Grzegorz Klaman’s A Subjective Bus Lin runs in Genk, Belgium

Genk:
30 May – 30 September 2012

This summer, FLACC in Genk and the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk come together as partners for A SUBJECTIVE BUS LINE, a project by the visual artist Grzegorz Klaman. A SUBJECTIVE BUS LINE in the Belgian former mining city of Genk will run during Manifesta9. Simultaneously, a Line will be held on the grounds of the former Gdansk Shipyard in Poland during Alternativa. Both the Genk mining sites and Gdansk Shipyard are undergoing transformation and are reservoirs of collective and individual memory. Gdansk Shipyard is carrying the legacy of the Solidarnosc Movement, while the Limburg mines have a complex history involving migrant workers and a profound influence on the city and surrounding landscape. Their official history is visualised in the shape of diverse forms of commemoration. The Line is an answer to the urgency to embrace hidden voices that have never become a central narrative. The project gives a unique insight into the premises of these historically loaded industrial sites.

The bus tour starts at the former mine building of Waterschei, now the Manifesta 9 venue, and takes 2 hours. The tour includes several important mine sites, such as the Cités (residential garden city), slag heaps and industrial sites. The tours in Genk can be booked in the following languages: English, Flemish, Polish and Slovenian.
http://www.flacc.info/en

A Subjective Bus Line (Genk) is a project by Grzegorz Klaman and FLACC and partnered by Het Vervolg Vzw / Coal Face (BE), Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk (PL) in conjunction with Alternativa International Visual Arts Festival in Gdansk and with support of Meta VZW. Meta is the Flemish heritage organisation for vintage tramcars and buses.

ALTERNATIVA OPENING PROGRAM 25 -27. 05. 2012

25.05 Friday

12.00 - 18.00 exhibitions open to the media and the professionals - Hall 90 B / Wyspa Art Institute

12.00 - 14.00 press preview and curator guided tour – conference room / Wyspa Art Institute

15.00 Alternativa 2010 - 2011 - movie by Elvin Flamingo - preview screening - conference room / Wyspa Art Institute

17.00 Alfredo Cramerotti - Tagging and Other Amenities of Contemporary Life (lecture in English, Polish translation) – conference room / Wyspa Art Institute

21.00 PARIAH (R&S / London) – Buffet Club


26.05 Saturday

18.00 Alternativa opening - Hall 90 B

20.00 Szelest Spadających Papierków – concert, Hall 90 B

21.00 Pink Freud - concert, Hall 90 B

22.30 after party - Buffet Club
exhibitions open until midnight


27.05 Sunday

14.00 Pascal Gielen - Biennale and the art scene: post-institution in post-Ford creativity factory (lecture in English, Polish translation) – conference room / Wyspa Art Institute

20.00 NILS PROJECT (Paryż) - premiere concert / Buffet Club

ALTERNATIVA 2012 – INTERNATIONAL VISUAL ARTS FESTIVAL

under the auspices of  President of Gdańsk Mr Paweł Adamowicz


Exhibitions open to the media and the professionals:
May 25, since 12.00 / Please register at alternativa2012@wyspa.art.pl

Official Opening
May 26 at 6 pm

The shows will run until September 30, Admission free
Inquiries: pr-wyspa(at)wyspa.art.pl

Wyspa Institute of Art invites you for the opening days of Alternativa 2012, a project that seeks diverse modes of knowing and explores possible ways of being and acting in contemporaneity. This year’s programme comprises two exhibitions, entitled respectively Materiality and Wyspa. Now is Now.

Artists’ talks and lecture performances include those by Hito Steyerl, Lara Almacequi, Emilio Moreno, Marcelo Expósito, Sally Gutierrez and Oliver Ressler.

The list of distinguished speakers who will deliver talks during Alternativa 2012 includes: Franco Berardi, Alfredo Cramerotti, Okwui Enwezor, Pascal Gielen, Miguel Robles Duran and Irit Rogoff. Please check our website regularly for schedules of talks and workshops and updates.


Alternativa 2010–2012 is a project prepared by Wyspa Institute of Art and the City of Gdańsk, with additional committed funds from the European Commission, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as well as the Province of Pomerania, among others.

Materiality is a two-year European project that is being developed in collaboration between Wyspa, Vessel in Bari, Polytechnico in Tomar and Kibla in Maribor.

19th of May (Saturday)
8.00 PM / 1.00 AM Wyspa Institute of Art
Admission free

Spend The Night of Museums in Gdańsk Shipyard ! Wyspa Institute of Art offers a demonstration of the latest animations of Lodz’s film studio - Se-Ma-For.

