Curatorial Workshop: “The Making of a Collective Agency”
18 – 24.07.2016 & 11.08.2017
As a part of the Re-Directing: East Curatorial Residency at A-I-R Laboratory / CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 18.07 - 17.08.2016, Warsaw, Poland
International seminar:
18 - 24.07.2016 (in order to participate please contact ptak@csw.art.pl in advance)
CCA Ujazdowski Castle
Laboratory building
Jazdów 2, Warsaw
The workshop is free of charge. It will be held in English. The organisers do not cover the costs of the participants’ stay in Warsaw.
The Re-Directing: East Curatorial Residency is a peer-learning workshop, a curatorial seminar, extended site exploration and a research opportunity for a group of international curators-in-residence, local participants and the CCA Ujazdowski Castle team. It has been organised by the A-I-R Laboratory since 2013 in order to facilitate collaborations in-between art initiatives, which due to geopolitical conditions hasn't had many opportunities to exchange knowledge and experience in a horizontal way. The participants are expected to share their understanding of respective artistic and socio-political contexts, as well as to focus on exploring this year’s topic: “The Making of Collective Agencies”.
The invitation is open now for Poland based curators (in a broad understanding of their activities), organisers, researchers, critics, artists and art managers to participate in the Curatorial Workshop. Please contact ptak@csw.art.pl to book a place. It is required for those interested in participation to send an e-mail explaining:
How your practice is entangled in a collective formation and/or an argument explaining your motivation to discuss “The Making of a Collective Agency” in terms of artistic practice?
If you wish to take part in the whole seminar or in selected days; please indicate which one(s).
"The Making of Collective Agencies” is a fact and a task, a strategy and set of issues related to contemporary artistic practices, which will be the subject of this year’s curatorial workshop within the frames of the Re-Directing: East programme. We would like to (self)reflect from a curatorial perspective what is going on outside or on the edges of formal institutions and on the practices which draw their inspiration from critical, social, and collective modes of action for the commons. The starting point for the discussion will be examples of: social practices (e.g. cooperative work, like the Indonesian "gotong royong," or the already non-existent Polish "communal work," which has been replaced by modern forms of the "exchange platforms"), artistic (e.g. activities supporting the self-governance of artistic circles and also "alternative" institutions and forms of presentation and creation of art) or post-artistic practices within politics, economics, and social life (protests, cultural resistance, informal education). The questions which will be discussed are (among others): What are the different strategies and consequences of entangling curatorial and artistic practices in collective actions? Does it mean implementing within their frames political commentary regarding the position of specific collectives? Who and what these collectives are, on behalf of those and within the frames of those which artistic statements are created?
Programme:
18.07 (Monday) Day Session 1: BODIES
• 5 p.m.: Introduction by A-I-R Laboratory: http://www.csw.art.pl/index.php?action=air&lang=eng
• 6 p.m.: “Dido’s Blanket”: a minimal architecture for temporary gatherings designed especially for the RDE Curatorial Residency by Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis [Centrala] will be tested by our group; we aim at creating the reflexive manual for its future users. To introduce it and experiment with the possibility of the activities that can take place inside it, a workshop-performance prepared by Iza Szostak, dancer and choreographer, associated with Center in Motion collective will be held there.
Centrala Designers’ Task Force: http://www.centrala.net.pl/
Center in Motion: http://centrumwruchu.pl/en/
19.07 (Tuesday) Day Session 2: WORLDLINGS
Globalisation today is the pre-condition of thinking about collectives. This day session will provide the grounds for considering the conditions of a collective action on a global scale: connecting individuals and issues in a global event. Contrary to an intuition of a shared space as a starting point of a collective, we will start from a discussion about the condition of distance and mediation, which seems to be a predominant one for contemporary artworlds. Moderated by: Anna Ptak.
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Presentations and discussion
• Renan Laruan: Wounds of Agency Formation: The Critical and The Naïve
• Alicja Rogalska, Marianna Dobkowska: Social Design for Social Living
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.: lunch break
2:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Lecture / workshop
• Bogna Kietlińska – art historian and ethnographer, she will present a lecture and workshop dealing with psycho-geography, the sensual experience of space and mapping – methodologies often employed by artists and curators on the move.
