is the artist who became a tool?

The Silence of the Archive is Overrated, 2009 The Silence of the Archive is Overrated is an intervention that came out of the discussions during a work­shop organized in April 2009 at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, and published in the third issue of Working Title: archive (red. Andrzej Leśniak, Magdalena Ziółkowska, Łódź 2009). The participants of the discussions were: Łukasz Biskupski, Katarzyna Dobrowolska, Mar­ta Gendera, Antony Hudek, Aleksandra Jach, Magdalena Kownacka, Krzysztof Kościuczuk, Dominik Kuryłek, Katarzyna Kuzko, Marysia Lewandowska, Kamil Malinowski, Maria Matuszkiewicz, Paweł Mościcki, Krzysztof Pijarski, Monika Rendzner, Przemysław Sanecki, Sylwia Serafinowicz, Beata Sew­eryn, Patrycja Sikora, Ewa Skolimowska, Katarzyna Słoboda, Tomasz Szerszeń, Aleksandra Ściegienna, Ewa Małgorzata Tatar, Joanna Walewska, Kamila Wielebska. 11


choice Krzysztof Pijarski, JL–KP, 2011 The process of making every choice starts with a realistic assessment of the situation, analysis of existing setting. Subsequently, arguments, theses, and as­ sumptions about the validity of future decision are being catalogued. The simple profit and loss account becomes more of a struggle, a contest in rope pulling. The collection of experiences from the past and suspicions of the anticipated validity ceases to be an ordered archive full of arguments arranged in identical piles. By its very nature, any choice involves taking responsibility for the future. Krzysztof Pijarski’s JL–KP is a form of catalogue of evidence of right choices, as well as an acronymic riddle. Jerzy Lewczyński (1924–2014), an acclaimed photographer, promoter of the concept of archaeology of photography, stands eye to eye with a fifty years younger photographer and art histo­ rian. In-between (both literally and metaphorically) there is the JL archive, from which KP carefully selects elements for his own story about JL. He puts them in order, he links, juxtaposes, and frames them, creating photographic collages supplemented with JL’s handwritten notes. A silent confrontation forms between the two artists. KP chose a convention of dismantling JL’s archive and he created his own vision of the world which, though registered in photographs, does not in fact exist. Yet again, Krzysztof Pijarski becomes an archaeologist of history, but in case of JL–KP project he works with ironic detachment.

Krzysztof Pijarski negatives #5 (from Dłubak – Sources) 2009

Aurélien Froment Cultural Form of the First Gift 2013 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris


after Krzysztof Pijarski, The Negative of Sculpture / Sculpture of the Negative, 2015 Processes of ruination take various physical forms of decay. They also reach material history as such – they tear its narrative, blur the protagonists, dis­ solve objects and things. Decay, loss, oblivion, delay – those are the ruthless tool of the work of time. Krzysztof Pijarski became interested in remnants of sculptures from the collec­ tion of the family von Rose from Döhlau (present Dylewo), located near Osterode (Ostróda) in Eastern Prussia, because they constitute peculiar bastards of time and silent witnesses of history. He photographs those formless and anonymous remnants, while by placing them on small wooden pedestals he restores their elegance and nobility, since once they were distinguished busts. At present, they belong to the time “after,” referring us also to the nobility and Sarmatian tradition and the landscape of the eastern borderlands of Poland. In turn, Zofia Chomętowska’s black-and-white photographs combined with them, which show Polesia, the pre-war life of the Warsaw Królikarnia, and the ruins of Warsaw, are re-photographed with a “shift,” at an angle, with blurred focus. This work was produced as part of a larger curatorial project, The Estate, realized together with Katarzyna Kucharska-Hornung, Michał Libera, Karolina Puchała-Rojek, and Jan Sowa, under Agnieszka Tarasiuk as chief curator, at the Xawery Dunkowski Museum of Sculpture at the Królikarnia Palace in Warsaw.