The projections will be held simultaneously in two places: in a specially arranged kiosk in front of Wyspa Institute of Art and in the film room, on the first floor of our building. During the Night of Museums you will be able to visit our bookstore, in the same evening a special discounted offer for the guests, will be prepared by Buffet Club.

Videos will be displayed without breaks, in two main thematic areas

One of Gdańsk’s greatest attractions – the shipyard – is inaccessible and surrounded by a wall. The Subjective Bus Line opens it up and transforms it into public space. See the original workplace of Lech Wałęsa, the historical gates on Roads to Freedom Exhibition, historic BHP (Labour Safety and Hygiene) Room as well as Imperial Shipyard, shipwayes, U-boots Workshop and the spot where Wałęsa jumped over the shipyard’s wall! Listen to a subjective story of this special place told by the witnesses of the legendary events – our Guides (former Shipyard workers)

Visit the exhibitions of the international visual arts festival ALTERNATIVA, Labour & Leisure in a new amazing exhibition space – Hall 90B and Estrangement in the building of Wyspa Institute of Art.

You are welcome to visit the Info Point of the Subjective Bus Line ahead of the Shipyard’s Historical Gate on Monument to The Fallen Shipyard Workers, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Tuesday till Sunday, or call us at: +48 512 055 176 / sla@wyspa.art.pl

4th Festival of Polish Short Films. SHORT WAVES

14th of April (Friday)
7 PM / Wyspa Institute of Art
Admission free

Between 12 and 28 April 2012 the Festival of Polish Short Films will travel across all over Poland, also visiting some foreign cities.

The programme comprises the latest Polish productions from feature films, through documents, animation, video-art to video-clips. The public gathered at the Festival shows will enjoy the opportunity to vote and select the winner of the Main Prize. Additionally, the Festival will grant the Short Waves PRO prize, the winner of which will be selected by a professional jury.
Short Waves goes across the borders of geography and genre. Similar to radio short waves, which attain large distances, the Festival tries to reach everywhere wherever the viewers hungry for short-time experience are waiting.

Set your tuners to the fourth edition of Short Waves!

Lecture by Hito Steyerl

13th of April (Friday)
5 PM / Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk
Admission free

Wyspa Institute of Art is pleased to invite you to the Meeting Hall of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, for the lecture of the a prominent German artist and artistic educationalist Hito Steyerl a participant in this year’s Alternativa 2012 Festival. Her lecture is the first in the series of the talks, planned within the Alternativa framework, which launches the co-operation between our Institute and the Academy. Hito Steyerl is going to show her solo exhibition at Wyspa in 2013.

Hito Steyerl will talk about her recent projects, especially "In Free Fall" about the recycling of media images and the beginning of the current financial crisis, as well as "The Kiss" a laser scanner video about an incident in the Bosnian war in 1993. How do documentary expectations shift with 3d technologies? And what does this have to do with a "withdrawal from representation"?

Hito Steyerl – a filmmaker, art educationalist and writer, based in Berlin. Steyerl started out as an essay filmmaker and successively moved into the art field. Her main interests are the digital image, it´s circulation and it´s materiality. She works a professor for New Media in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Arts Berlin. Steyerl is also the author of a book on the documentary film in art and an editor of several other films.


Her lecture and participation in the Alternativa framework are the result of the co-operation between "Wyspa" and "If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to be a Part of Your Revolution" in Amsterdam, co-financed by the EU and the City of Gdańsk. The artist’s participation in Alternative is financed by IFA in Stuttgart.

Hito Steyerl’s lecture was organised in the co-operation with the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.

The action "Being Solidary with Belarusia" in Gdańsk will comprise a series of events organised on the premises of the University of Gdańsk and the Wyspa Art Institute.  The event in then Three-City agglomeration will launch the series of events all over Poland which will finish with a big open-air concert in Warsaw on 22 April 2012.


24 March (Saturday) Wyspa Institute of Art, conference room
18:00 A show of documentary films:

"Białoruś. Droga do niepodległości"/ Belarus. A Road to Independence (Dir. Mikołaj Wawrzeniuk). The film shows, inter alia, the history of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR). There will be a concert on the anniversary of the incorporation of the Republic on 25 March entitled "Solidarni z Białorusi¹" ("Being Solidary with Belarus").

"Muzyka wolności" / Music of Freedom (Dir. Jerzy Kalina)
A document about an annual Belarusian rock music festival "Basowishtcha" which takes place in the Podlasie region of Poland.

