Solidarność Camp
www.wyspa.art.pl
www.nowyteatr.org
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Gdansk, Wyspa Institute of Art, August 26–31, 2011
Kyiv, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, September 7–13, 2011
Brussels, Royal Flemish Theatre, September 23–30, 2011
Madrid, Matadero, September 11–20, 2011
Warsaw, Nowy Teatr, November, 2011
Curatorial concept and collaboration: Karolina Ochab, Aneta Szyłak, Piotr Gruszczyński, Konrad Pustoła, Igor Stokfiszewski
Solidarność Camp is a project developed by Nowy Teatr in Warsaw and Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk. As an art space, the Camp is an installation that will be modified in each of the sites it visits. The installation proposed by Grzegorz Klaman consists of steel sheds once put up at the Gdańsk Shipyard by workers wanting a private space away from the construction yard. Their harsh, noisy, cold, and polluted working environment led the workers to organise themselves and carve out an intimate, individualised space where they could meet at breaks, have coffee, eat lunch, rest, and—on occasion—plot the downfall of the system. These modest zones of comfort and privacy were always respected by the plant’s management even though their status was never officially regulated. No longer serving their function, and consigned to be melted down at a steel-mill, these tiny havens now languish on the shipyard grounds.Solidarność Camp will be a village made up of such sheds, which will be modified by the workers collaborating with the artist on site in Gdańsk to comply with EU transport regulations. The result will be hybrid structures illustrating the clash of the vernacular and the normative. Normative practices become a point of reference for the project and associate it with the shipyard’s struggle for survival under new conditions in United Europe. Nowy Teatr and Wyspa will arrange for found items from the Gdańsk Shipyard to go on a tour of major European cities by extracting these objects, with their peculiar blend of the banal and the legendary, from the historical surroundings in which the myth of the shipyard was born.
Camp Life
Solidarność Camp will be set up for 5 to 8 days in each city: Gdańsk, Kijev, Brussels, Madrid and Warsaw. The sheds and their surroundings will become spaces for the use of artists, performers, actors, and intellectuals. At each of its stops, this travelling camp will engage local residents wanting to contribute to the project. Hosting visual installations, projections, meetings and debates, and encouraging all manner of political intervention, the camp will also welcome secrets, games of hide-and-seek, conspiracies, and anybody wanting to share time or a meal with others.
Each shed will have a distinct function: one will contain a multimedia piece by Grzegorz Klaman addressing the political, social, and historical context in which the sheds were originally built. Visitors will be able to use a smartphone app as an interactive multimedia guide of the Camp. The second shed will house an installation by Marek Sobczyk titled “Soliterity” on the betrayal of revolutionary ideals. The third will showcase works by Polish artists-in-residence in the cities that will host the project: Zorka Wollny in Gdańsk, Robert Kuśmirowski in Kiev, Roman Dziadkiewicz in Brussels, Elżbieta Jabłońska in Madrid and Łukasz Surowiec in Warsaw. The fourth shed will be a media library and will serve as a space for changing audio and video displays. The fifth will be a reading room with books on topics connected with the project and the people and organisations involved in it.
Critical Camp
The keynote lectures opening each instalment of Solidarność Camp will be delivered by leading intellectuals, whose work examines the present condition of the ideas inspiring Solidarność. Part of the Camp’s programme will involve staged readings of new Polish drama, which provides an accurate picture of the changes Poland has undergone on its way from the founding of Solidarność to joining the European Union. Three texts have been chosen:
Bożena Umińska-Keff’s “About Mother and Homeland” (reading in Brussels)
Paweł Demirski’s “Diamonds Are Coal That Got Down to Work” (reading in Kyiv)
Julia Holewińska’s “Foreign Bodies” (reading in Madrid)
Taken as a whole, these plays give a comprehensive depiction of social and political transition as seen by a generation too young to have been directly involved in the process, a generation thrown into a brave new world and trying, with hindsight, to describe how and why it came to pass. Each of the three playwrights has a distinct perspective and focuses on different types of alienation: economic, physical, and mental.
The staged readings will be performed by actors from countries visited by Solidarność Camp. Concerts and Dj sets prepared by Polish artists such as Gypsy Pill from Gdańsk will accompany the project in each location.
The creation of the Solidarność trade union in 1980s Poland and the events it had set in motion are slowly becoming a distant memory. Poland’s recent presidency of the European Council provides an excellent opportunity to re-examine the significance of the ideas cherished by Solidarność 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, or the desire to gain security through isolationism.
The project is also a chance to reflect critically upon the future of Solidarność, 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?
Executive producers: Nowy Teatr, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa/Fundacja Wyspa Progress
Solidarność Camp: A project celebrating the Polish Presidency of the EU
Installations by: Grzegorz Klaman and Gdańsk Shipyard workers
Production: Joanna Nuckowska
Production assistants: Natalia Osadowska, Dominik Skrzypkowski
Produced in cooperation with: The European Center of Solidarność in Gdańsk, Gdańsk Shipyard, Kininklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels, Centro de Creación Contemporánea Matadero in Madrid, The Polish Institute in Kiev, The Polish Institute in Brussels, The Polish Institute in Madrid and Alternativa International Visual Arts Festival.
Financed by the Ministry for Culture and National Heritage
