Info about the new album:
The musicians improvise electro-acoustic, dimensional sound structures, they do not avoid trans, post-noise improvisation or post-rock romanticism.
The dialogue between percussion and guitar is mixed with electronic and electro-acoustic journeys. The album, which is being prepared at the moment, will include, apart from electro-acoustic improvisations or electronic compilations, a dynamic improvised groove - computer noise next to melodious guitar. All of this exists on the border of acoustic and electronic sound experiment and compilation.

Information about the musicians:

Emiter – a solo project by Marcin Dymiter, who played previously in the following bands: Ewa Braun, MAPA and GAMADISCO; currently he is a member of the band MORDY. He has cooperated with musicians from the field of jazz, electronics and avant-garde such as: Mikołaj Trzaska, Paul Wirkus, Rosa Arruti, Tomasz Gwinciński, the poet Marcin Świetlicki, Raphael Roginski, Marek Chołoniewski, Tomasz Chołoniewski, Matthias Muelerrem, Peter Eisold and the band Chlupot Mózgu. He has recorded 13 albums, worked and composed for alternative theatres and is also a music producer. Marcin has played in many European countries and in the US. As EMITER he released five albums: ”#1”(2000), ”#2:static”(2002), ”#3”(2003), Emiter/Krzysztof Topolski ”16.03.2003” (2003), Emiter/Tomasz Gadomski „#4”(2004). The albums received very good reviews in the music press; their especially unusual musical atmosphere and eclectic character was underlined.
He is also the head of the publishing company sojuz emiter rec.

 

Important events and festivals: Forma Nova (Denmark, 2003), 2nd Festival Muzyka z Mózgu (Bydgoszcz, 2002), Art Acts ’02 (Austria 2002), Have a noise days (Gdańsk, 2004), 4th Meeting of Improvised Music (Gdańsk, 2004), Moo Festival (France, 2004), Les Nuits Europeennes (France, 2004), Next Wave Europe (Germany, 2004), Improvised Music Work-shops-Stage D’Improvisation Musicale & Choreographique

 

(Parthenay 2004) hosted by John Butcher and  Karim  Sebbar,  Artist in Residence (Strasbourg - France, 2004), 2 Unsound Festival (Cracow, 2004), Contre Cour Festival (Macon- France, 2004), Sopot Alternative Film Festival (Sopot, 2004), Experiments with sound, the transformation of noises which are with us throughout our lives, seek inspiration in the world around us. He believes that music is everywhere. Composing it is an ongoing, never-ending process.

www.emiter.art.pl e-mail: fpomd@univ.gda.pl


ARSZYN (Krzysztof Topolski) - drummer, sound artist. He has cooperated with various artists on many musical projects such as: the Rogulus X Szwelas Project, Kobiety, Emiter, M.bunio.S., Mikołąj Trzaska, Tomasz Szwelnik, Muk, Beatrix von Shreader, Hoec, Dj Wojak. He is co-founder of the band Ludzie (People) and Pracownia Ludzie Gdańsk (PLG). Arszyn is a solo project by Krzysztof Topolski; so far three albums have been released: "Z werszków pierwszy" (nefryt ' 02) ,"Unitas Multiplex" (tns rec.rxs/plg rec. ’04) .
He has taken part in the following events and ventures:
“Line_in : Line_out "(Austria), Wien Modern ’03, Work Overture "Synthese", Bourges, France 2002 – 2004, "From Gdańsk till Down, Contemporary Experimental Music From the Eastern Europe", LMJ, MIT (USA), "Forma Nova" (Denmark) 2003, ”Have a Noise Days 2 “, 2004 (Gdańsk), "Art acts" 2002, St. Johann in Tirol (Austria), Marcus Schmickler, "DEMOS_the united untitled”, Bunkier Sztuki (Cracow). “Warsztat Piezo 2”, Arszyn + Youth Electroacoustic Orchestra + Dj Wojak, CSW Łażnia (Gdańsk, 2004), "Nova Polska ” 2003 (Warsaw), 3rd and 4th Meeting of Improvised Music (Gdańsk), Artgenda 2002 (Hamburg). Artist – in – Residence Program, Museums Quartier, (Q21) Vienna 2004. “Equleyes 2”, Vj’s Meeting and Congress. Vienna 2004. UnSound 2 Festival, Cracow 2004. “Modern Music for the housewives” CSW Łaźnia 2005, “Electro-acoustic workshops-Plants, fruit and flowers” CSW Łaźnia 2005.

www.ysztoftopolski@wp.pl

Silence does not exist, and the broadcast is still going!!!

 

WANDERERS
Since 17th September till 8 th October

Educational workshop for high school youths, connected with redevelopment of Lower City. Using the inter-disciplinary art workshop (photo, video, painting, installation, sculpture, performance, graffiti) as well as classes of creative acting, the participants will build “vehicles” thanks to which they will wander through social culture in the historical area of the district. The meetings are conducted by Mikołaj Robert Jurkowski, Piotr Odysejak Niewiadomski, Sylwester Gałuszka.