"Dosyć! Do wolności" (bel. Dawoli, Da Woli!") / Enough! Towards Freedom! Belsat, 2011

A summarising discussion:
Guests: Franak Wiaczorka, Helena Głogoka - the chairperson of the "Chatka" Belarusian Cultural Society, Maciej Konopacki - a journalist, a son of one of the characters in the film " Belarus. A road to Independence" Hasan Konopacki.

The event will finish with the film "Massacre" (Dir. Andriej Kudinenko), 2010

A crazy and "ironical" horror, being an adaptation of Prospero Mérimée’s short story Lokis. The action takes place on Belarusian terrain incorporated into the Russian Empire in the mid 19th century. It tells about a young aristocrat who changes into a bear during the night. He is also the figure of an exemplary Belarusian patriot who refuses to declare himself either as a Pole or Russian.

25 March (Sunday) 18.00
Amaroka, Vinsent, Botanic Project | Buffet Club, admission free
A concert of committed Belarusian groups during which photographs from Belarus of 2010-2011 with be projected along with the Polish commentary by Vinsent.

The organiser - Stowarzyszenie Wolna Białoruś/ Free Belarus Association, The "Mozaika" Student Scientific Circle, Wyspa Art Institute, the "Alternator" Academic Cultural Centre of Gdañsk University and the "Belsat" television

23 of March (Friday)
6 PM / Wyspa Institute of Art
Free entrance

Wyspa Institute of Art cordially invites You to the opening of the project RE.ACT.FEMINISM #2 on 23rd of March at 6 pm. re.act.feminism #2 - performative archive. Archive, exhibitions, workshops, performances, discussions, research

Opening programme on 23rd of March:
18.00 - meeting with the curators of the archive: Bettina Knaup and Beatrice Ellen Stammer and the curators of the Gdańsk part: Aneta Szyłak and Aleksandra Grzonkowska
19.00 - official opening
22.00 - concert in the Buffet Club

re.act.feminism #2, performative archive is a mobile project which is going to be shown in six European countries in the years 2011 - 2013. The first unveiling of the project occurred on 7 October 2011 at the Centro Cultural Montehermoso in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country in Spain.

10th of February (Saturday)
07:00 PM / Wyspa Institute of Art
Free entrance

Wyspa Institute of Art and Film Discussion Club "Marcelo" invite you for a subsequent show from the cycle of World Shorts. This time you could view short films from Greece. As those who saw "The Thug" and/ or „Attenberg” know, the Greek cinema successfully opposes the crisis.

18th of February (Saturday)
07:00 PM / Wyspa Institute of Art
Free entrance

Wyspa Institute of Art and DKF Marcello (Film Discussion Club) invite you to the show from the series of World Shorts, which presents short films from all over the world to the public. We will present a programme composed of the most interesting productions form Sweden.

Opening:
Friday 3rd February 2012, 19.00, Wyspa Institute of Art

Exhibition on view:
Tuesday - Sunday, 12.00-18.00


Maryam Jafri is an artist working in video, performance and photography. Informed by a research based, interdisciplinary process her artworks are marked by a visual language poised between film and theater and a series of narrative experiments and oscillating between script and document, fragment and whole. Jafri’s practice often starts from something that seems concrete whether that be an archive or a written text and then disrupts its established form. As Bridget Crone states in the work, "Staged Archive" (2008), for example, Jafri worked in relation to the National Archives of Ghana to create a film that questioned the archive‘s relationship to knowledge and ‘truth’ by staging the archive through a series of tableaux that referred to the visual and narrative codes of TV and cinema such as the court room drama, for example.

Maryam Jafri is an artist based in New York and Copenhagen. Her video work “Costume Party” (2005), Staged Archive (2008) and “Death with friends” (2010) will be presented in Wyspa in the exhibition “Stages”. Maryam Jafri presented her video works “Running”,“Janus”, “Father & Son” and Theatre as a part of Estrangement, an exhibition organized in Wyspa Institute of Art in the framework of Alternativa Festival 2011 curated by Aneta Szyłak and Hiwa K. Recent exhibition is her first solo show in Poland.

During the opening there’s a possibility to get know with two publications about Maryam Jafri - Bettina Steinbruegge: Silent Witnesses: Independence Day 1936-1967; Camera Austria International, nr.116/2011 and Maryam Jafri. Costume Party: Colony &Native, Kathrin Becker, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2006. Publications will be avaliable in Wyspa’s archive.

