systeMY / systemUS - A Review

As promised earlier I will attempt to give you an over-view of the exhibition opening I attended on Friday evening. Friday was for me and, more importantly the artists and curator, the culmination of a week of on-site preparation and many months of personal work.

The exhibition is at Lodz Dom Kultury (Culture House) and more specifically Galeria Imaginarium on the ground floor of the building.

I am not a professional art critic and have no real idea how to write a review and thus I will attempt to give you a virtual tour of the exhibition and allow you to draw your own conclusions as to its effect.

Entering through the glass doors you can not help but notice the striking logo of the exhibition designed by the exhibition's curator Mariusz Sołtysik (PL). The bar code logo pertains to the automated process found as a central theme of the individual exhibits of SysteMY/stystemUS.

The first thing you will notice is three large flatscreens displaying three videos of Dmitry Strakovsky (USA) entitled "The Mall; The Wheel; The Departure." Filmed in a shopping centre, mountainous area and aircraft; these films have a strikingly spooky similarity from what are essentially three very different realms.

Keyword: communities by Travis Shaffer

 Opposite these films lie the work of Travis Shaffer (USA). The work, "Keyword: communities" the artist uses Google search to map community centres in the UK, USA, Manhattan and Kentucky. Next to these large scale maps are two small books entitled "34 Parking Lots in Los Angeles" and "Real Estate Opportunities/A 2010 International Investment Guide. Both books look at the distribution of resource with the second plotting the ten most indebted countries following the 2008 financial crash.

The next piece you notice as you walk through is a collection of photographs by US artist Talena Sanders. The photos depict the rich Mayan cultural history found in ethnic Guatemalan traditional dress and fabrics. Opposite these are two vidoes and accompanying pieces by Ela Wysakowska-Walters called "Pocket Dictator" which was reviewed by me here.

On the same side of the room is a vidoe by Karolina Głusiec entitled "Perfornance 2011." The work is an animated film bringing to life the structure and sound of a pianola. The video becomes hypnotic in its simple beauty.

Wall 38 by e.w.walters

Opposite this film are two somewhat complimentary pieces. The first by Ela Wysakowska-Walters is an interactive sculpture called "Wall 38". The visitor must plug a headphone jack into one of 38 sockets and then construct their own experience based on the "indefinite references" they hear, continuing onto other sockets as and when they wish. Next to this lies a sculpture by Anna Macleod called "Polar Tension". The piece uses magnets to construct a seemingly impossible arrangement of metal sheets and strings.

Access all Areas by Anna Macleod

Macleod's work has the honour of holding the last position of the room in the form of "Access All Areas. Water Optics" which uses similar optical illusions to bring attention to the disproportionate use of water in the world.

The Erotic life of XAU by Dmitry Strakovsky

 Last but by no means least, Strakovsky's work returns in a second room shield by large black curtains. "The Erotic Life of XAU" looks at the position of aesthetics in the world through an analysis of the artificial position of gold within the world economy.

As promised this was a virtual tour of the exhibition. Intentionally i have not gone into huge detail as I do not wish to spoil the effect. I therefore simply recommend going to the exhibition in Lodz (ul. Traugutta 18) which is open until 2nd July 2011.

Legal and constitutional calamities strike again

Freedom of speech or abusive tripe?

I have, as regular readers will hopefully remember, commented several
times on this blog upon the topic of the Polish constitution; mostly unfortunately in a critical manner. Well, actions conducted by the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) on Wednesday morning (18.5.11) at 6 in the morning have alas risen the position of the Polish President once again into controversy.

After a warrant issued by the prosecutor's office ABW agents and police spend three hours searching the flat of 25-year-old student Robert Frycz, leaving with his laptop and various memory sticks/disks. Bizarrely enough Frycz's lawyer Bartosz Kowalski says that Frycz was not a suspect: "(What is) Very important in this case is the fact that Robert is not Frycz a suspect." Kowalski differentiated Frucz from his equipment stating that the prosecutor's order had been to seize the
equipment used to mange and update the website : AntyKomor.pl which has
President Komorowski as its target.

