1,2,3 Avant-Gardes
Experiment / Film / Art / Archive
Dec. 9, 2006-Jan. 28, 2007
Centre for Contemporary Art
Ujazdowski Castle
Al. Ujazdowskie 6,
00-461 Warsaw, Poland
tel: ( 48 22) 628 12 71-3
fax: ( 48 22) 628 95 50
e-mail: csw [at] csw.art.pl
Artists:
Akademia Ruchu, Antosz & Andzia, Pawel Althamer / Artur Zmijewski, Piotr Andrejew, Bernadette Corporation, Kazimierz Bendkowski, Matthew Buckingham, Bogdan Dziworski, Marcin Gizycki, Janusz Haka, Oskar Hansen, Judith Hopf / Katrin Pesch, Tadeusz Junak, Jacques de Koning, Igor Krenz, Grzegorz Królikiewicz, Zofia Kulik, Pawel Kwiek, Przemyslaw Kwiek, Natalia LL, Jolanta Marcolla, Jonathan Monk, Ewa Partum, Andrzej Pawlowski, Zygmunt Piotrowski, Józef Robakowski, Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij, Zbigniew Rybczynski, Zygmunt Rytka, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Singer, Zdzislaw Sosnowski, Mieczyslaw Szczuka, Michal Tarkowski, Stefan & Franciszka Themerson, Teresa Tyszkiewicz, Ryszard Wasko, Jan S. Wojciechowski, Krzysztof Zarebski, Florian Zeyfang
The exhibition 1,2,3 Avant-Gardes celebrates the (ongoing) history of the experiment in film and art, and the interactions between these two fields. The exhibition brings together artists and filmmakers from different countries and generations, juxtaposing their work with the outstanding history of Polish avant-garde film, represented by the works of Pawel Kwiek, Józef Robakowski, Natalia LL, Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, Bogdan Dziworski and many others.
The exhibition works with the tension created by a “horizontal” and a “vertical” interpretation of the multiplicity of the avant-garde and evoked by the exhibition’s title 1,2,3 Avant-Gardes: Horizontal in the sense of different ideas of modernism, the pluralism of film and conceptual image-work existing in the different worlds of the Cold War and today; Vertical suggesting the search for a possible historicisation of Polish avant-garde art and film, a linearity, to be discovered and reconstructed in light of the many distortions in Polish history over the last 80 years.
Vertically it contains a reference to the three movements important to experimentation with art and film: the very first modernist avant-garde, the neo-avant-garde of the 1970s, and the artists who started working in the 1990s to address, often with irony or idealism, the heritage of the two previous movements. In contrast, the title’s horizontal reading includes different understandings of the notion of avant-garde like Peter Wollen’s text Two Avant-Gardes that elaborates on the difference between narrative politics and politics of the formal experiment suggesting something like a third, fourth and even fifth avant-garde
1,2,3 Avant-Gardes experiments itself with a setting that confronts the videos and films of artists working since the 1990s and influenced by different legacies and notions of moving image with the extensive work of earlier generations of artists, performers and filmmakers in Poland. The exhibition consists of six rooms, organised according to different themes, such as Analytical strategies, Political Film / Soc Art, Sound & Image, Imagination, Games / Participation, Consumption, and features work especially developed for the show.
Another important issue off the exhibition is work with the archive. The show is a specific summary of the previous events of the program of the Archive of Polish Experimental Film at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, which is a research project focused on gathering and analysing Polish film and art. The aim of the program is to reveal new layers of communication between film and art, and to develop contemporary contexts of presentation for this historic material.
1,2,3 Avant-Gardes is curated by Lukasz Ronduda and Florian Zeyfang and
conceived within the framework of Buero Kopernikus, an initiative of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). The exhibition is supported by IFA Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stichting Mondriaan, and Piktogram Magazine. Collaboration: Kaja Pawelek. Exhibiton design: Centrala www.centrala.net.pl
For further information:
Kaja Pawelek: 48 22 6281271 # 104, kaja.pawelek@csw.art.pl
www.buero-kopernikus.org/en/project/2/36/0
1,2,3 Avant-Gardes will be shown in 2007 at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (with a special focus) and at Sala Rekalde, Bilbao. A catalogue will be published with essays by Leire Vergara, David Crowley, Steven Ball/David Curtis, Stefanie Peter, Anselm Franke, Jan Verwoert, Michal Wolinski, Lukasz Ronduda, and including an archive section and artist pages.