27th of January (Friday)
22:00 PM / Buffet Club,  Wyspa Institute of Art
Introduction Joanna Sarbiewska (University of Gdańsk)
Free entrance

Piotr Szulkin’s film ’Oczy uroczne’ ("Spellbinding Eyes") from 1976 is a story based on a dismal folk tale about a Lord whose gaze causes death. The Lord, closed in his castle leads his dreary life alone until, one day, a nobleman and his daughter lose their way and seek for help on his premises. This oneiric cinema, spells the story with no words, using only images and choral chants. The film is crowded with corpses of dead people from the area of history and culture, which adds an erudite zest making the Szulkin’s film a specific essay. The narrative function is taken over by music which will be played by the MAMROCZ group in this particular re-interpretation.

Mamrocz is a collective established for the interpretations of Szulkin’s film, spicing the director’s filmed images with an improvised form – an exchange between Natalia Grzebała (piano, voice) and Robert Kamiński (synthesisers) – who are musicians linked to the formations Le Bâtard de la Raison / The Bastard of the Mind and Kciuk & The Fingers (The Thumb & The Fingers) in their daily practice..

Detailed information about the film on the site IMDB

20th of January (Friday)
05:30 PM / our book-store Bookyard, Wyspa Art Institute
The meeting will take Krzysztof Miękus
Free entrance

„7 Rooms” is Rafał Milach’s most personal project. He went to Russia to meet his relatives, living in east Siberia. He had to go through three cities on his way: Moscow, Ekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk. It was there, where he met the majority of the characters of his book „7 Rooms”. They invited him to their homes, showing how they lived. He would return to them regularly for 6 years, trying to keep the relation as close as possible. He lived with them, travelled with them and spent some time at their "dacha" (summer house in the country).

Szanowni Państwo, Koledzy, Współpracownicy, Przyjaciele

Zbliża się ostateczny termin rozliczenia PIT za rok 2011. Byłoby nam niezmiernie miło, gdyby przy wypełnianiu zeznań podatkowych pamiętali Państwo o Wyspie. Także dzięki wskazaniu Fundacji Wyspa Progress jako beneficjenta 1% Państwa podatku, jesteśmy w stanie animować kulturę, organizować wystawy, spotkania i wydawać publikacje a także
utrzymywać budynek, w którym prowadzimy działalność. Ten rok, jak i poprzedni, jest rokiem szczególnych potrzeb ze względu na organizowaną przez nas drugą edycję Festiwalu Alternativa oraz zbiórkę publiczną na rzecz wykupu naszego budynku.

Prosimy mieć na uwadze numer KRS – 0000063731

Serdecznie zachęcamy do uwzględnienia naszej prośby oraz zapraszamy na otwarcie Festiwalu Alternativa już 25 maja.

Aneta Szyłak, Grzegorz Klaman i zespół Wyspy

„Santa’s Workshop” documentary
Meeting with Yang Yu and Debby Chan
6.12.2011 time 19.00

On the occasion of St. Nicolas Day, when children in Poland traditionally receive presents, we will talk about situation of toy factory workers in China, where 80% of global production in that sector is located. Moreover, on 10th Dec we celebrate Human Rights Day. Processes of globalization and pressure of international competition often lead to severe human rights violations. Civil society organizations and trade unions worldwide fight against corporate practices, that sustain exploitation of workers at the bottom of the supply chain. What about us, consumers? Can we do something about it?

We will listen to the testimonial of  Yang Yu, former worker of Tai Qiang factory, (manufacturing toys for Mattel) and Debby Chan, human and worker’s rights activist investigating working conditions in factories in Guangdong province. She represents the organization Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM, Hong Kong) which keeps track of abuses connected with manufacturing of brand products.

25th of November (Friday)
09:00 PM / Hall 90B

Directed by: Bożena Eltermann
Concept and choreography: Bożena Eltermann
Cast:  Bożena Eltermann, Anna Steller, Marek Kakareko, Adrianna Kubik

Guest appereance of the musicians: Olo Walicki, Gaba Kulka

Tickets: 20 PLN / available in Buffet and ISW

Bożena Elterman’s most recent production „Heretics, Heterics, Hedonists, Celebrities” refers to  the aesthetics of the period between the wars of the twentieth century, and her own art project – the Cynada Theatre refers to a German Expressionism and artists such as Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman.

Opening:
Friday 25th November 2011, 18.00, Wyspa Institute of Art

Exhibition on view:
Tuesday - Sunday, 12.00-18.00


Perito Moreno is one of the largest glaciers in the world which melts into the Patagonian Lake Argentina and is still growing, despite the global warming. As a result of its continual enlargement the huge pressure of water makes the glacier break up and release frozen blocks. This on-going, spectacular process of the glacier calving takes place amidst the applause and cheers of spectators.