"Tvout, audio out, audioart" Wojciech Hoffmann – concert and presentation
08 October 2005, 17:00 hrs

“The title of the presentation is a combination of three parts. As Wojciech “Tvout” Hoffman, I create videos and music visualisations. I create audio out music and audio-art objects. I will show and play the instruments in Gdańsk, which I built during the past few years. These will include the “little coffin” (built in the Leszek Knaflewski workshop), the electric crank lyre, the hirschgitare (stringed instrument) and little motors (electromagnetic). There is also a chance that the duet King Kong and Barbie will appear. This is not all, however; most of all I would like to explain how each new instrument develops my thinking about music.”
 

Wojciech “Tvout” Hoffmann – artist (born 1977) is a graduate and assistant at the animated film workshop of the Art Academy in Poznań. He deals with multimedia art, film, visualisation and audio-art. He has created a number of music videos. Currently he is a member of the Loco Star band. He has presented his works and concerts in England, Germany, Holland, Croatia and in Poland.

 

WANDERERS

Since February till June

 

Educational workshop for high school youths, connected with redevelopment of Lower City. Using the inter-disciplinary art workshop (photo, video, painting, installation, sculpture, performance, graffiti) as well as classes of creative acting, the participants will build “vehicles” thanks to which they will wander through social culture in the historical area of the district.

The meetings are conducted by Mikołaj Robert Jurkowski, Piotr Odysejak Niewiadomski, Sylwester Gałuszka

MUSIC IS THE ORGANISING OF SILENCE

Since September till June

Workshop of musical and vocal education for primary and gymnasium school children of the Tree-City run by Janina Kostyszyn. Training comprises classical music, jazz and modern music.

Meeting two time a week: Wednesday and Friday: 13:30 – 14:30

21st July 2005, 6:00 p.m.
Baltic Club opening symposium as part of the “Baltic Corridor” project.

The following lectures will be given during the symposium:

Agnieszka Wołodźko (Centre for Contemporary Art “Laznia”) “Is Heimat absolutely essential for life?”

Elena Tsvetaeva (National Centre for Contemporary Art in Kaliningrad) – presentation of academic-artistic works concerned with Kaliningrad and former East Prussia organised by the National Centre for Contemporary Art in Kaliningrad. Elena Tsvetaeva will also present the artistic projects created to commemorate the 750th anniversary of granting city status to Kaliningrad.

Dr Bożena Domagała (The Wojciech Kętrzyński Centre for Scientific Research in Olsztyn) – “The historical and sociological determinants of identity”.

 

 

Baltic Corridor
18th – 24th July, 2005

“Baltic Corridor” is an international scientifically-artistic project consisting of two parts: “Baltic Club” and “Audio Tourism”.

 

The “Baltic Club” is an international working team consisting of scientists from various fields of the humanities (historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists etc.), artists and art curators who will run the trans-border research on the East Prussia phenomena – the territory that was culturally homogeneous before and is now divided by frontiers and inhabited by culturally non-rooted settlers. Both in Poland and in Russia there is a lack of common knowledge about the progress of research on the historical and cultural legacy of East Prussia, or about the institutions responsible for this and any archive material.

Polish, Russian and German scientists participating in the Baltic Club meetings will present the actual research progress of the historical and cultural legacy of East Prussia and exchange their knowledge and opinions concerning this subject. However, the main purpose of the Baltic Club meetings is to familiarize the topic of East Prussia to Polish and Russian artists who are to undertake a common artistic action based on the information they receive. The Baltic Club will hopefully become a communication platform between the artistic societies of these two countries and an information source to create new common artistic projects.

The first meeting in Gdańsk is planned for 21st – 24th July 2005. It will include a number of meetings for the members of the club accompanied by a viewing of artists’ documentation and a two-days studio trip around the Elbląg and Mazurian region. A direct result of the club’s activity will be the web site and a post-symposium publication of the specialists’ lectures, discussions and photographic documentation of the trip.

 

The main subject of the symposium of the “Baltic Corridor” in Gdańsk is the question: is life without identity possible? This question should be accompanied by others: why do we need an identity? In which cultural-social situation does the question of identity arise? In which fields is research of identity placed: national, historical, ethnic, religious, professional, local society, etc.? How do these traditional fields of identity function with regard to postmodernist trends in contemporary culture?

The second part of the project “Baltic Corridor”, entitled “Audio Tourism”, is a meeting of musicians and audio-artists and an attempt to bring closer experimental music scenes from Gdańsk and Kaliningrad. Three artists from Gdańsk and three of them from Kaliningrad were invited to a co-operation in the aim to make music compositions and audio forms according to an idea of audio-tourism, which was created especially for this project. It is connected with an exploration of an audio-sphere of Gdańsk and Kaliningrad. Artists will meet during workshops in Gdańsk and Kaliningrad, they will exchange informations about their art production and will get acquainted with an experimental music scenes of both cities. Visiting of both cities will be an inspiration and introduction to their work. Artists will record sounds characteristic for these places. These recordings will be a base for creating electronic, electro-acoustic or improvised music compositions, representing a “sound-trip” along Gdańsk and Kaliningrad. The compositions will be edited as a CD “Audio-Tourism” and publicly presented at Laznia CCA in October 2005.