Aurélien Froment Of Shadow of Ideas 05-08 2014 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris

Krzysztof Pijarski from a short series Chmielewski realized after Lives of the Unholy 2014


translation Aurélien Froment, Fröbel Fröbeled, 2014 The first gift is a set of six woollen balls of small sizes and particular colours. They hang on a short string ending with a loop. Activities: rocking, tossing, rolling, dif­ ferentiating colours. The second gift is a set of two spheres, two cubes, and two cylinders of iden­ tical colours. Activities: rotating in space, comparing surfaces. The third gift is a set of eight cubes which together form one cube. Activities: counting, putting figures and shapes together. The tenth gift is a final gift. The spatial frame built of spheres with wholes and sticks, growing in any directions and without end or precise shape. It is certainly only an algorithm that could define the number of its possible combinations. Friedrich Fröbel’s (1782–1852) ten gifts translated into eleven tables de­ signed by Aurélien Froment. This multifunctional installation is not merely a history of progressive educational practice of one of the most interest­ ing teachers and a founder of the idea of pre-school education with a focus on the humanities (Ger. Kindergarten – children’s garden). It leads us from manual arrangements and systems to the questions about the nature and character of translation as a strategy of working with history.

Krzysztof Pijarski The Negative of Sculpture / Sculpture of the Negative #13 2015

Aurélien Froment Of Shadow of Ideas 28-13 2014 Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris 14


Krzysztof Pijarski (1980) – visual artist, photographer, art historian, lecturer at the Film School in Łódź. He is interested in the history of images and objects in (post)modern world – he creates visual archaeologies of museums, archives, landscapes, urban spaces, and other “machines of representation.” Author of indi­ vidual exhibitions, including: Lives of the Unholy (C/O Berlin, 2015), The Negative of Sculpture / Sculpture of the Negative (Archaeology of Photography Foundation, Warsaw, 2015), Dłubak – Sources (Asymetria Gallery, Warsaw, 2009), MSŁ (Okna Gallery, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2008). He took part in nu­ merous group shows, including: At the Very Centre of Attention: New Documentalists. Photography (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2006), Antiphotographs (main show of 5th Photography Biennial, Municipal Gallery Arsenał, Poznań, 2007), Red Eye Effect. Polish Photography of the 21st Century (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2009), Communism Under Construction (Paris Photo, Asymetria Gallery, 2012), The ‘Cadavre Exquisité’ of Polish Photography (BWA Awangarda, Wrocław, 2015), Tribute To Jerzy Lewczyński, IT BEARS REMEMBERING! An Attempt at a New Psychogeography of Art (Asymetria Gallery, Warsaw, 2015), Entoptic Screening (Salon Akademii Gallery, Warsaw, 2016). He lives and works in Warsaw and Łódź.

Aurélien Froment (1976) – visual artist, author of multimedia installa­ tions. In his works, he investigates the relations and tensions between perception, montage, and experience of images and space together with their historical context, making multilayered works that confront elements taken from the language of physicality and materiality with time, history, and memory. Nominated for Prix Ricard in Paris and Future Generation Art Prize organised by Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev. Author of individual shows pre­ sented in Gasworks in London, CCA Wattis in San Francisco, Heidelberger Kunstverein in Heidelberg, Spike Island in Bristol, carlier/gebauer in Berlin, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He took part in numerous group shows, including: Undiscovered Words (High Line Art, New York, 2015), Affecting the Audience (University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2014), 19th Sydney Biennial (2014), Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (55th Venice Biennial, 2013), Tactics for the Here and Now (5th Bucharest Biennial, 2012), Time Again (Sculpture Center, New York, 2011), 10 000 Lives (Gwangju Biennial, 2010). He lives and works in Dublin and Paris.

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TEXT AND ITS PERFORMANCE

Carlos Amorales, Agata Biskup, Eva Dertschei & Carlos Toledo, Magdalena Fabiańczyk, Wojciech Gąsiorowski, Mateusz Kula, franck leibovici & Julien Seroussi, Alicja Rogalska, Matej Vakula, Piotr Wyrzykowski curator: Agnieszka Kilian The exhibition will develop in time. Works of participating artists will be presented on the following dates: Matej Vakula – June 8 franck leibovici / Julien Seroussi – June 10 Mateusz Kula – June 16 The exhibition comes with a programme of related events. It will involves guided tours, meetings, and workshops with invited guests, including: Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin, Maciej Jakubowiak, Woltes Kluwer pub­ lishing house team, and Prof. Wojciech Załuski. Exact dates will be listed on our website and Facebook fanpage.