"Perito Moreno" speaks about our daily "breaking" because of seemingly petite reasons in unspectacular situations. Hanna Nowicka shows this little effective, unattractive and quite breaks of our own "glaciers" in seductive visual and sound layers.

Opening:
15th October 2011, 18:00, Wyspa Institute of Art

Exhibition on view:
Tuesday - Sunday, 12.00-18.00


Anna Reinert’s painting is first and foremost focused on the reconstruction of visible reality, not its imitation. Its main concern is not any approximation, intuitive method and, even, observation but the rational, scientific certainty. The reduction of a three-dimensional space to the plane of a painting, following a scientific approach, brings to mind the 15th-century intention to create new rules for painting in Renaissance time and the concept of a painting as the window open to the world.

Matadero Madrid - centro de creación contemporáneo del ayuntamiento de Madrid

Open Daily:
Monday - Friday 16:00 - 22:00
Saturday - Sunday 11:00 - 22:00

Free entry to all events.
All events with Spanish translation.


Everyday: 11:00 – 20:00

Elżbieta Jabłońska - Resident’s performance The Revolt, 2011 (Shed 1)

Elżbieta Jabłońska’s intervention at Solidarność Camp is based on the principle of performativity which derives from Austin’s concept of ‘performative utterances’  combining it with a specific physical action. The events that have recently stirred European cities, Madrid also, are forms of social disagreement with the order whose political, social and above all economic facts of  existence have exhausted their conciliatory potential and have become unacceptable.

Throughout her residence at the Camp, the artist will induce small, daily changes with the use of words and actions. New elements will constantly appear and cause commotion and change the status quo. The revolt in Jabłonśka’s interpretation is the moment when communication is simultaneously the main priority and the greatest difficulty. It breaks through despite the noise, gibberish, lack of dialogue. When it finds an outlet, it has the power to change. Sometimes this outlet is blocked because of a lack of faith and infinite possibilities of interpretation.

Grzegorz Klaman - Untitled (Shed 4)
Marek Sobczyk - Solitarity (Shed 5)
Jadwiga Sawicka - Never Happened / Reading Room (Shed 3)
Video Library - (Shed 2)


12.10 Wednesday

17:00 Official opening of the exhibition Solidarność Camp

18:00 Lecture: “Solidarity – a communist event. An attempt at a reinterpretation” by Jakub Majmurek

19:00 A political woman. Meeting with Henryka Krzywonos and cooking the conspiracy soup "Karuzela"


20:00 Performance: “Health and Safety at work. A user’s manual for revitalization of post-working class territories” by
Jacek Niegoda


21:00 Debate: “How the material resonates politically? The discussion around the worker’s sheds installation”. Participants: Arne Hendriks, Inês Moreira, Aneta Szyłak, Leire Vergara


13.10 Thursday

16:00 – 20:00 Consultations for artists Consultants: Arne Hendriks, Grzegorz Klaman, Inês Moreira, Aneta Szyłak, Leire Vergara

20:00 Stage Reading - Julia Holewińska: “Foreign bodies”
Spanish translation: Elżbieta Bortkiewicz
Stage direction: Natalia Korczakowska

21:00 Meeting with the author: Julia Holewińska

22:00 Film Screening: “I still believe”
Directed by: Magdalena Mosiewicz


14.10 Friday

17:00 – 20:00 The Inner Ear Massage Parlour
Only one person can enter the shed during each 12-minute-long performance.
The Inner Ear Massage Parlour is a charlatan’s project, mixing truth with fiction, the absurd and grotesque but treating things in a professional and serious manner. With reference to traditional shamans and the barber surgeons of medieval Europe IEMP seeks to find the very deep connections between medicine and music. IEMP’s work is different from that to the conventional approach of music therapists, but they remain open to the inspiration and knowledge that comes from this trade. As charlatans IEMP are absolved and free from convention, but as good-hearted people they have the best intentions towards what they do. In accordance with the science and wisdom of Professor Ripplemark, IEMP play and heal others equally as well as themselves.
Performers:
Jacek Mazurkiewicz, Patryk Zakrocki

20:00 Performance: Elżbieta Jabłońska

22:30 Concert: Gypsy Pill


15.10 Saturday

14:00 – 17:00 “The Man Who Whistled While He Worked and other stories.”  Acoustic workshop for children and adults by Zorka Wollny

17:00 – 20:00 The Inner Ear Massage Parlour

19:00 Solidarność Camp Special Guest Zygmunt Bauman: “Has Solidarity a future?”


