Lawrence Abu Hamdan
30th June, 2011
performance, radio-play

Abu Hamdan will develop both an audio essay and a collective listening performance/presentation event using the reanimation of the shipyard radio, Radio Alternativa, as both a conceptual point of departure and a means of broadcast and distribution of the work. Lawrence Abu Hamdan will intersect his current research into the politics of listening and the role of the voice in law with an exploration of the radiophonic history of the Gdańsk Shipyard to produce a new work that sonically inhabits the audio infrastructure at the core of its investigation.

Abu Hamdan is sound artist and researcher based in London. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Karem Ibrahim i Linda Pollack
25th June 2011
Wyspa Institute of Art & Hall 90B

What if democracy is not an exceptional singular case, specific to one country, but a series of instances, moments and locations... A pluralism of histories and exchanges that can be found in times recent and past; Cairo, Tunis, Madison Wisconsin, Gdansk Poland, Paris, the Congo, Philadelphia... Karem Ibrahim and Linda Pollack will collect slogans, chants, and manifestos from democratic movements around the world via a Facebook Page (Everything is Exceptional). For the Alternativa Festival, they will create the Everything Is Exceptional Gathering Point – a recording booth / meeting place, inviting the public to recite the collected texts, both in original language (with the help of pronunciation coaching) and in translated languages.

Jan Simon, Aga Klepacka, Jakub Barbaro, Janek Sowa, Kuba Mikurda, Kuba Majmurek
Wyspa Institute of Art
18–19th June 2011

Minifestival / presentation of cooperative

Goldex Poldex is an indirect byproduct of the gold rush consuming our planet in the times of political instability, neocolonial wars and sky-rocketing oil prices. With a little divine intervention of Jah in the morphogenetic field, Goldex Poldex Cooperative along with several other ideas budded from the initial plan of opening a Polish gold mine on Madacascar. This voluntary association of unlimited number of people – not following any previous models, open towards the future and maniacally innovative as Jürgen Habermas would say – remains a combination of illegal bar, neighborhood gallery, art restaurant and hobby bar. It acts in the Pi-sector of cultural production, in the unexplored fractional dimension with no intend to collaborate with neither public institutions nor the art market. It seeks no sponsors and no patronage. It does not cooperate with European Cultural Foundation nor with Kulturkontakt. Its only income is alms and serving of alcohol. Its sole purpose – to fight the dead time measured by a steady ticking of the cat’s tail. In the course of the action, 18–19 June, Goldex are going to build a spatial equivalent of cooperative in the Shipyard. The activities will include: a business game; selling ‘oscypek’ cheese; talk about Solidarity (Kuba Mikurda + Kuba Majmurek + Janek Sowa); cooking; Pimpek, the dog-artist participation.

Opening party:
May 28, 2011 7pm

Exhibition on view
29 May - 30 September 2011
Tuesday - Sunday 11:00 - 07:00 PM
artistic director: Aneta Szylak

Estrangement: At the very core of the project there is the question of the circulation of cultural forms. The idea of considering the notion in this way arises at the intersection of the poetics of Shklovsky—a representative of Russian formalism—and the Arabic term taqseem, which means both musical improvisation and mathematical division. Found forms and ’everydayness’ are points of entry into the way the project takes shape and disintegrates. “Estrangement” works with various elements that do not seem to be connected then places them under observation and sometimes sets them to work.

Artists: Sherko Abbas, Shirwan Can & Horen Gharib, Shirwan Fatih, Gailan Abdullah Ismail, Maryam Jafri, Hiwa K, Poshiya Kakil, Hüseyin Karakaya, Anton Kats, Reben Majeed, Rozhgar Mahmud Mustafa, Mattias Olofsson, Sener Ozmen, Diary Muhammad Osman, Joanna Rajkowska, Avan Sidiq, Cengiz Tekin and Knutte Wester.

Estrangement is curated by Aneta Szylak and Hiwa K.
The exhibition reader is edited by Francesca Recchia.

Opening party:
May 28, 2011 7pm

Exhibition on view:
29 May - 30 September 2011
Tuesday - Sunday 11:00 - 07:00 PM
artistic director: Aneta Szylak

The Summer 2011 programme will materialise in two exhibitions, Estrangement and Work & Leisure.

Labour and Leisure is a project encompassing that other side of labouring or what is out of sight of the typical representation of the work or worker. It seeks interest in stagnation, spare time and its uses, dreams and phantasies, false identities, forms of survival, frustrations of engagement and failures of transformation.

Artists: Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum, Kalle Bröllin, Jane Cheadle, Maureen Connor, Roman Dziadkiewicz, Köken Ergun, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Hiwa K, Grzegorz Klaman, Zbigniew Kosycarz, Kasia Krakowiak, Joanna Malinowska, Ekta Mittal & Yashaswini Raghunandan, Ines Moreira, Jacek Niegoda, Cora Piantoni, Konrad Pustoła, Jadwiga Sawicka, Dominika Skutnik, Marek Sobczyk, Łukasz Surowiec, Michał Szlaga, Pilvi Takala, Milica Tomić, Anna Reinert, Zorka Wollny & Anna Szwajgier, Mariusz Waras, Julita Wójcik and Artur Żmijewski.

The project is curated by Aneta Szylak in collaboration with Maks Bochenek as curatorial assistant. The exhibition reader is edited by Krzysztof Gutfrański.