According to article 135 of the criminal code any act of public insult of the President is punishable by unto three years in prison. The constitutionality of this article has already been challenged in the case of the late President Lech Kaczyński sueing ex-President Lech Walesa for calling him a prat in the newspaper "Rzeczpospolita". The constitutional tribunal is due to deliver its verdict shortly and this will hopefully be a final nail in the coffin for this ill conceived law. There are alas many similar laws which journalist Grzegorz Sroczyński lists in Gazzetta Wyborcza which go against the norms of freedom of
speech.Thankfully the president's office has come out against the law with Secretary of State in the President's Office, Sławomir Nowak, stateing to the TVN24 news agency that he did "not accept and did not like the use of security agency to police the internet and that if thus case was legal then there is a problem with the law and that it should be changed."

Regardless of the ins and outs of it, whether Frycz was genuinely insultive or 'satirical' as he claims, the case highlights a major problem with the legal system and has ramifications beyond Poland's boarders. Poland is at the forefront of democratic efforts to help Belarus change its system of government and 'rejoin' Europe. In Belarus, as in any other dictatorial regime, police raids and confiscation of materials are regular tactics used to intimidate opposition members. It therefore does not bode well for Poland's credentials as a critical
observer.

Whether this is a left over from Poland's communist past is hard to say; there are many aspects of Polish day-to-day life that appear strange to myself, an outsider, yet go often unquestioned by most Poles (see posts on Ids etc). However, an unquestioning legal apparatus which protects the 'sacred' status of the political apparatus is a long way from the true idea of a liberal democracy which most Poles envisaged in 1989.

Presdiential Security

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration is currently mulling over a rather interesting idea. In order to ensure security for Poland's presidency of the EU in the second half of the year it is considering banning virtually every type of conceivable weapon.

All very well and good you may thing; yet lets have a look at this list: The Law on arms and ammunition, which is the basis to issue the regulation, includes not only regulation firearms. It is also mentioned in her air-guns, CS GAS, and tools and equipment, whose use could threaten life or health. This last category includes crossbows, stun guns and melee weapons (according to the law: Blades  hidden in objects like guns, brass knuckles and some types of clubs, including baseball bats).

In essense then the following is Public Enemy Number One:

A similar law as put in place in Warsaw during the funeral of President Kaczyński  when Warsaw was placed under such a restriction. Basically it was illegal to enter enter public placed in Warsaw with any of the proscribed instruments. The law as suggested for the presidency will cover certain cities during specific time periods. Once again, all very well and good.

It seems logical to ban guys with guns from being in the same city as visiting dignities. Yet as revealed by various news agencies it will also affect a baseball team travelling to a match.

Commentary?  Well, in my view this is all a tad over the top and a blanket solution to a specific problem. It is akin to the recent ruling in which Lech Poznan and Legia Warsaw had to play their games behind closed doors due to football hooliganism. By targeting all possible weapons the government are in fact breaking one of the cardinal rules of security: Security has to make sense.

If the security measures cause more negative effects than the conceivable negative effects that would be apparent through a lack of the measure, then the security measure defeats its self. For example, during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland shoppers were under a continuous bomb threat; yet security had to allow people to actually move around and shop else the terrorists had to all extents and purposes one.

Returning to Poland, rather than employing intelligence assets to target prospectively specific threats, the government has chosen to employ a draconian method of civil control. In affect it has curtailed the normal rights of its citizens in order to play the 'tough on security card'.

systeMY / systemUS

This is just a short pre-posting in way of a form of advertising. On Friday 20th at 18.00 in Lódź is the grand opening of the much awaited systeMY / systemUS exhibition at Lódź Culture House's 'Galeria Imaginarium' (ul. Traugutta 18).

The exhibition is curated by Mariusz Sołtysik and features four American artists, one Irish artist and one Polish artist. Importantly for me, the Polish one is me wife Ela Wysakowsk-Walters (see Pocket Dictator) hence my pre-posting.

I will of course post a full report after the opening. The exhibition will be open for a further month and so please take the time out to take a look :)