16.10 Sunday

12:00 – 15:00 “The Man Who Whistled While He Worked and other stories.”  Acoustic workshop for children and adults by Zorka Wollny

17:00 – 20:00 The Inner Ear Massage Parlour

20:00 Bożena Umińska-Keff: “On Mother and Fatherland”
Spanish translation: Aranzazu Calderón Puerta
Stage direction: Ana Brzezińska

Drama translation was possible thanks to the financial support of the Instytut Książki – Sample Translation Program


18.10 Tuesday

16:00 – 20:00 “How to become lonely and parasitical of your own free will and accord?” Art workshop and public demonstration with Marek Sobczyk

18:00 Lecture: "The Taboo of Freedom. Polish Theater after 1989" by Piotr Gruszczyński

19:30 Lecture: "Theater as Politics – the practice of art focused on transforming reality" by Igor Stokfiszewski

19.10 Wednesday

16:00 – 20:00 “How to become lonely and parasitical of your own free will and accord?” Art workshop and public demonstration with Marek Sobczyk

20:00 Film Screening: “Places of Transformation” Directed by Łukasz Konopa


20.10 Thursday

20:00 Drama: “Small Narration”
Written, directed and performed by Wojtek Ziemilski

Wyspa Institute of Art / Hall 90B / Buffet

29th September (Thursday)


7.30 p.m. Hiwa K With Jim White Once Upon A Time In The West - concert/ performance Hall 90B
8 p.m. Le Batard de la Raison / Rozumu Bękart - concert Buffet
9 p.m. MODE101 (newwaveconnection), Pan Damian: disco, italo, cosmic, balearic - Buffet
11 p.m. DO: CENT, SKANK-1: drum&bass - Buffet

30th September (Friday)

6 p.m. Buy Yourself Wyspa! charity auction - Wyspa Institute of Art
8 p.m. Paryss + Sasin - live sax! Cripsy: deep house, lounge, chill out - Buffet

Wyspa Institute of Art / Buffet /  Hall 90B
27 of September 2011
7.00 - 11.00  PM

Curators: Inke Arns (Dortmund) & Thibaut de Ruyter (Berlin)
Coordinator: Daniel Muzyczuk
Advisor: Michał Libera

The exhibition and film programme INDUSTRIAL asks ‘whatever happened to the industry?’. It would in fact appear that industrial modes of production have not so much disappeared as migrated from one place – the early industrial countries – to another. While ‘first-world’ nations have only just completed a 40-year-long history of de-industrialisation, so-called emerging countries are undergoing a rapid and massive process of industrialisation. How has the industry managed to resettle in those regions (notably China and India), what are the working conditions in its new factories, and what is its heritage in the areas it has left behind? Has it actually susbsided in traditional industrial countries, or is the notion of immaterial labour merely an uncanny resurgence of the classic industrial model, whose might is now inscribed in contemporary, post-industrial modes of production? Within the framework of the Culture Season North Rhine-Westphalia in Poland 2011/12 Tam’Tam, over the course of the first two weeks in October the HMKV will present INDUSTRIAL on Tour, a film and music programme hosted by five industrial towns in Poland (Bytom, Tarnów, Łódź, Nowa Huta/Kraków, Gdańsk). During this time it plans to conduct further research for the exhibition in collaboration with the respective local partners.

It’s Gas! Teatr KontemPlujący, Słupsk, Poland
24th of September, Wyspa Institute of Art

Directed by Joanna Stoike-Stępkowska
With Agnieszka Bednarek, Monika Jasiak, Małgorzata Łosiewicz, Żaneta Mroczyńska, Sabina Soboń, Robert Chomicki, Norbert Jaszkul, Kamil Kierszniewski, Marcin Soboń, Bartosz Pakuła, Patryk Roszkowski

It’s Gas!, a production based on the drama by Szymon Wróblewski, depicts people who want to have their own country and live like citizens of other independent countries. They are so determined to reach their goal that they resort to terrorist attacks. Specifically the play concerns Chechnya under Russian rule and references an event in 2002 when Chechnyan terrorists attacked a Moscow theater and took hostages. In an attempt to rescue the hostages, the Russians launched a brutal raid which claimed about 300 victims. Like Chechens, Kurds have also for years striven to establish an independent State. They, too, form groups of rebels ready to fight for independence. It’s Gas! tackles the topic of terrorism metaphorically. No one says the words “Chechnya” or “Russia”. Instead, there is Sparta, which fights for its rights, and imperialist Rome. The production might as well deal with Kurds and Turkey, or Iraq. The mechanisms leading to the most desperate moves such as terrorism remain the same.