Organizers of the project:
Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk (curators: Agnieszka Wołodźko, Krzysztof Topolski)
National Centre for Contemporary Art, Kaliningrad (curators: Elena Tsvetaeva, Sergey Sazonov, Danil Akimov)


This project was co- financed from funds of European Union, Program PHARE - Polish Eastern Border - Fund of Small Projects - edition 2003
 

 

Contemporary Music for Housewives
25th June 2005, 5:00 p.m.

Michał Libera – “Is improvised music possible?”

This report will be a trial of discussion, in theoretical and practical spheres, on the most important definitions of improvised music in the 20th century. Based on methods of festival organisation, musicians’ opinions and theoretical texts, I would like to show that improvisation has a specific critical potential towards every kind of music including free improvisation.

In this context, I will briefly present Plain’s activity, where all these tensions are reflected. I will talk about the events organised by Plain, about the musicians cooperating with plain and about the new definitions of plain activity that are created continuously.

[1] What does improvisation mean?
[2] A short history of improvisation before the 20th century.
[3] The meaning of “free improvisation”.
[4] Improvisation in Poland.
[5] Plain activity presentation:
- What is Plain activity?
- What is its purpose?
- Plain’s archives.
+ Photos and music from the concerts and a movie trailer from the festival in Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw (February 2005)

Plain
 

Contemporary improvised music is an open formula. Despite the fact that at its roots are set in the sixties and seventies, when rather dogmatic assumptions were set out concerning the outbreak of every music style, the modern improvisers do not reject any kind of music in advance. The contemporary improvised music is based on the arbitrariness of all styles that allow the musicians involved to keep a creative distance.

Plain is an independent act formula in the field of contemporary improvised music. Our aims are:

1. To create the possibility of systematic work on improvised music:
- to organize concerts and festivals
- to organize musical workshops
2. To animate the scene of improvised music:
- to organize independent recording sessions
- to integrate improvising musicians from the all over Poland
- to create international projects

Plain activity is based on the creation of “adequate conditions” to develop such a specific art form as improvised music. “Adequate conditions” here means regular concerts, thanks to which the musicians may work on their own language. The improvised music requires not only learning the wide technical possibilities but also a specific opening which allows for a quick reaction to every musical event. Such skills may only be achieved by giving systematic concerts.
“Adequate conditions” also means frequent meetings with experienced musicians from all over the world. This is the purpose of Plain.


website: www.plain.pl e-mail: plain@plain.pl

curator: Krzysztof Topolski, krzysztoftopolski@wp.pl

 

 

The lecture entitled "Alberta in Poland"
14th June 2005, 5:00 p.m.

The lecture on Canadian contemporary art will be given by Walter May, Laura Vickerson and Peter von Tiesenhausen - the artists connected with the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary.

 

“The presentation’s aim is to accustom a Polish audience with contemporary art and craft in Alberta. The artists and the curator will also talk about their group installation “There and Gone” to be opened at Galeria Klimy in Warsaw on June 22nd.

This event is very special because it the first visit of a group of contemporary Alberta artists to Poland.”

“There and Gone” and “Alberta in Poland” are undertaken with the support of Foreign Affairs Canada, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Alberta College of Art and Design and The Nickle Arts Museum.
 

Presentation by Walter May, Laura Vickerson, Peter von Tiesenhausen and Bozenna Wisniewska titled "Alberta in Poland" was possible due to the support of Foreign Affairs Canada.

 

 

THE LAND OF CREATIVENESS
15 th April till 29 th May
 

Multimedia artistic workshop for the youth from the Tri-City high schools. During a one-day visit in the Center for Contemporary Art., students develop their abilities of creative thinking, learn the techiniques of painting and sculpture as well as create short film forms (exercises). The workshop is conducted in closed sessions (7 hours) followed by an order from school. The meetings are conducted by Mikołaj Jurkowski, Piotr Odysejak Niewiadomski, Sylwester Gałuszka.

 

Description of Radio 4x4
Radio 4 x 4
24.05.2005, 5 pm.

 

Radio 4x4 is a collaborative sound performance conceived of by the New York-based transmission arts organization free103point9. Radio 4x4 features four artists performing both individually and collectively on independent radio frequencies.

Four simultaneous audio performances are separately transmitted on FM frequencies and amplified via radio receivers. Additional radio receivers are disbursed throughout the performance space conveying the use of the radio spectrum to distribute the performances. Audience members become active collaborators in the performance, “mixing” the audio feeds by moving about the space among the four signals.  

free103point9’s Radio 4x4 will include artists Damian Catera, Tianna Kennedy, Radio Ruido (Tom Mulligan), and Tom Roe.