Carlos Amorales, Supprimer, Modifier et Préserver, 2012, film still

“− I would like to know which article you decided to delete. − I chose article 5 of the civil code, it deletion has catastrophic consequences. − We’d no longer live in a democracy. − Where would we be? − In a country where all power rests in one hand. […] − How would you replace this article? − This depends on what country you would like to live in.”1 “I would remove from the civil code the phrase »French people«.” This is the reply provided by another person requested by Carlos Amorales to make a change into the text of the Napoleonic code which is still in power in France. The artist made copies of the act that is the foundation of the legal system not with the use of printing paint, but with the pencil graphite. The film shows how the civil code (of all French people) changes its face. Not the will of the policymakers, but that of the artist transforms it into a diffe­ rent story. The legal text is never stuck motionless. In the moment of novelisation, it un­ dergoes a stage of change, disintegration. Next, it is put together again so that a unified meaning can be established. Finally, it is deconstructed again, when it is being interpreted and executed. Texts are executed on multiple occasions and ways. Taken over by a number of voices, the sound of texts is modified. 1

Statement from Carlos Amorales, Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver, 2012. 17


Text and its Performance exposes the narrative element of that change inherent in the multiplicity of readings, in the process of inventing law and justifying interpretive decisions motivated by different attitudes and reasons. Processes of interpretation that precede the execution of law can be seen as consistent and linear work, as did Ronald Dworkin, the theoretician of law, proposing his own version of chain enterprise – writing consecutive chapters up to the moment of reaching a satisfactory result. Yet, is this model the only accurate vision? The exhibition is not written from a comprehensive perspective that solves ad hoc the problems of formulation and execution of law. The works on display, as well as the workshop space that is a part of the exhibition, are supposed to reveal the potential of a different cognitive sensibility whose source is in the emphatic reading of the law or, as Martha Nussbaum wrote in Poetic Justice, in the figure of a literary judge, who invests his reading with experiences other than those stem­ ming from the legal system. Text and its Performance will “exercise” this sensibi­ lity through looking at a specific structure of a legal text, which is characterised by a dissonance between particular notation reflected in the editorial divisions of the text (articles, sections, items, letters), and the rule that transgresses this notation. The dissonance between the visible and the invisible, the graphic struc­ ture of the document (notation) and thought (and what determines it) is recurrent in the exhibition architecture. In the first moments of reading we have an impres­ sion that particular notations express that which seems at first cognizable, yet only the disruption of an orderly set, inclusion of what is imperceptible, show the whole picture of the text and its execution. By introducing reflection on law into the field of art, through artist’s prac­ tices, we are able to expose a layer that may seem like something irrel­ evant, a murmur, or just an additional story. Yet, the presence of those practices is not a sudden impulse, but a way to confront diverse grammars, to develop perspectives that can prove causative. It changes our per­ ception of notions and institutions that by themselves create new social categories. Just like in Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin’s X. c/ Préfet de…; Plaidoirie pour une jurisprudence, included in the workshop part of the exhibition, where confronted ideas of author/citizen unexpectedly begin to work for themselves. This means that with their simultaneous belonging to different “genres” of law, private and public, their encounter shifts their respective meanings. Authorship begins to play a different role and serves gaining the right to residence. On the other hand, Piotr Wyrzykowski’s performance Copyright, made in 1995, which saw the introduction of a new bill on copyright and related rights, reveals a different combination of the attitudes of artist and citizen. Wyrzykowski was one of the few artists working at the time to pose a question on the meaning of the change of law for artists and society.

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Piotr Wyrzykowski, Copyright, performance, 1995, photo: Tamara Wyrzykowska

