cok gidilesi

Translate: The Impossible Collection, Part 1

“The Impossible Collection” is a project taking place within the framework of a larger group of events under the leading title “Translate. Beyond Culture: The Politics of Translation”, initiated and theorized by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies [eipcp] www.translate.eipcp.net .

The project is aimed at reframing the collection of the Wyspa Progress Foundation through innovative curatorial practices. The team of curators consists only of international guests in order to approach the artworks from the perspective from outside and to achieve the form of display that targets beyond just a representation of artists and subjects.

Curator as Translator: Where have all the workers gone … When will we ever learn?

Workshop with Boris Buden and Stefan Nowotny

Participants: Dorothee Bienert , Galit Eilat, Livia Paldi , Els Roeland, Alina Serban , Simon Sheikh , Aneta Szylak , Antje Weitzel , Louisa Ziaja

Date and venue: 22-23 November, WYSPA Institute of Art, Gdansk

There is always trouble with a historic place. Even if we can easily identify with its auratic quality, we might be deeply disappointed by its narrative one: yes, it is great to be here, but why actually? Why is the shipyard in Gdansk so important? Communism ended here. Yes, but what started here then? The workers won their freedom here. But where did they disappear thereafter? History happened here. Only never to happen again?

Every answer is automatically followed by another question. The reason is obvious: there is no master narrative to forever fix the meaning of a historical event. Neither is there a subject of history to make experience of it. What we have instead is cultural memory. It never recalls the event in its alleged original meaning, but rather through different forms of its cultural articulation, in short, through its cultural translations: the culture of everyday life, cultural effects on gender formation, literary and visual culture etc. This is where this atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by historical places comes from. They are familiar yet strange because we always perceive them in a (cultural) translation of what imbues them with the current meaning, namely the original event. The workshop will deal with this problem in the form of short presentations and a discussion.

The performance by Elzbieta Jabłonska will take place within her own installation “Kitchen”, from 2003, reconstructed at Wyspa Institute of Art at the request of the “Translate: The Impossible Collection” event. This well-known and thoroughly discussed work is an oversized random kitchen in which both the artist and the audience can barely reach the top of the cupboard. It has usually been presented to date within the feminist framework. Here it appears in a new dimension, as a voice in the discussion about the status of an artwork, its materiality, issues of collecting and displaying a piece as well as the artistic escapes from this framework. This performance allows a new interpretation and recontextualization of artistic intentions and the very piece itself.

Curator: Maks Bochenek
Wyspa Institute of Art, 23.11.2007, 6p

MOBILE ARCHIVE is a project which arose at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon . The archive contains more than 1,200 titles, including works by Israeli and international artists who have exhibited at the Center and works by artists who have contributed works over the years.
Archive’s aim is to present contemporary artistic practice. The video archive focuses on the presentation of local and regional (Near East) works, the exchange of information and knowledge, and the promotion of Israeli artists abroad.
The idea of the Mobile Archive surfaced during several conversations on the idea of bringing the archive to the Kunstverein in Hamburg and how it could function there out of its original context. The question was how to make the archive dynamic and valuable to the local audiences at both ends.
From Hamburg , the Mobile Archive moves to Wyspa and then to other art institutes that will also contribute work to the original collection. The mobile archive will travel for three years in European, Balkan and Middle Eastern countries, before it returns to Holon .
In Wyspa Institute of Art, the collection will be enlarged by video works made by Polish artists. To make the viewing much more comfortable, it will be possible to sit and watch the chosen works. it is presented in Gdansk as a part of “The Impossible Collection” The archive touches upon the issues of accumulation, status and distribution of artwork though the archival forms that differ from that of the collection idea.

Curator of Polish contributors and coordinator: Ola Grzonkowska
On view: 23rd November –15th December 2007

Tue-Wed, Fri-Sun, 12.00-18.00