"Radio 4x4" is a free103point9 transmission project that has featured many different artists performing into independent FM transmitters at numerous locations. Recent “Radio 4x4” performances have occurred at the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Art in General, OfficeOps and the free103point9 Gallery, New York City; and Wesleyan University, Connecticut. Each time, audience members are invited to walk among the radio receivers, actively "mixing" the performance as they move among the radio signals.

free103point9 General Information

Mission & History

free103point9 is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media arts organization focused on establishing and cultivating the genre of “Transmission Arts” by promoting artists who explore ideas around transmission as a medium for creative expression including investigations in AM and FM radio, Citizen’s Band, walkie-talkie, generative sound, and other broad and microcasting technologies. free103point9 serves diverse public audiences through programs including an online radio station, a distribution label, a performance/exhibition/transmission series, an education initiative, and a preservation program.

Founded in 1997 in south Williamsburg as a microcasting artist collective, free103point9’s goals during the formative years were focused on the microradio movement fight for the public’s access to its own airwaves. free103’s mobile operations made airtime available to community voices, local bands, and most significantly to a group of under-served artists shaping conceptual works specifically for radio transmission.

About the Artists

DAMIAN CATERA
Damian Catera is an electroacoustic composer/guitarist, sound installation creator and media artist. Catera's work reflects interests in sound based composition/ improvisation, transmission and sociopolitical critique. He has toured the US and Europe twice and has also presented work in Latin America and Asia. Recently he's been performing improvised "deCompositions" for live electronics, radio and guitar and also participated in the New Sound New York sound art exhibit during the spring of 2004.

TIANNA KENNEDY
Tianna Kennedy's work explores lo-fi/neglected sounds in the form of field and home/band-practice recordings. In 2003-4 Tianna collaborated with Michelle Rosenberg on a sound sculpture installation in Beacon, NY based on early hearing aid technology; with Laura Kohl on a soundscape of a Rock and Roll camp for girls in Portland, OR; with Great Small Works for a sound event at PS122; and with Autonomedia/Chronoplastics for the Sound Generation Benefits held at Experimental Intermedia and OfficeOps. Tianna also hosts a monthly improvisatory broadcast. She has a history in cello performance and can be found playing cello/mandolin/guitar/bass/vox or recording with various New York and Nottingham bands including Polygraph, Iran, Hannah Marcus, Laura Hannah, Doug Shepherd, Matt Bua, The Reynolds, Great Bear, Seachange, Wolves! (of Greece), Bee and Flower, K, I Am Spartacus, 66 Watts, etc. She currently working on an MA in Performance Studies at NYU, and has written for liveartmagazine and Reckless Sleepers.

RADIO RUIDO
Radio Ruido is the nom de guerre of Brooklyn artist Thomas Mulligan. In addition to transmitting experimental sound work with free103point9, he has performed live with the audio-visual collective Dimmer and designed sound for the bilingual performance group Teatro Chinampa. He has recently exhibited at Deitch Projects, Participant, Inc., and the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore.

TOM ROE
TOM ROE is a sound transmission artist sometimes known as DJ Dizzy. He co-founded microradio stations 87X in Tampa, FL and free103point9 in Brooklyn, NY. Roe performs with transmitters using multiple bands (FM, CB, walkie-talkie), as well as prepared CDs, vinyl records, and various electronics. He has also written about music for The Wire, Signal toNoise, and The New York Post, among others. Roe's writing about free jazz in New York recently appeared in The Wire's 20th Anniversary publication Undercurrents (Continuum). His collaboration with Matt Bua and Matt Mikas, Of The Bridge, premiered in Brooklyn! (2001) at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. Constructive Engagement, another recent collaborative project, is a collection of audio works using field recordings from demonstrations at the 2002 World Economic Forum and other political protests in Philadelphia, Tampa, and Los Angeles. He will perform this July at Tune(In))) Santa Fe at the Santa Fe Art Institute. He has also spoken about Transmission Art and microradio at panels and classes at the New School, Columbia University, NYU’s ITP, FAIR, the NYC Grassroots Media Conference and the Grassroots Radio Conference.

MATT MIKAS
MATT MIKAS is a sound artist with a history of involvement with microradio. A sonic anthropologist, Mikas uses turntables alternately as a historian and performer. In January 2000 he curated the sound program for Dave Hickey’s Ultralounge at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa. Of The Bridge, a collaboration with Matt Bua and Tom Roe, premiered in Brooklyn! (2001) at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. Mikas’s current project Interactive Audio Response Kit is a musical composition and listening tool created for two identical LPs.