Links between the notions of author/citizen, their sudden semantic migrations, of­ fer a chance for developing a different line of argument. Namely, one that involves thinking across structures that is forced by translation. Translation of texts, espe­ cially legal texts, always brings questions about the ways meanings are mediated and fields of dialogue between institutions and conceptions of law are changed. The more important seems the inclusive gesture of Alicja Rogalska who translated Polish constitution into Arabic, the language of culture that is excluded from our civilisation. Paradoxically, this step, her work with Polish constitution, opens reflec­ tion on the actual meaning of the translated text, on the problem of guaranteed freedoms and rights, social and cultural rights, and finally creative freedom. The exhibition investigates also the frameworks for negotiating meanings. For instance, remaining in conflict or even an ability to persist in conflict. After all, narrativity of the argument is an axis of the execution of a text (legal, and in a wider sense law-related), it is present in a different perception of the relation between law and justice, as well as in the fact that parties do not share systems of values, cultural backgrounds, or ways of articulating emo­ tions. Works by Mateusz Kula and Magdalena Fabiańczyk address this issue with a belief that asking for consequences of differences is important for the assessment of the process of interpretation and execution of law, thus they should always be repeated. The background for the uncertainties illustrated in the exhibition is certainly the conflict that we are presently witnessing. As part of Text and its Performance we reflect on the features of court proceed­ ings, where parties are being informed about the contents of laws translated into particular solutions. In the courtroom, this is manifested in the silence required 19


between individual acts of execution of the text of the law (court proceedings). The procedure consists of specific choreography, management of gestures and the unspoken, as well as the policy of deciding who can speak and who has to listen, or who manages silence. The court has authority over the visibility of wit­ nesses, and it directs their statements. “It is necessary that you speak lowly, that you speak loudly, and that we have a pause between the question and answer and vice versa.” The mode of conduct is also to allow for an accurate translation of statements made by witnesses, the parties, and the judges. In their muzungu (those who go round and round) franck leibovici / Julien Seroussi confront the rules of procedures of the International Criminal Court in the Hague which are made in real time, somewhat in the course of proceedings. The proceedings have a precisely marked order of words that would later be used as material for reconstructing the events of the case. This reconstruction is a rather unstable figure, closer to creativity. The reconstruction of the course of events or a mimetic recreation of image is a fiction. It is fiction that we accept, yet we know that the words “the court has established the following facts” actually refer to a story, one of the possible variations of the course of events whose meaning is not always possible to comprehend. Recreation of reality and reconstruction of past events are also inherent parts of legal practice. In case of granting citizenship, law requires giving state­ ment about the place of birth or origin (depending on the official formula: the jus soli or the jus sanguinis). Copyright is also based on a reconstruction of sorts. By establishing the name of the author, it refers to past events. To his­ tory, as Agata Biskup and Matej Vakula show us. The author is a person who (just like in case of perpetration) can be considered an author of particular action. Authorship stems from life and true events, not from an agreement or contents of arbitration. Similarly, the legal text recedes into life whose rapid current is difficult to grasp in full.

franck leibovici / Julien Seroussi, muzungu (those who go round and round), installation, 2016, fragment


Magdalena Fabiańczyk, Homo Narrans, 2016, projection

London–New York 2006, p. XIII

Psychosocial Perspectives, eds. M. Andrews et al.,

Norman K. Denzin, Foreword, [in:] Lines of Narrative:

become in our tales of self.”

“We live in stories, and do things because of the characters we


Mateusz Kula, Rather Nothing than Something, 2016, installation fragment

Matej Vakula, Exercise 1.0 – The Beta Version, 2016, performative workshops


“To address oneself to the other in the language of the other is the both the condition of all possible justice, it seems but in all rigor, it appears not only impossible (since I cannot speak the language of the other except to extent that I appropriate it and assimilate it according to the law [loi] of an implicit third), but even excluded by justice of law, inasmuch as justice as law seems to imply an element of universality, the appeal to the third party who suspends the unilatarety or singularity of the idiom.” Jacques Derrida, Force of law: The Foundation of Mystical Authority, transl. M. Quaintance, “Cardozo Law Review” 11  (1989–1990), p. 245

Alicja Rogalska, Having regard for the existence and future, 2016, installation


Agata Biskup, Kobro. Gift, 2013, reproduction from Excerpts from notes in the journal of authorial relations. Togetherness as an affair, 2016

Wojciech GÄ…siorowski, Acoustics of Legal Instruments, 2016, installation 24


Agnieszka Kilian (1975) – curator and lawyer. She works as an attor­ ney, dealing with issues of creative freedom and its implications in the relations between contemporary art and law. Curator of Gloves of Jeff Koons (CAA Kronika, Bytom, 2012), exhibition on the issues of author­ ship and copyright. She also develops projects dedicated to the phenomena of creative collaboration and condi­ tions of artistic production. Recently she co-curated a programme of art residencies “Placed Called Space” for which she developed a project (…) Behind Togetherness (nGbK / HIT Gallery, transit.sk, Bratislava, 2014) and Repose (Krakow/Lankorona/ Znamiroiwice, 2015).