SOLIDARNOŚĆ CAMP

The creation of the Solidarity trade union and the events it had set in motion are slowly becoming a distant memory. Poland’s upcoming presidency of the European Council provides an excellent opportunity to re-examine the significance of the ideas cherished by Solidarity in present-day Europe. How did the concept of solidarity and the movement it gave rise to affect European sensibilities? Are its values still valid or have they been obscured by consumerism, free-market mechanisms, materialism, greed, the desire to gain security through isolationism, etc.?

The project is also a chance to reflect critically upon the future of Solidarity, and discover new meanings and phenomena with which it could be associated. Is it possible to revive these ideals or are they destined to become slogans of an ageing continent, where solidarity serves only to safeguard the costly privileges of the older generation? Can Europe afford to show solidarity with illegal immigrants, or will it merely continue to shore up its borders against them? Is solidarity still a living component of European civilisation, or is it just a catchword covering up cynical interests?

Artists - Paweł Demirski, Roman Dziadkiewicz, Julia Holewińska, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Grzegorz Klaman, Robert Kuśmirowski, Konrad Pustoła,  Marek Sobczyk, Łukasz Surowiec, Bożena Umińska-Keff, Zorka Wollny.

Carrot Workers Collective
8-10th July
Hall 90B

In terms of the details for the project "Photoromance for Precarious Workers" we propose to work in a participatory way with a group of cultural workers to develop a series of photoromances to map precarity.

The Carrot Workers Collective is a London-based group of cultural and education workers, students, current or ex interns and non-aligned individuals from the creative and cultural sectors who regularly meet to think together around the conditions of free and precarious labour in London. We are currently undertaking a participatory action research around voluntary work, internship, job placements and compulsory free work in order to understand the impact they have on material conditions of existence, life expectations and sense of self, together with their implications in relation to education, life long training, exploitation, and class interests.

Elżbieta Matynia is associate professor of sociology and politics at the New School for Social Research, New York. She graduated in Polish studies and sociology from the University of Warsaw. In Poland she is currently associated with the University of Lower Silesia. Founder and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, she has undertaken many research and educational projects in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. She has authored numerous articles and works about contemporary democratic culture, including the book Performative Democracy, published in America by Paradigm in the prestigious series Yale Cultural Sociology, and whose Polish edition will be presented at this year’s Alternativa.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
30th June, 2011
performance, radio-play

Abu Hamdan will develop both an audio essay and a collective listening performance/presentation event using the reanimation of the shipyard radio, Radio Alternativa, as both a conceptual point of departure and a means of broadcast and distribution of the work. Lawrence Abu Hamdan will intersect his current research into the politics of listening and the role of the voice in law with an exploration of the radiophonic history of the Gdańsk Shipyard to produce a new work that sonically inhabits the audio infrastructure at the core of its investigation.

Abu Hamdan is sound artist and researcher based in London. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Karem Ibrahim i Linda Pollack
25th June 2011
Wyspa Institute of Art & Hall 90B

What if democracy is not an exceptional singular case, specific to one country, but a series of instances, moments and locations... A pluralism of histories and exchanges that can be found in times recent and past; Cairo, Tunis, Madison Wisconsin, Gdansk Poland, Paris, the Congo, Philadelphia... Karem Ibrahim and Linda Pollack will collect slogans, chants, and manifestos from democratic movements around the world via a Facebook Page (Everything is Exceptional). For the Alternativa Festival, they will create the Everything Is Exceptional Gathering Point – a recording booth / meeting place, inviting the public to recite the collected texts, both in original language (with the help of pronunciation coaching) and in translated languages.

Wyspa Institute of Art
17th June 2011, 7 pm
book launch / screening with editor/ curator Ana Janevski
(Warsaw, MoMA)


Alternativa invites you to the promotional meeting of our latest book As Soon as I Open My Eyes I See a Film. Experiment in the Art of Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by the first exhibition organized by the MoMA Warsaw.
It’s a journey to a country which has ceased to exist, but which gave rise to the most important art myth
in our part of Europe – the myth of radical art. The presentation of the book is accompanied by the screening of short
amateur films from Yugoslav cineclubs and the examples of Yugoslav ‘Black Wave Cinema’. The program entitled We cannot promise to do more than experiment includes films by Dušan Makavejev, Karpo
Godina, Želimir Žilnik, Sanja Iveković.