More information on all of the above is available at http://www.free103point9.org

 

Stefan Figlarowicz – URBAN VARIATIONS
23.05. 2005 5.00 p.m


 

“One to one” 1979-1980, is a reflection on two housing estates that I lived in - Gdansk-Zaspa and Warszawa-Ursynów - and which arose from the personal need of the artist who uses art language to talk to inhabitants, architects and managers. Prof. Wiesław Anders wrote in the introduction to the exhibition: “It is a story about the culture of designing, the culture of building and using contemporary housing districts in the big cities of our country.” The exhibition was met with a warm welcome by its visitors. It has 6 expositions: 2 in Gdańsk (one in the shop window of “Victus”, today called “Admirał”), 2 in Warsaw, and one each in Wroclaw and Bydgoszcz. It formed the background for a seminar of journalists and architects in Warsaw and it was described in “Architektura” magazine (4-1980), in the book of Iwona Jakcyna “A jednak miasto?” (Warsaw 1984) and in the textbook for secondary schools by Piotr Bogdanowicz “Man and space” (Warsaw 1988). The exhibition that belonged both to the author and PSP has been lost. (I present it in the form of slides)

“The ceiling runs in the high-heeled shoes” 1985. It is the first exhibition from the series dedicated to the problem of poetry visualisation. The idea arose when the chief of housing management in Gdańsk-Zaspa asked me to design the interior of the new management headquarters. I proposed a photographic scaling of the poetry of Miron Bialoszewski, who moved from the centre of Warsaw to the new housing estate in the end of the ’70s. He began writing about big blocks of flats then. I found these texts, I took photos and I scaled them up. The first exposition took place in the shop windows of “Victus”. I had a theory to visualize the poetry and I published it in the exhibition catalogue “Picture of words. Poetry of Jan Twardowski in Stefan Figlarowicz’s photography” Gdańsk 1985.

About myself

I am an electronic engineer by education. I first came into contact with the theatre, drawings and photography during my studies at Politechnika Gdańska. I worked as photo-reporter for the Student’s Chronicle, the monthly magazine “Poland-West”, “Pomorze” and “Czas” in 1961-1975. I have organized a few exhibitions and national competitions. The first of them – “The man and his city” (1969-1970) – was organized during my work as a photography instructor in the housing-estate agency “Przymorze”. The competition was under the patronage of the City of Gdansk, Architecture and Urban Planning Institute and Central Housing-Estate Association.
Since 1990, I have run Gdanska Galeria Fotografii (which became a part of the National Museum in 1995). I also work popularizing and teaching photography. I run Artistic Photography Studies within the Gallery. I am a co-author of three books published based on Gallery deposits: “Stay with us” (1988), “Vilnius and its neighbourhood at the end of the century in the photography of Stanisław Filibert Fleury” (1999), “The end and the beginning. Gdańsk 1945-1955” (2000)


Stefan Figlarowicz
 

Architectural modernism – multiplicity of reality.
A lecture by Hubert Bilewicz
18^th May 2005, 5:00 p.m

Modernism as seen from a post-modern perspective looks like an ambiguous form full of contrasts. Contrary to the orthodoxy of slogans, declared content and ostensible uniformity, its architectonic picture is full of scratches and cracks, and its reception provokes many controversies. Both modernist discourse and the discourse about modernism are now questioned and interpreted.

The basic definitions, terminology and interpretational problems with modernism in architecture, particularly in the mid 20^th century, will be the subject of the lecture. Its complicated fate at the end of the 20^th century will be mentioned too. Theoretical proposals will be illustrated by a number of visual examples.

Hubert Bilewicz  lecturer of art history at Gdansk University and Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk graduate of History of Art of Warsaw University, museology at Torun University Department of Fine Arts. post-graduate studies at the Research Centre of Antique Traditions, Warsaw University postgraduate of Creative Pedagogy at Torun University attended gender studies at Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Cracow.

Hubert Bilewicz has studied the architecture of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and has carried out research on Polish architects who graduated from Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He is interested in artistic pedagogy and the combination of art and education. At the moment, he is finishing his thesis about Polish applied art and 20^th century design (doctoral dissertation at the History Department of Warsaw University). He is interested in various (artistic and non-artistic) aspects of art. He has published articles in “Architektura”, “Design”, and “Spotkania z zabytkami”. He is co-author of an art textbook for secondary schools.

 

The lecture: Big housing estates – a city in an embryonic state
Dr Gabriela Rembarz, Architecture Department of Politechnika Gdańska
12.05. 2005, 5.00 p.m

 

Contemporary knowledge about urban construction underlines the meaning of continuity and accumulation rules as essential elements of urban creation. These two factors determine the creation of the city’s traditions. Their carriers are both space forms and inhabitants. The fate of the inhabitants is written in forms. This historical regularity is difficult to transfer on the modernistic structures of great housing estates. There is no analogy to the fates of 19th century tenement houses which were rehabilitated after over 50 years of programmed degradation. Tenement houses and city squares became a synonym for urban lifestyle, the day to day events of which, have the power of a cultural message. Big blocks of flats have a different history.

The dimension of a beautiful life wasn’t considered in the project or in its realization. “Blocks of flats” aren’t patinated but degraded. It happens very fast, especially with the social approval for treating them as potential slums. Is it possible to shut away over half of the habitants of the big cities in our country?

The commonly felt syndrome of “big housing estates” hung over the modernist era. One forgets easily about certain civilization changes and about the conditions in which these (currently criticised) structures were built. Moreover, the fact that the city is a constant process of changes and adaptation to the new cultural conditioning is often omitted too. “Tower Blocks” written in the life rhythm of “worker society” become a development barrier for this part of Europe. It means that they have to adapt to contemporary requirements or disappear. In the scale of shortfall of flats of over a million, it seems impossible.