Carlos Amorales (1970) − visual artist who works with a variety of me­ dia: drawing, photography, film, and performance. Since 1998 he has cre­ ated “fluid archive” – a digital data­ base of his drawings in vector versions, which he uses in collaboration with other artists, at the same time pointing to the ubiquity and circulation of his motifs. In his practice, he investigates the issues of camouflage and identity. He lives and works in Mexico City. Agata Biskup (1982) − graduate of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In her practice, she goes beyond the medium of painting and concentrates on an analysis of artistic attitudes characterised by migration from the field of art to the space be­ yond it. Since 2013 she has run an ar­ tist-run-space called David Robertson (with Przemysław Czepurko) – space dedicated to the analysis of author­ ship, positions in the art world, espe­ cially in their linguistic representa­ tions. She lives and works in Krakow. Eva Dertschei (1973) & Carlos Toledo (1965) – graduate of graphic arts at Universität für angewandte Kunst. Since 1996 they have run TiD studio. They are co-editors of “Bildpunkt” magazine. Writing, im­ age, and space serve their in-depth investigation of aspects of particular aesthetics and ideologies, process of emerging social relations and power relations. In 2007, in a regional court in Klagenfurt, they made a project on linguistic policy in their region. They are authors of visual identity of Vienna Design Week, and since 2015 they have been curators of Typo-Passage at MuseumsQuartier. They live and work in Vienna. 25


franck leibovici (1975) – visual artist, he uses the medium of text, employing records of experimen­ tal music, dance, and conversation analy­sis. For the last several years he has worked on the text of a mini-opera for non-musicians, treating it as a way to rewrite the conflict of “law intensity.” Ten sentences from this work were presented in museums, music festivals, and dance cen­ tres. His other publications include: few storyboards (ubuweb, 2003), 9+11 (ubuweb, 2005), des documents poétiques (al dante, 2007), portraits chinois (al dante, 2007), (some forms of life) − an ecology of artistic practices (questions théoriques / les laboratoires d’aubervilliers, 2012), letters from jerusalem (with Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, spam, 2012), filibuster (a duration piece) (jeu de paume, 2013), on ordinary conversations (with Grégory Castéra and Yaël Kreplak, les presses du réel, 2014). He lives and works in Paris.

Magdalena Fabiańczyk (1980) − graduate of Byam Shaw School of Art at Central Saint Martin’s in London. Author of installations, performer, and mediator. At present she studies at the Faculty of Art and Politics at Goldsmiths University in London. She is interested in the position of artist who works at the junction of many discourses, from art and community to politics. Co-initiator of numerous art projects, e.g. Critical Juncture, taking place during Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, and Five Nation Film at Southbank Centre in Great Britain. She lives and works in London. Wojciech Gąsiorowski (1989) − studied sociology at the Pedagogi­­­cal University in Krakow, at present works on his diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, the Faculty of Intermedia. He makes works that cross boundaries of many disciplines, using video, photography, sound, and object, and often employing the tools of sociology and anthropology. Solo musician. He lives in Krakow and other places.

Alicja Rogalska (1979) − graduate of cultural studies at the University of Warsaw and of the Faculty of Art at Goldsmiths College in London. In her practice, she focuses on the social dimension and political involvement, working with particular contexts and developing participatory situations. She lives and works in London.

Mateusz Kula (1983) − studied philosophy and film studies, gradu­ ate of the Department of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and Universität für ange­ wandte Kunst in Vienna. He is inter­ ested in issues of identity, status of databases, and archive as a source of knowledge. In his works, he analy­ ses the modes of shaping discourse, for instance in his Hortus Conclusus he made intervention into works pre­ sented at the exhibition. He lives and works in Krakow.