5:00 p.m. – 7 p.m. Case studies + visits
• Exhibitions at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle – meeting with Małgorzata Ludwisiak, CCA’s director and curator of the exhibition “El Hadji Sy: At First I Thought I Was Dancing”, and Jarosław Lubiak, artistic director and curator of the exhibition “Angelika Markul”: http://archiwum.u-jazdowski.pl/index.php?action=aktualnosci&s2=1&id=1437&lang=eng
20.07 (Wednesday) Day Session 4: LOCALS
This day session will focus on the collective’s relation to territory: shared but also divided and to a local community – a myth, an ideal, an oppressive group, a unifying / unified entity. We will discuss protocols for collective behaviours, entrance/exit strategies, spatial planning and many other forms of manufacturing belonging. Moderated by: Anna Czaban.
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Presentations and discussion
• Open Place: Yuriy Kruchak & Yulia Kostereva - workshop and discussion based on the experience of the project “At the heart of the community” (2014, together with Museum of Local Lore in Melitopol, Ukraine and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) - how to formulate a proposal for an effective model of a socially minded institution together, which could form a basis for the revitalisation and transformation of the cultural sector in Ukraine.
• Piotr Juskowiak, expert in culture studies,writer and translator will present the current Polish artistic and political predicaments with understanding and sustaining a democratic public space.
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.: lunch break
2:30pm – 6:00pm Case studies + visits
• The Prototype: A City Garden next to the CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Anna Czaban)
• Social Culture House - the case of the “Finnish houses” (Andrzej Górz)
• Multicultural Centre in Praga (cultural organization of migrant communities) (Witek Hebanowski)
21.07 (Thursday) Day Session 5: POP-CULTURE
The resources which allow to create spaces of autonomy, outside official institutions (sanctioned by state, mainstream art, and hegemonic cultural ideologies) are often rooted in parallel orders of the everyday culture of specific social class, generational experience and popular culture: music, party, consumption. In this day session we would like to learn about the cultural practices that inform possible alternative models of collective action. Moderated by: Konrad Schiller.
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Presentations and discussion
• Mika Conradi: Pooling resources and rythmanalysis - presentation based on Mika Conradi’s artist-curator run projects, with the experience of South-African informal intimacy of collectivising
• Konrad Schiller: curator, writer, researcher - Konrad will introduce alternative cultures of Poland’s 1980s and its relationship to possible artistic formations.
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.: lunch break
2:30pm – 6:00pm Case studies + visits (tbc)
• lokal_30 Gallery - Józef Robakowski’s films
• Raster Gallery - from artist run zine to a gallery
• PIKTOGRAM Gallery- visual culture of Polish art
22.07 (Friday) Day Session 6: SELF-ORGANIZED
The day session devoted to self-organized efforts related to collective processes, such as education, political participation, organization of labour and recreation, and designing public spaces. We will work at one of Warsaw’s allotment gardens - a residual of a socialist vision of a right to share the land and cooperative management. Moderated by: Marianna Dobkowska
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: A garden session - presentations and discussions
• Taina Azeredo: Education as social (re)organisation - a case study
• Jaśmina Wójcik & Igor Stokfiszewski: commemoration as participatory artistic activism, the history and future of work in a peripheral district of Warsaw
• Iga Kołodziej: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, Biennale Urbana, urban gardening
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.: lunch break
3 p.m. – 6 p.m. Planning session devoted to a final public presentation.
23.07 (Saturday) Day Session 6: A DYNAMIC OF COLLECTIVES
This day will be an evaluation session devoted to our experience, critique and (political-artistic) hopes of collectivity in curatorial work. A specific focus will be given to the relations between artistic and social processes shaping the life and death of collectives and their political significance. Moderated by: Anna Ptak.
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Presentations and discussion
• Dorian Batycka - presentation based on his involvement and approach to work of such publicly known collectives as Et Cetera, Chto Delat?, Chamber of Public Secrets, Raqs Media Collective and Jelili Atiku. He will be joined by Ehsan Fardjinaya (Anonymous Stateless Immigrants)
• Ewa Majewska - philosopher, feminist, politician, she will discuss the “weak resistance” - how we can understand the relation between artistic and social organisation today. Presentation will be based on her paper Peripheries, Housewives, and Artists in Revolt: Notes from the “Former East.”