 

The modern interpretation of the idea of the city has become the core of the quest for rules of creating new, ideal cities for the second half of the 20th century. A radical transformation of views and means of expression by contemporary architectural methods happened twice within this period. The turning point was determined by the changes in the perception of spatial conditions of housing environments for the needs of forming a community. In the era of industrial fascination, the first interpretation created the development of great housing estates, however, the second one, in the post-modernist wave, resulted in their complete criticism and redevelopment.

 A particular place in this discussion was the matter of creating public spaces as the platforms of social contact. Today their quality is seen as a result of the cultural power of the city.

Now we need proper urban spaces to cultivate a post-modern lifestyle. Polish cities shaped by the urbanism of the sixties require a thorough renewal. It will constitute a process of “urbanization” of the great housing estates, which should be treated as a town in an embryonic state. We may ask if the new post-housing estate era, as a part of the history of Polish cities, must only be an attempt to come back to traditional forms. Each answer to this question requires a new look at “tower blocks” as a flawed urban structure that still has a lot of development potential in Poland. “Tower blocks” have a much stronger position than similar housing estates in Western Europe. They remain forever in the mentality of local society.

 

The lecture: Art as therapy or correction?
10.05. 2005 5.00 p.m

This open question arose during the realization of the project entitled “Meeting arts” with the participation of mentally handicapped people, their helpers and therapists from Special Care Centre No 2 in Gdańsk.
The pressure for “difference” and “variety” in the 20th century has labelled handicapped people as “alien”, having particular features and properties. The will to improve their health through involvement in the life of surrounding society has become the main purpose of the country’s leaders. Therapy as a process stopped being spontaneous and became specialized. The handicapped have been isolated, separated, segregated and supervised by specialists so much that they have been transformed from “Aliens” to “Strangers”. This creation was specially prepared for them, planned, regulated and supervised. The results were called “The art of isolated people – raw, unprofessional, naïve and free from cultural normative”.
In a stable and explicit world, the world of artists and their fiction seems very attractive. In an uncertain reality, ambiguous “art” is supposed to support and stabilize general and ageless values. But does the artist’s fiction act as a life support? Do the compensated losses of reality bring us true existence? If offering an asylum from sense seeking in that what is real will not deprive us of free decision where do we want to be and what do we want to create? Particularly when handicapped people will be deprived of their own experiences by copying patterns from old pictures.
These and other questions are addressed to the people working with the handicapped. I believe they will look for the answers to these questions.

Slawomir Lipnicki (born in 1972, Gdansk), graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Since 2001, he has been working there as an assistant in the Painting and Drawing Atelier of K. Gliszczynski. He is the author of many realizations in public space and artistic workshops.
Training “Handicapped in the European Union”.

The aim of this scheme is to serve as informal training for future creators of projects involved with, or cooperating with, handicapped youth groups. Through common training of tolerance and help, they can acquire skills and competence to help them function in the community and beyond, without any barriers or prejudice. The training considers the balance between individual development and the collective action in all social spheres.
 

Street art – a city tattoo

26.04.2005

Street art – a city tattoo that comments on the relationship between street habitués and architecture. There are street architects and artists. Roman Rutkowski belongs to the first group and Jakub Banasiak, Partyk Poślednik, Mariusz Waras collectively known as the RAT Group belong to the second.
 

According to the “architect”, street art is an attempt to break down the borders between art and architecture within an urban setting. Roman Rutkowski and Tomasz Zaleski created a meadow for two days on Świdnicka Street in Wroclaw (2004). It had features of artistic and architectural intervention: parallel, colour diversified strips of grass and bedding flowers with pedestrian zones in-between. A plant oasis on the concrete, this rectangular piece of landscape dominated the centre of Wroclaw for two days. A direct intervention - professional and legal street art dismantled into pieces after 48 hours.

Another example – the footbridge project connecting the banks of the Vistula River in Cracow - a utopian, modern idea taking art out of the gallery and onto the street. In such circumstances, the architecture itself is not important – it is only a means of presenting the art. This is the kind of artistic intervention that makes an art form from a small footbridge over the Vistula River and a bridge from art. There have been several other projects, one based on the works of Leon Tarasewicz (we walked on his paintings) and another based on Sosnowska’s piece (here, we walked down a long corridor, whose perspective was broken by the figure of a girl placed somewhere inside).

There were plenty of interesting non-utopian street interventions in the nineties. Worth mentioning are “Twożywo”, “Galeria Zewnętrzna AMS”, “Galeria Róż” in Toruń, graffiti. Now all this is history, but it represents the beginnings of the third wave.

“What about painting?”(in other words: “What happened to art?”) is a question that is often asked but which, in the context of the great changes, does not make much sense. The last painting dash was done by the “Ładnie” group, which participated in these changes and so was “murdering” art itself. It is sufficient to surf through the internet to see who their best student is. Is it bad that comics and stickers have replaced painting? The members of the “Twożywo” group are wrong to say that today’s streeters are a con. They are their students who simplify and continuously shorten the gap.