Julien Seroussi (1977) − PhD in sociology, he collaborated with franck leibovici on the work presented in the exhibition. He is interested in the international criminal court proceed­ ing models, which stems from his re­ search on the debate around the con­ cept of the universal jurisdiction of a national judge. From 2009 to 2012 he 26


worked for the International Criminal Court in the Hague, at present he is the member of the department of the supreme court in Paris, which in­ vestigates cases of genocide, crime against humanity, and war crime. Author of numerous publications. He lives and works in Paris. Matej Vakula (1981) – artist, critic, and curator, as well as lecturer. He studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2009 to 2011 he was a Fulbright Foundation fel­ low. At present he works with Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science and The Institute des hautes études en arts plastiques (IHEAP). He investigates the ways information transforms into know­ ledge and how knowledge can lead to action. Nominated for Oskár Čepán award for Young Contemporary Art. He lives and works is New York. Piotr Wyrzykowski (1968) – graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Artist, performer, film set designer. He is an author of interactive installa­ tions, Internet projects, and multime­ dia performances. He employs also media such as video and photogra­ phy. His work Beta Nassau (1993) is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the 1990s, together with Marek Rogulski he made a performer duo, with works such as Ziemia Mindel Würm. He lives and works in Gdańsk.

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Imagineering – (Re)activating the Photographic

Discipula Klara Källström i Thobias Fäldt “Werker Magazine” curator: Lars Willumeit


The exhibition presents works by three art collectives that can be defined as collective research platforms working in the field of contemporary photography, visual culture, and publishing. Discipula We live in a society that has fully embodied the neoliberal vision of a global and homogeneous world. Thanks to the increasing dismantling of the political apparatus, power is now concentrated around giant transnational corpora­ tions: a form of power both liquid and absolute in its capacity to be omni­ present and, consequently, omnipotent. Along with the creation of a global production system in which we are inescap­ ably involved, the greatest achievement of contemporary market economies is their ability to make people believe that power can be in our hands. The new regime asks little and gives us much in return, above all freedom: to consume, to appear, to communicate. Thus has cognitive-cultural capitalism progressively transformed information into control and commodification. Driven by the rise of communication technologies, images play a crucial role in the maintenance of this capital-driven ecology. Contemporary images, far from simply mirroring reality, invade and expand our world and the way we perceive it. Transcending representation, they embody transient desires and needs; seduced by their alluring surfaces, we become one with them. Images are our alter ego, idealized projections of our being and our expectations. We trust them, and therefore we embrace the ideology that generates them. Based on these premises, the works presented by Discipula in Imagineering – (Re)activating the Photographic revolve around the appropriation, postproduction, and analysis of images captured from the flow of daily production and consumption. Stock photos, renderings, and advertisements are manipulated and immersed in new networks of signs, languages, and cross-references in which the original function of each image is subverted, creating space for new interpretations, meanings, and uses. While stressing the centrality of the notion of connectivity in our society, each work can be compared to a dynamic system in which ideas are laid out and negotiated through the interactions among matter, forms, values, and ideologies. By highlighting the fluid and mutable nature of contemporary im­ ages, Discipula ultimately aims to invite the viewer to look at and reflect on what is hidden beneath the glossy surface of the visible. Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt work in the field of photography, text, instal­ lation, and publishing. Their work focuses on the production of knowledge, exploring media issues, historical narratives, and the depiction and perception 29


of political events. Over the years, Källström and Fäldt have produced a number of works relating to places undergoing paradigmatic changes; they seek to activate historical layers and notions of uncertainty and chance in order to draw attention to the gap between what is visible and what is told. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “salutary estrangement” suggests a distinction between the visual and the image. In Källström and Fäldt’s work, this distinc­ tion is the gaze looking back at us, asking what we want from the things we are viewing. Through this activation of what is unresolved, the regime – that which we might call the habitual vision – becomes visible. In this tension, our desires unfold. Together with the designer duo 1:2:3, Källström and Fäldt run B-B-B-Books, a publishing platform that engages in methods of narration and visual culture. In 2011, they started the ongoing project Wikiland, which revolves around the me­ dia image of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The same year, they initiated a se­ ries of works on the representations of the Greek crisis, starting in Athens during the general strikes in October. The series The Last of the Lucky began to take shape when they met with a former photographer of Fidel Castro, who put the last rolls of 35mm film on Cuba at their disposal. The retrospective of Källström and Fäldt’s presented at Krakow Photomonth 2016 includes the Cuba work, which has never before been exhibited. This world premiere coincides with a crucial historical and geopolitical juncture, a handshake of pivotal importance. Werker 2 – A Spoken History of the Young Worker The new edition of “Werker Magazine” presents images and documents that have been compiled from secondhand bookstores, online booksellers, personal archives, and street markets over the last few years. The selected documents originate from different geographies and historical contexts. The body of the young worker is at the very core of this research: a body that is disciplined in schools, educated at home, and put to work, often for a me­ager salary, and at times obliged to migrate. This is a body that is also at work when it rests, rejuvenating the leisure industry with its youthful expression, consuming in order to stimulate additional injection of capital. Nevertheless, the body of the young worker is a body with the capacity to revolt. It has political agency and fights exploitation, imprisonment, expul­ sion, and murder. Since its invention, photography has been closely related to power. Its mimetic capacity to replace anything that consists in a complex reality with its unidi­ mensional representation made it the perfect instrument to dominate our world. Photography, the archive, the encyclopedia, the museum, and mass media 30