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.: lunch break AND THE END OF THE COLLOQUY
Speakers (among others) include:
Tainá Azeredo is a curator and director of the independent art space Casa Tomada in São Paulo, Brazil. Her practice investigates concepts around the idea of working together, in collaboration, thinking projects horizontally, and she treats the curatorial practice as a territory for arranging discussions, meetings and debates around the art field. She graduated in Dance and Performing Arts and holds a master’s degree in Art History, Criticism and Curatorial Studies. In the last years, Tainá Azeredo has organized different programs at Casa Tomada, all based on young artistic practices, transdisciplinarity, and the connection between different initiatives, such as art residencies, publications, conferences, educational programs, etc. She has curated a number of exhibitions in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, among others; and also worked as the editor of several publications. During 2014, Tainá worked as a project manager of Crossway Foundation, an institution based in London, and coordinated the program Create & Inspire - Brazil for young artists from Arabic countries. In the same year, she got a grant from Matadero-Madrid to be part of the El Ranchito program. She participated as a guest curator in the Marabunta Studio Visits program in Buenos Aires, 2015; and later that year was selected to participate in the first edition of CPR (Curatorial Program for Research) in Estonia and Finland; at that time she was also invited to curate a Film Festival in Buenos Aires during arteBA 2016, called: Closer to the Border. In the last year, she co-funded, together with the artist Claudio Bueno, Intervalo Escola, an experimental visual arts school and platform for research and development of collaborative educational programs. Its first action takes place in 2016 between São Paulo and Amazonia.
Dorian Batycka (b. 1985, Hamilton) is an art critic and curator and frequent contributor to numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Selections, Frieze Blog and Nero. His work investigates intersectional issues spanning artistic practices, social research and geopolitics. As a curator, he has been involved in numerous international exhibitions and projects at venues such as: the Royal College of Art, London; Bait Muzna for Art Film, Oman; and the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Since October 2015 he has been employed as a curator at the Bait Muzna for Art Film (BMAF), which is a new institution located in Muscat, Oman. The mandate of the institution is to explore discursive developments in contemporary art and film, with a focus on the Arab world, by providing access to cinema production facilities and an exhibition venue for local Omani and regional film and image makers.
Mika Conradie (b. 1989, South Africa) is a researcher and curator preoccupied with plant-thinking, rhythmanalysis, ecology studies, decolonial spatial practice, the post-contemporary and collective social infrastructures in Johannesburg. Her curated and co-curated projects include Or As With (NewARC, Johannesburg), Identikit (Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg), supplies (Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg), The Forecasters (Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju), and Listening Through the Image (Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg). As one half of pool (a curatorial collective with Amy Watson) she co-developed the long-term research project Ocean-Thinking that will travel to Madagascar in October 2016 with the support of Pro Helvetia Johannesburg. She lectures in Exhibition and Curatorial Practice at the Market Photo Workshop and is currently completing an MA in History of Art at Wits University, with a focus on spatial practice, vernacular infrastructures and collective agency in South African visual arts. She is a member of Tropical Depression, a makeshift trans-continental collective that speculates on artistic mobility and infiltration within contemporary structures of capital, and that emerged, in part, through a shared awkward crush on Jakarta.
Marianna Dobkowska is a curator of residencies, projects and exhibitions, she edits and designs publications and manages the production of new artistic works. Since 2004, she’s affiliated with the Artists-In-Residence Laboratory programme at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, one of the leading residency programs in Central Europe. She has curated and co-curated projects such as “Public AIR”, “We Are Like Gardens”, “Porthos” and ”Akcja PRL”, which were carried out in public spaces and included the active participation of wide audiences. Dobkowska received her MA in Art History from the University of Warsaw and completed postgraduate studies in Curating at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. During her visits in Indonesia, she researched the field of socially and politically sensitive art practices and investigated the modes of work of various communities in Java. She lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.
Piotr Juskowiak is an assistant professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland (Unit of Cultural Urban Studies), editor of peer-reviewed journal "Praktyka Teoretyczna"/"Theoretical Practice" and translator. His areas of interest are critical urban studies (especially urban Marxism); political philosophy; urban cultural economy; socio-political aspects of contemporary art; processes of economic restructuring in post-socialist cities. He is an author of Przestrzenie wspólnoty: Filozofia wspólnotowości w perspektywie badań nad miastem postindustrialnym (Spaces of Community: Philosophy of Commonality in the Context of the Research on Post-Industrial City, in press) and co-editor of a collected volume Ekologie (Ecologies, Łódź 2014, together with Aleksandra Jach and Agnieszka Kowalczyk).
Bogna Kietlińska is a graduate of the Institute of Art History (IHS) and the Institute of Applied Social Sciences (ISNS) of the University of Warsaw. She also holds Ph.D. in sociology. Her doctoral dissertation centered on the multisensory experience of the urban space. She was awarded an EU-funded scholarship as part of the “Doctorates for Mazovia” program in support of scientific research for regional development. She is a co-creator of the Live Culture Observatory Research Network - a foundation aiming to examine the condition of culture in Poland. She participated in the research (2009-2013) and co-authored the book (2013) on the nationwide Invisible City project. She has been a research team member for a number of projects including: “GIS Culture. Building a geolocation and infrastructure system for live culture”, “Constructing self-evaluation tools for the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage” and “Building a nationwide network of Live Culture Observatories”. She has taught visual research and qualitative text analysis at the University of Warsaw. She co-wrote and co-edited the book Research practices published by the Institute of Applied Social Sciences.
