Researcher: Nahla Al Tabbaa Region: Southern Asia and Central-Western Asia
“Otwock” is a project revolving around a place perceived through the lens of art – with the aim to look at the town in question from the angle of art. It is both a ‘total artwork’ in its own right, and a platform for international artistic participation in the life of a small Polish town Otwock. The project was founded in 2011 by established Polish artist Mirosław Bałka, together with curators Magda Materna and Kasia Redzisz. Otwock is a town located 24 kilometers south-east of Warsaw, on the river Świder. Its current population is estimated at 44 thousand inhabitants. The privatization and the construction boom that followed after 1989 resulted in great urban chaos. The present-day architecture seems accidental and chaotic. In the city center, commercial pavilions erected in the 1960s were turned into a construction site, abandoned now for years. Reinforced concrete foundations of an unfinished retail park remain a bitter reminder of the current condition of local landscape. The place has a twofold meaning. Otwock is the hometown of Bałka, who has transformed his family house into a studio. The studio, in turn, has inspired a reflection on the relations between art and the space in which it is created. The artists and authors invited to the project are here to create in the found context, their works and gestures to uncover layers of hidden senses, facts and associations.“Otwock” is an exercise in creating a subjective description of the place. Invited artists, curators and writers work with the found context. Their contributions are suspended between history presence and future, between personal and official narratives, between changing functions of space. The adopted method is best described by the notions of site specific and site responsive. The works, the elusive artistic gestures, the texts or events uncover new layers of meanings and form a loose grid of associations and connections. By mutually complementing each other, they pose questions and make proposals leading to changing interpretations and new ways of considering the local. "Otwock" is an attempt to spend time with art in the place, approached with commitment and imagination. The artists who have thus far worked in “Otwock” include Lara Almarcegui, Tacita Dean, Anna Molska, Charlotte Moth, Luc Tuymans, Anna Waliszewska, Jos de Gruyter i Harald Thys. The project is followed by an extensive public programme, containing art and urban research. It has been able to engage the local municipality and public institutions to support the development of artistic research and interventions in the town. |