constitute different instances of the same project: the positivist endeavor of cre­ ating types, canons, models, and roles to explain the totality of history, and of the present, in order to reinforce the ideological structures in power. Next to the male narratives that constitute history as we are taught it in school, there is a “spoken history” that was not written or that has been discharged from the history books. Walter Benjamin, in Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), introduces the notion of the “tradition of the oppressed,” which he defines as the medium in which the present is connec­ ted to all lost causes and the struggles of those who have lost their histories. Rethinking the relationship between photography and history through Benjamin’s “tradition of the oppressed” and his “dialectics at a standstill,” “Werker Magazine” proposes a stage for queering history. How can documents from different in­ stants in history be performed by readers? Pre-organized local collectives or any engaged visitors are invited to perform this archive using the microphones and tools provided in the exhibition space. All recording sessions will be uploaded to a Soundcloud archive and broadcast in collective listening sessions, transcend­ ing the borders of the museum.

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Cuba, 2014, from the The Last of the Lucky series, 2016 © Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt

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Discipula − founded by MFG Paltrinieri, Mirko Smerdel, and Tommaso Tanini in 2013, Discipula is a collaborative research plat­ form operating in the fields of contem­ porary photography and visual culture. Combining art practice and selfpublishing, Discipula delves into the production, use, and consumption of images, and explores the interweav­ ing of fact and fiction in the process of meaning-making. Discipula’s works have been exhibited internationally at the Mücsarnok (Budapest), FORMAT International Photography Festival (Derby), Photo 50 – London Art Fair, and elsewhere. Discipula was the re­ cipient of the 2015 Author Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles Festival.

Discipula, Human #2, from the Efficacy Testing Stream series, 2015 © Discipula. Courtesy of MLZ Art Dep Gallery 33


Klara Källström (1984) and Thobias Fäldt (1978) − have been working together for ten years. They are based in Stockholm but have pro­ duced most of their work while trave­ ling: the liminality that travel creates is the site where their methodology takes shape. Most of their projects are published through their own label, B-B-B-Books, which they founded in 2011 in Stockholm with designers and collaborators 1:2:3. Källström and Fäldt have had solo exhibitions at galleries and institutions around the world, including Fotografiska (Stockholm), CULT Exhibitions (San Francisco), Pingyao International Photography Festival (China), CFF/The Center for Photography (Stockholm), VERKET (Stockholm), Trafó House of Contemporary Arts (Budapest), The Popular Workshop (San Francisco), and Gallery VU (Québec City). They have participated in group exhibi­ tions at the Swedish Institute (Paris), Hasselblad Center (Gothenburg), LACMA (Los Angeles), Aperture Foundation (New York), and, most recently, Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen). Their work has also been published in numerous photo­ graphy anthologies around the world.

The Fifth Estate, 00:59:46, 2013, from the Wikiland 2007-07-12-00:59:46 series, 2014 © Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt


“Werker Magazine” − is a publi­ cation about photography and labor, initiated by the visual artist Marc Roig Blesa and the graphic designer Rogier Delfos. Its starting point is the Worker Photography Movement, a group of associations of amateur photogra­ phers that appeared in Germany in the 1920s, part of the legacy of the first socialist photography experi­ ments in the USSR, which extended into the rest of Europe, the United States, and Japan. The publication takes an interest in working methodo­ logies based on self-representation, self-publishing, image analysis, and collective learning processes. Each issue is produced and distributed in a different context (a fine arts acade­ my, a museum, a neighborhood, the Internet…), thus exploring strategies of interaction with specific audiences.

