The second meeting of the Master’s Studio is a Mistesses Studio under the slogan “Naked Nerve”
The second meeting of the Master’s Studio line-up (it is the first meeting of The Mistresse’s Studio at the same time) takes place in the BWA Studio Wrocław gallery again. We get to know each other. Each artist is given a few minutes, but in fact it is still a presentation or conversation time. Some even risk small performances. Ala Savashevich brings a felt costume she made, combining elements of the heritage of huge monuments characteristic of post-Soviet states and the feminine, soft clothing material. The participants begin a discussion. We talk about the powerful works by Victoria Tofan and Marianka Grabska, both concerning communicative detachment – the former is about alienation through the violent attack on an almost material boundary of inability to self-express, the latter – a metaphor of the helplessness connected with the inability to find a word which would express the experience of losing one’s own child. Another discussion relating to the issue of translation revolves around the impressive research carried out by Dominika Piętak and referring to the history of a Jewish inn which, together with Joanna, in some sort of cabalistic process, she tries to turn into sugar. We also struggle with Katka Bleichert’s doubts, who tries to find a way out of the post-artistic format in which she was trapped after the success of her “Ciacha fryzjera” and wants to find a form of a synthesis of the problem she is working on. Agata Siniarska comes with Foka, a dog she adopted half a year earlier in Wrocław when conducting a choreography course accompanying the exhibition “We Will All Meet at the Same Place”. She describes a detective project in which experience leads to the discovery of one’s own criminality. A bit like, pardon the reference, “Crime and Punishment”, except that it is the human body that serves as a means of expression on the set of “Logging”. We all ponder on the possibility of transmission of interspecies experience through movement. Some cross-species tropisms.
Irmina Rusicka changes her plans. She also explains why Kasper Lecnim is absent. He suddenly disappears from the project – he has other exhibitions and commitments, a fact that momentarily shows the reality of young artists’ work. Priorities are priorities. Irmina also abandons her original, risky plan to step into Piotr Szczęsny’s shoes and comes up with a more universal project of exploring the scapegoat motif, an object of collectively transferred emotions, liberation from guilt in the name of new social integration. Irmina wants to create objects. It may be difficult to find a foundry which would prepare the sculptures on the basis of 3D print prototypes. In the case of Mateusz Kowalczyk things may prove difficult too. His idea of mediating an organic folk revolution through the project of growing legal hemp has a number of points which right away challenge BWA Wrocław Główny, an institution entangled in untypical spatial and political coalitions. Some space for legal cultivation in the context of the gallery will have to be found. It may be a problem.
Przemek Piniak is quite incredible – he shows us his performative integrity again. Each of his words is like poking a stick in the dried mud of his narration. It is a very literary project, and performative at the same time, in Erika Fischer-Lichte’s sense of performativity, i.e. “destabilizing the boundary between what is natural and real for us and what is stipulated and imaginary”.
And then Daniel Kotowski speaks, or rather stops speaking. And so do we when his sign-language interpreter appears on the screen of the computer. The silence is complete, we are fully concentrated. We realize how much we lose when everyone speaks at the same time, and how much we gain when everyone listens at the same time.
Things are relatively simple as far as Magdalena Romanowska’s idea is concerned. Joanna believes right away that it is a clear concept, the border plough is a machine which appeals to everyone through its material simplicity and function. Paulina Pankiewicz’s project is equally simple and straightforward. She will be guiding a group of blind people to “show them the landscape of a place” and paint it with their experience by means of their bodies. It is not clear yet how to show it.
Emotionally speaking, Kamila Kobierzyńska seems to be facing a more difficult task. She is fascinated with the vocal technique of “white singing” typical of folk music, richer in harmony than music based on tonality. Kamila intends to use this technique, together with the unique history connected with the culture of oral memory stored in its products – songs, ditties, lullabies – and clash it with the history of atrocities that civilian population falls victim to in times of conflict. She uses the voices of pregnant women singing in a choir.
Jakub Jakubowicz, a sculptor awarded for his concise approach to issues connected with memory and its transfer, wants to meet descendants of post-war settlers. Just as in the artist’s earlier projects, they include former inhabitants of Wólka, a Lemko village near which he was born, and their descendants who were moved to the Ukrainian resort of Truskavets. The goal the artist sets for himself in the project is to explore the resort (when it is possible) and find conjunctions between Wólka and Truskavets.
What seems to be a perfect integrating element is the project introduced by Pamela Bożek and Paweł Błęcki. It is called Bureau of Worthwhile Activities and is a new abbreviation that stands for BWA (Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych – Bureau of Art Exhibitions), a symbol of Polish contemporary art exhibitions within institutional frames. It is still associated with conventional solutions introduced out of habit to produce artistic events. Results include costly settings, promotional publications and catalogues, often miscalculating the recipients’ needs and interests, also in terms of marketing and distribution.
Over the two days, we discuss each project. It is still a bit like in a classroom. Someone suggests that the next meeting should take place somewhere far from institutional conditions. We decide that it will be held in Kashubia, where Kasia Hołdys’s grandmother supervises a settlement of family houses. Everyone should take a sleeping bag.