Its own kind of truth BY Jörg Heiser Art Turowski and Baumgart provoke a reconsideration of actual history precisely by doctoring it. Maybe the term ‘metamodernism’ might apply for this
Szapocznikow in America Talk with Cornelia Butler Art You don’t often find a body of work that’s twenty years long that can sustain the range of really sophisticated interpretation that was brought to bear on it – says MoMa curator Cornelia Butler of their Szapocznikow retrospective open till 28 January 2013
Caucasian Bazaar Talk with SLAVS and TATARS Art Our work is transnational. We act like mediators or even post-national-mediators. We don’t belong to a single nation – we are intellectually and affectionately as Russian, as we are Polish, Iranian or American
Lovely, Human, True, Heartfelt (excerpt) BY Alina Szapocznikow Art The previously unpublished correspondence between one of the great women artists of the twentieth century, Alina Szapocznikow, and an eminent critic and museum director, her fiancé, then husband and friend, Ryszard Stanisławski
Hey, You With the Camera! BY Iwo Zmyślony Art We go through the archive of the Exchange Gallery, established by Robakowski in 1978. My attention is drawn to a picture from Robakowski’s ‘An Exercise for Two Hands’ – the artist triumphantly picks the cameras up, like a gunslinger after a well-placed shot
I Don’t Do Street Art Talk with Krystian Truth Czaplicki Art The authorities decided that styrofoam beams can’t just lie there without anyone around because they constitute a threat to public security – stories of art in public space by Krystian Truth Czaplicki
CRAFTSMEN OF CULTURE:No More Overproduction Talk with Jakub Antosz Art I wasn’t really planning on getting involved with artists. When one of them needed help with carpentry, they came to me for advice. I was a craftsman, but I felt like a partner in crime. – interview with a technical specialist
There is No Single Mainstream Talk with Wojtek Ziemilski Theatre Look around – nowadays even ads for shoes are often bolder than the so-called alternative. The desire for something new and vivid is neither alternative, strange nor unattainable. – Wojtek Ziemilski talks about his Lisbon expierience, going back to Poland and phantom phone vibrations
Design Centrum Kielce Opening BY Klara Czerniewska-Andryszczyk Art We will have to wait some time for tangible effects of DCK’s efforts, but the place itself merits a visit even today. It’s just a comfortable two-hour drive along E77 – exhibitions open till 4 August 2012
Industrial Ruinsand Other Objects BY Karol Sienkiewicz Art Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk Shipyard keeps on redefining itself. This year’s Alternativa investigates two areas: materiality and its own archive. The outcome of the first one is much more convincing
NOT IN ENGLISH YET: Neither Turtlenecks nor Pocket Protectors BY Olga Drenda Media Frąckiewicz’s book is the first such diverse, detailed and dynamic record of Polish comic culture. Yet just as important is what lies outside the ‘diagnostic’ axis of the interviews, in between the lines and as an afterthought
Artur Żmijewski’s Reality Show BY Nicola Trezzi Art Nothing seems real at the 7th Berlin Biennale; even the term ‘biennale’ is fake, as this is not a biennial or a group exhibition. This is massive artwork by Artur Żmijewski. If we don’t realise that, we just believe in the fiction and becomes victims of it