Andrew Dewdney and Martin Lister, Youth, Culture and Photography (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1988), from Werker 2 – A Spoken History of the Young Worker, 2016. Courtesy of “Werker Magazine”


Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art Szczepański sq. 3a, Krakow bunkier.art.pl

Aurélien Froment / Krzysztof Pijarski. Moiré 4.06−21.08.2016 Opening: 3.06.2016 (Friday), 6 pm

Director: Magdalena Ziółkowska

Featured artists: Aurélien Froment, Krzysztof Pijarski

Gallery Media Patronage: “Fragile. Pismo kulturalne,” “Le Monde diplomatique,” Local Life, Off Radio Kraków, O.pl, Radio Kraków

Curators: Lidia Krawczyk, Karolina Vyšata, Magdalena Ziółkowska

Publication accompanying three following exhibitions Edited by: Anna Żołnik Translated by: Karolina Kolenda Design, typesetting, preparation for printing: Agata Biskup ISBN: 978-83-62224-53-1 Publisher: Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art Krakow 2016

Coordination: Renata Zawartka Graphic identity: Agata Biskup Exhibition Media Patronage: “Herito,” “Lounge,” “Opcje 1:1,” “Magenta,” “Szum” Exhibition Partners: les Abattoirs. Musée d’art moderne et contemporain. Frac Midi-Pyrénées (Tuluza), and Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) Co-financed by Culture Irleand. Krzysztof Pijarski would thank to: Iwona Danielewicz-Włodarczyk (National Museum, Warsaw), Thomas Dütsch, Wiltrud Fischer-Pache, PhD (Stadtarchiv Nürnberg), Irena Kalicka, Miron Kokosiński (Cricoteka), Renata Kopyto (Krakow House in Nurnberg), Dorota Krakowska, Sonja Mißfeldt, PhD (Germanisches Nationalmuseum), Christof Neidiger (Stadtarchiv Nurnberg), Katarzyna Pakuła (Saint Mary’s Basilica in Krakow), Jan Płatek, Silvie Preußer (Amt für Internationale Beziehungen in Nurnberg), Anke Schlecht (Institut für moderne Kunst in Nurnberg), Agata Wolska, PhD (Saint Mary’s Basilica Archives) for their help in implementation of the exhibition. Aurélien Froment would express thanks to Somnath Mukherjee (Bharat-Pehchane, Pikine, Senegal), Sumesha Sharmy (Clark House Initiative, Bombay, Dak’Art 2016 curator), Redshoes Production (Paris), and Marcelle Alix (Paris).


Imagineering − (Re)activating the Photographic As part of Krakow Photomonth Festival 2016 17.05−21.08.2016 Featured artists: Discipula, Klara Källström, and Thobias Fäldt, “Werker Magazine” Curator: Lars Willumeit Coordination: Renata Zawartka Joanna Gorlach (from Krakow Photomonth Festival 2016)

Text and its Performance 4.06–21.08. 2016 Opening: 3.06.2016 (Friday), 6 pm Featured artists: Carlos Amorales, Agata Biskup, Eva Dertschei & Carlos Toledo, Magdalena Fabiańczyk, Wojciech Gąsiorowski, Mateusz Kula, franck leibovici & Julien Seroussi, Alicja Rogalska, Matej Vakula, Piotr Wyrzykowski Curator: Agnieszka Kilian Exhibition design: Carlos Toledo & Eva Dertschei Coordination: Jolanta Zawiślak Exhibition Media Patronage: “Herito,” “Lounge,” “Opcje 1:1,” “Szum” Exibition Partners: Austrian Cultural Forum, Kurz Foundation, Department of Anthropology, Literature and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Supreme Bar Council, Wolters Kluwer Publishing House Inc. Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of task “Critical Pavillon”. The curator and the Gallery would wish to thank Wolters Kluwer publishing and the Director Alicja Pollesch for their cooperation on this exhibition.


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Imagineering – (Re)activating the Photographic

17.05−21.08. 2016


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