When the Government is Spying in the Forests, Hide in Hemp

Mateusz Kowalczyk’s project raises the issue of relationships with culture and history other than human in the light of the catastrophic consequences of the anthropogenic impact on the environment, openly called the sixth mass extinction today. Coexistence with non-humans, animals, plants and fungi was seen and experienced differently in pre-exploitation cultures. Aspects of this coexistence, as well as awareness of dependencies resulting from it, left traces in shamanistic cultures, which assumed a spiritual dimension of all beings, including the inanimate ones. Inspiration drawn from pre-Christian, animist spirituality has been present in Mateusz Kowalczyk’s works for the last few years. They combine visual and performative elements borrowed from shamanic cultures with social and political commentary. For the purposes of Naked Nerve, in collaboration with local eco-activists, the artist created a crop installation, confronting the audience with the presence of live plants of the Cannabis sativa species as a postulate of alternative urban horticulture. Despite the fact that resource management has been heavily exploiting the properties of hemp since the beginning of the modern era, the 20th-century biopolitics has brought the cultivation of the plant under strict control in most countries, including its penalization. Emotions aroused by contact with this mock wilderness remind us of the subversive potential of the impact that biochemical policies may have on human population.  

The title of the project is a quote from the famous fragment of Book Six of Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz. An entire passage of its Settlement chapter is devoted to the traditional cultivation of hemp. The fragment’s broader context illustrates the political dimension of the motif:  

Within this thicket, so fragrant and dense, 
surrounding the manor, both man and beast 
find refuge. Often a hare has the good sense, 
caught in the cabbage, to continue his feast 
in the hemp, safer than in the bushes, 
for into this thicket, a hound rarely rushes, 
afraid of its overpowering odor. 
And sometimes a servant, fleeing the lash 
or fist, hides from the wrath of his master. 
Or some peasant recruit might dive
with a crash into the hemp, evading his sergeant.  

 Adam Mickiewicz