Talks
Inclinations #2: Joanna Kusiak & Joanna Warsza: Out of the Red? Post-communist Idiosyncrasies of Warsaw
June 11, 2013
7:30PM
Convened by: Patricia Reed, Jonathan Middleton
Participants: Joanna Kusiak, Joanna Warsza
Location
Or Gallery Berlin
Or Gallery Berlin is pleased to present Joanna Kusiak & Joanna Warsza in Out of the Red? Post-communist Idiosyncrasies of Warsaw, for the second of our speaker series Inclinations hosted by Patricia Reed.
After 1989, in the red cities of post-communist Eastern Europe things started emerging out of the blue. And although many Westerners trusted the cold war propaganda that these cities are grey, Warsaw is actually one of the greenest capitals in Europe with – until recently – the largest of black markets. This fluctuating palette reveals fast-forward changes for art and architecture. To grasp those changes the speakers will first have to liberate themselves from the dark post-communist syndrome of self-colonization.
Inclinations:
A monthly speaker series at Or Gallery Berlin, hosting philosophers, artists, curators, and…
The presentation of work revolves around the posing of a question that is the thrust of a guest’s activities. It goes without saying that questions may not be answered, but are grappled with in their unresolvability. An inclination is the force of attraction to a question (without a straightforward response), yet also to each other, as a community who partakes in a common quest(ion).
Hosted by Patricia Reed.
# Arriving at a question is already a departure.
# Questions are a declaration of departure.
# Arriving at a question in thought or activity is also the creation of a trajectory, of inclining oneself towards an unknown goal, yet not without direction.
# A question inclines a departure in a particular way, but a question itself is generic – it propels all modes of seeking some thing. Questions possess the force of bending and swerving ideas/action.
# A question is the confrontation and departure from a lack. To arrive at a question is to arrive at a gap in knowledge, action and speech – a gap that cannot be immediately filled in without the inclination towards something other.
# A question is indisciplinary; the inclining magnetism of a question knows no disciplinary bounds.
In Kooperation mit der Botschaft von Kanada/In collaboration with the Embassy of Canada
Participant Bios
Joanna Kusiak
Joanna Kusiak is a philosopher and sociologist as well as an urban activist from Berlin and Warsaw. She researches the notion of chaos as an ideological keyword circulating in post-socialist Warsaw. She is the co-author of Chasing Warsaw: Socio-material Dynamics of Transformation, Campus Verlag, 2013 (with Monika Grubbauer), and an advisor for the newly re-emerging Museum of Warsaw.
Joanna Warsza
Joanna Warsza is a curator interested in art, architecture and the performative. She is curator of the Georgian Pavilion Kamikaze Loggia at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and of several projects in the public realm of Warsaw (with Public Movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, at the derelict Communist Stadium, in allotments parks and in the Warsaw Zoo). She is editor of the Ministry of Highway. A Guide to the Performative Architecture of Tbilisi (2013, SternbergPress), among publications. She lives in Berlin and Warsaw.