The swoosh of the third wave

 

“Graffiti died naturally” – I read in a publication. And this is true, as apposed to the streeters who barged into the fashion world. Perhaps because the street artists work alone, ignoring the district gangs interests and unite only on web sites, if at all. But most of all they leave the signs of their presence in the name of activism – not necessarily social activism. Street art plays the same role as internet blogs, which are already present on the streets. They leave the internet for walls. The only known example in Poland is the realization of Iwona Zając from Gdańsk, who wrote the testimonies of the shipyard workers in the “Murales Festival” in Gdańsk Shipyard, explaining their life, work, dreams and unfulfilled plans.

Street art has settled well in the cities of America, Europe and Australia during the past ten years. It has infested the streets (to understand it properly, a trip to Prague is necessary – it is the closest street city to Warsaw) and has appeared in galleries. The Banks, Terror Stak, Eltono, Zevs, Hand Lisbona, Space Invader, East Eric, Influenza, HNT, etc are among the classics of their genre.

As Jakub Banasiak – Silesia streeter – writes, “the barbarian invasion did much good to everyone. The white cube has been reshuffled. The metropolis created its own original language of artistic expression which naturally places art in the orbit of industrial areas inhabited by millions of people – potential receivers.”

“We try to get to people with our message to focu their attention towards important issues and problems. We’re having a lot of fun doing it. We cut and print stencils, paint directly from a paint can and distribute our hand-made posters ourselves.”

Streeters comments:
- street art is an excellent way of reaching young people illegally, in an unusual way, and with a positive message. Moreover, it’s relaxing and entertaining for us.
- we believe that through the creation of street art we can help, support, teach and serve other people.
- We were shouting about our disagreement with racism, xenophobia and consumerist life attitude.

- What is street art? V-stickers, graffiti. An interference in urban space, often illegal, that influences passers-by. It’s still developing in Poland – says Mariusz Waras (author of the “City” project)

- How about “Twożywo”? It’s not the same. To understand it you have to leave Poland - to Prague or Paris for example. All the signposts are covered by stickers there.


2004 – 1st festival of street art in Warsaw (Street Art Jam). Created by the Warsaw team “Vlepvnet” – the wall near the Vistula River was shared between different groups of streeters. There were many of them. It was the first manifestation of street art and graffiti in Poland.
Graffiti is characterised by its closed nature – the works are not directed towards passers-by but they are some form of internal announcement – as if marking territory – that’s why they are always signed. Vlepkarze represents a different group because they address their work to everyone through the actions in tramways for example - they come and go leaving their printed pieces of art. Sometimes passers-by help streeters with their actions. They can count on professional poster and billboard distributors or just friends. It’s great that so many people can be involved in such actions.


The meeting will be conducted by:

Piotr Szwabe – poet and painter, member of painter’s group SAM. He will talk about murales, graffiti and works of European Murales Festival “Węzeł Kliniczna” in Gdańsk, Poland

and

Ryszard Ziarkiewicz – critic, editor and publisher of “Magazyn Sztuki” (“Art Magazine”) who will present the history of street art, its connections with the internet, policy and art.




 

The lecture: Internal affairs. Remarks on the modern house.
31th March 2005


 

 sister of Ludwig Wittgenstein – Hermine – once mentioned in her family memoirs that although she admired the house designed by her brother, she would rather not live in it: “it seems to be more God’s house than a place for a casual mortal like me”. Comfort, pleasure of living, shelter, privacy, cosiness and familiarity are some of the criteria for modernist housing which will be analysed. Fulfilled expectations and lost hopes towards the myth of the modernist house will be discussed during the lecture, based on the chosen examples of interiors designed by Adolf Loos (a house in Kundmanngasse Street, Vienna) and the unusual, surrealist project of Le Corbusier for Charles de Bestegui.

Dr Gabriela Świtek
Art historian. Adjunct in the Department of History of Art Thoughts, Institute of History of Art, Warsaw University. Graduate of University of Cambridge (Architecture Department, doctoral dissertation of history and philosophy of architecture, 1999). Curator in “Zacheta” National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (e.g. the exhibition of Daniel Libeskind “Memory foundation”, 2004).
 

The lecture: Slow down! Architecture.
21st March 2005

A lecture about the architectural installation of Jacek Dominiczak and Dominik Lejman in the Polish pavilion at the 9th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.


The lecture will be about creating the installation “Delay(er)ing Façade” which was part of the Polish exhibition in Venice. The curator of this exhibition was Adam Budak. The lecture will be about the new acceleration, stratification of dialogic façade, dialogue of art and architecture and about the essence of architectonic events.