If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to Be a Part of Your Revolution
Alternativ a Workshops

If I Can’t Dance presents artists Edition IV

On 10 June, If I Can’t Dance presents Edition IV, with new projects in development by artists Jeremiah Day, Sung Hwan Kim, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Hito Steyerl and Emily Wardill, at the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk. During an afternoon programme, If I Can’t Dance invites its five commissioned artists to speak about their new works, which are to be finalized and presented to the public in fall/winter 2011. The gathering will provide a platform for exchange and discussion among the artists and with the audience. Curator Jacob Korczynski is moderator of the day.

If Can’t Dance’s field of research for Edition IV is the notion of affect, which can be read in the light of our continuing investigations into the construction of subjectivity and the politics of identity. Our interest in affect illuminates and intensifies our projects, allowing for connections to be made where relevant. The programme takes place in the context of If I Can’t Dance’s contribution to Alternativa, the international contemporary visual art festival that aims to investigate the ways in which contemporary art intersects with the political.

The commissioned works are developed in collaboration with our current partner organisations M HKA in Antwerp, Site Gallery in Sheffield, Tate Modern in London, Veemtheater in Amsterdam, and Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk.

Programme Friday 10 June, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk
Moderator: Jacob Korczynski

12:00 Introduction by If I Can’t Dance
12:15 Wendelien van Oldenborgh 
12:45 Q&A
13:00 Sung Hwan Kim

13:30 Q&A
13:45 Lunch break
14:30 Jeremiah Day

15:00 Q&A
15:15 Emily Wardill

15:45 Q&A
16:00 Hito Steyerl

16:30 Q&A
16:45 End of day

We would like to invite for the Performance Night that will take place on 28th May as a part of the Alternativa International Contemporary Visual Art Festival vernissage. All the accompanying events will take place both on the first floor of the Hall 90B (the Labour&Leisure exhibition space) and on the premises of Shipyard’s surroundings.

Although this is performance night, the first actions – like Rozgłośnia Stocznia/ Shipyard Radio Station, a broadcast of Kasia Krakowiak - will start at 10.00 am. It is worth to spend this day at Shipyard!

Zorka Wollny i Anna Szwajgier - A song while working
Hall 90B

Anders Bojen i Kristoffer Ørum - The Subjective History of Gdańsk, performance
Hall 90B

Kasia Krakowiak - Human Antena – Shipyard Radio Station 94FM, performance + reconstruction of the Shipyard’s broadcasting center
Former premises of the Gdańsk Shipyard and the Hall 90B

Wyspa Institute of Art, in collaboration with the City of Gdansk and Gdansk 2016 is launching a series of international exhibitions, art events, publications and on-line activities under the title Alternativa scheduled for the Summers of 2011 and 2012. Alternativa aims to investigate the ways in which contemporary art intersects with the political. It seeks diverse modes of knowing and is searching for a performative, affectual apparatus through which we can explore possible ways of existing in contemporaneity. For the exhibitions and events, the newly renovated spectacular space, Hall 90B, is made available along with Wyspa’s and Modelarnia’s own spaces. Located in the legendary Gdansk Shipyard, where the workers’ strikes of 1980 began the process of the disintegration of the Communist bloc, Alternativa looks at the atmosphere of political momentum and its possibilities.


Opening party:
May 28, 2011 7pm

Exhibition on view
29 May–30 September 2011
artistic director: Aneta Szylak

Gdansk Shipyard famously the “Cradle of Solidarity’’ and a key industrial site with in Polish history shall play host to four emerging British artists intending to explore its heritage.


The Artists’ visit marks the final stage of Post Industrial Revolution, an artistic residency exchange developed between the UK and Poland focusing on the former industrial areas of Birmingham and Gdansk, in particular the districts of Digbeth and the Gdansk Shipyard.

The artists from the UK will begin the one month residency from the 6th of May until the 5th of June 2011, using it as a period for research and for the production of new art works directly responding to the Gdansk Shipyard, its historical and social context. These newly create art works will be displayed in an exhibition at Modelarnia, a former industrial space, originally utilized for the building of model ships and part of the Wyspa Progress Foundation. The exhibition will take place from Friday 3rd June until June 17th.

Alternativa to cykl wystaw obudowany szeregiem wydarzeń towarzyszących, który poszukuje nowych dróg dla idei sztuki i jej roli społecznej. Jego idea nawiązuje do tradycji politycznych Gdańska oraz nowych zjawisk w sztuce, które zaczęły pojawiać się w Gdańsku w pierwszej połowie lat osiemdziesiątych.

This summer the Wyspa Institute of Art is exhibiting new works by Klaman that have never been publicly displayed in Poland before.

Affectionately Yours is part of a one year research project that If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution is curating at the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ since October 2009.