Hard Ground

Przemysław Piniak’s audio show is a kind of stream of consciousness. The poetic imagination and dense language full of metaphors locate the work in the literary tradition. What is more, the romantic topic of the birth of a nation aims at its sacred spheres. The thematic loftiness of the artist’s tale is combined with meticulous observation of marginal phenomena. Hard Ground is what is omitted in design. It documents areas beyond the mainstream of knowledge, perception, definition, but not usage. Backyards are by all means vital spaces, verifying the architects’ original intentions, a domain of urban wilderness where negotiations of particular interests are settled on hard ground. Przemysław Piniak concentrates on them and their culture-creating role. At the same time, he contrasts them with constructive intentions of urban planning, economics, social engineering and biopolitics of capitalist projects which divide the world according to the categories of health and illness, gain and waste. 

“Where there’s a breath, there’s a cough. Where there’s civilization, there’s hard ground. By describing the process of development of an individual from the perspective of these unrepresentative situations, I explore the way my own identity has been developing, the way the process of excluding an individual from a group or society evolves. I’m also slowly discovering how it has been shaping my own gender”.

What resonates in Przemysław Piniak’s words is therefore the potential dormant in queer strategies.       

Przemysław Piniak, born in 1986 in Szczecin, studied Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Painting at the Szczecin Art Academy (BA diploma in 2018). He is a painter, performer, futurologist and shoe designer. His designs of footwear have been shown e.g. during the London Fashion Week and Berlin Fashion Week. He has conducted design workshops in such institutions as the Szczecin Art Academy or Institute of Design Kielce. He is currently a student of the MA painting course at the University of the Arts in Poznań. He creates visions aiming to bend spacetime.