Jacek Dominiczak – works both on dialogic architecture’s theory and design methodology. He is associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Poland, where he leads the Architecture Design Studio and architecture + dialog Postgraduate Design Program, which he initiated in 2003 teaming-up with Monika Zawadzka. In 2000, he opened “architecture /dialog STUDIO Jacek Dominiczak”. Since 2000, together with Monika Zawadzka, he has been the editor of the internet site “Diaade. The workplace for dialogic architecture”.

He has taught architecture and urban design in various schools:
- Warsaw University in Warsaw (Poland) 1999
- Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Queretaro, Meksyk, 1998
- Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA (1991, 1993-1997)
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA (1992)
- Politechnika Gdańska, Gdańsk (1978-1995)

Dominiczak is registered an architect and has the status of Creator of Polish Architects Association (SARP). He holds a doctorate (1989) from the architecture school of the Technical University of Gdańsk, Poland, where he graduated with an M.A, in 1978.
 

 

 

“Sensitivity of art” based on the example of “Art of Love” by Artur Żmijewski
23rd February 2005 at 5:00 p.m.

- the first in the series of lectures “Under the shower of art. Lectures on contemporary art” entitled
 

The lecture will address the problem of driving the individuality out of the visual sphere of life. What does work presenting a different picture of the body (for example handicapped or sick) mean to us? How do we treat it? Why does looking at it hurt us? Analysing the works of Artur Żmiejwski, through the theory of Julia Kristeva, we may understand them as kind of a sensitivity lesson. They force us to become open to individual problems, to work on our fears and to reflect on the symbolic extinction, which is part of our identity. Looking at the contemporary artists’ works we can say that they fulfil a widely understood, educational role.

 
Izabela Kowalczyk is a doctor of art history, working at the University of Nicolaus Copernicus in Toruń. She actively participates in women’s organizations. She is a member of the Green Party. A critic, author of books and articles on art and feminism: “Dangerous relations of art and body” and “Body and power. Polish critical art of the nineties” (2002), co-editor of the series of books “Women in pop culture” (2002) together with Edyta Ziarkiewicz and “Looking for a small girl” (2003). She runs Gender Studies workshops in Poznań and edits the internet magazine “Artmix” http://free.art.pl/artmix. She was awarded the Artistic Critic Award of Jerzy Stajuda in 2003 for her critical and academic work as well as the creation of “Artmix”.
 

Artur Tajber: The Term video-performance

17.12.2002

a lecture and a presentation of the video-performance documentation selected from the artist's collection.   

 

ARTUR TAJBER (born 1953) works and lives in Krakow (Poland). Since 1974 he has been exhibiting and presenting his works in Poland and abroad. Multimedia Artist, a performer, an author of site and social specific works, initiator of artistic activity /e.g. co-founder of the independent project Fort Sztuki/, an independent curator and an art critic, since 2001 works as a head of Intermedia Workshop in Media Communication Department in Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

DESOLAcTION,Belfast,

Curator: Małgorzata Taraszkiewicz-Zwolicka

Justyna Wiejak - a workshop "Aim / Value"

8-29.11.2002

for pupils of the IX Gymnasium in Gdańsk. Through a form of a play, children look for aims and values important in their lives. A discussion on them results in creating art works (visual, video, or audio), realised with a help of adult proffesional artists, invited for the co-operation by Justyna Wiejak: Krzysztof Topolski, Adam Świerżewski, Monika Dętkoś, Adam Witkowski. Participants of the workshop: Ewa Bumblis, Marzena Hryć, Karolina Derkacz, Kasia Książek, Daniel Tarnowski, Artur Cieszyński, Natalia Żmuda, Wioletta Szulżycka, Sebastian Kiszka, Artur Gross, Wojtek Sikora, Maciej Gołąbowski, Grzegorz Majewski.

Lecture

11.11.2002

Ryszard Kluszczyński
"Interactivity or Interpassivity? Basic Categories of Multimedia Art"
 

Hanna Kaniasta (Institute of Adam Mickiewicz, Warsaw)

 14.11.2002

 "The Contemporary Culture and the Heritage. (Examples of French Solutions Presenting Combination of the Contemporary Culture with the Heritage, the Preservation, the Economy and the Regional Social - Economical Development)
 

Against the nature

22.03 - 07.04.02
 

Workshop for the students from the Workshop of the Essentials of Artistic Design culminated in an exhibition.

The material common for all the works, Plexiglas, was also the element common for  the workshop and the presentation of its results. And the authors of the realisations, the students will be invited to propose their own interpretation of the term “nature”, which can be understood as the properties of a material, object, place, as features of a given context, human behaviours and other things. The exhibition is thus a collection of individual statements about the environment in which we function. The quotations from the book of Jolanta Brach-Czaina "Ethos of New Art" [PWN; Warszawa 1984] on "new vision of the world and new feeling of the position of man in the world" are references for the considerations of the artists. Now the artists “ treat ready products of industry as unfinished products that can be used to compose new valuable structures, [depriving] objects of their overwhelming power. […] In this way they suggest the desirable change of relations between man and the world of things”.

The workshops and the exhibition prepared in co-operation with the teachers of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk:
professor Wojciech Mokwiński
and Marek Targoński.