Renan Laru-an (b. 1989, Sultan Kudarat) is a researcher, curator, and the founding director of Philippine-based DiscLab | Research and Criticism. He completed Psychology at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and participated in the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course led by Ruth Noack. He has been the 2016 Encura curator-in-residence at Hangar Barcelona.
His curatorially grounded theoretical project focuses on the libidinal desires of the naïve and its antagonism with the limits of criticality, including two of the presumed sites of the critical: the artistic and the intellectual. While responding to the metabolism of collective agency, the project complicates the researcher’s recent engagement entitled Lightning Studies: Centre for the Translation of Constraints, Conflicts, and Contaminations (CTCCCs) at Hangar Barcelona, which concentrates on a discursive architecture generated from horizontal scenes of knowledge and on the possibility of forming an institution for relational translation.Renan Laru-an is a member of SYNAPSE – The International Curators’ Network at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. He is the editor of An Auto-Corrected Journal of Printing Properties (DiscLab’s object publication published by The Office of Culture and Design) and co-author of From Bandung to Berlin (ongoing since 2014), with Brigitta Isabella.
Ewa Majewska is a feminist philosopher of culture. She studied Philosophy, French Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Since 2003 she has lectured at the Gender Studies at the University of War-saw, after receiving her PhD she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (BBRG), working on theories of subjectivity and translation; in fall 2010 – she was a fellow at the University of Ore-bro, Sweden, working on the feminist theories of love; in the years 2011-2013 she was the Adiunkt Professor in the Institute of Culture at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. In 2013/14 she was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria. She was a fellow at the ICI Berlin, with a two years project, “Chasing Europe, or on the Semi-Peripheral Publics”, which she will soon publish as a book. Nomadism is her life practice, together with political activism. She is an author of two monographs, one on feminism as social philosophy : Feminizm jako filozofia społeczna and one about art and censorship, Sztuka jako pozór? Cenzura i inne formy upolitycznienia kultury and co-editor of two volumes on neoliberalism and politics: Zniewolony umysł II. Neoliberalizm i jego krytycy and Futuryzm miast przemysłowych. She published in: Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, e-flux, Nowa Krytyka, Przegląd Filozoficzny, Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, Kultura Współczesna, Le Monde Diplomatique (PL) and several collected volumes, including A. Jonasdottir, A. Ferguson (eds), Love. A question for feminists? (Routlege, 2013). She currently lives in Warsaw, Poland.
Open Place (Yuriy Kruchak and Iuliia Kosterieva). Kruchak studied Scenography at the Kharkiv State School of Art and Environmental Design at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Art, from where he graduated in 1996. He did a postgraduate course in Painting at the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture, Kiev, Ukraine (1996-1999). Kosterieva studied Scenography at the Kharkiv State School of Art and Graphic Art at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Art, from where she graduated in 1998. She did a postgraduate program in Graphic Art at the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture, Kiev, Ukraine (1998-2001). The performative works of Yuriy Kruchak and Iuliia Kosterieva in the public space transform the audience into actors, creating a community consisting of the artist and the viewer, whose behaviour and interaction serves to interpret and reveal social structures in an urban environment. In the tradition of participatory artistic practices, their activism not only addresses the relationship between art and the reality of life, but also – always – the relationship between the artist and the audience. Apart from their artistic work, they are also active as curators and organizers, and thus unite the productive and receptive sides of the art business in their own life history.
In 1999, Yuriy Kruchak and Iuliia Kosterieva launched the artistic platform Open Place. It is aimed at expanding creative research and establishing links between artistic processes and different layers of modern society. Art is understood as a space of intersection between artistic, social and political processes. The platform seeks to provide both the artist and the viewer with a specific form of equality and liberation. Open Place strives to extend the borders of influence of art and to engage new groups of people in creative processes through interdisciplinary projects, as well as to establish a fruitful dialogue between society and those who create artSelected recent projects include: At the heart of the community Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol, Ukraine) 2014-2015, Revolution and War, SUPERMARKET the international artist-run art fair, Svarta Huset (Stockholm, Sweden) 2015, Posters Workshop Iset Hotel (Yekaterinburg, Russia) 2015. . www.openplace.com.ua
Anna Ptak is an art curator, editor and researcher, with background and practice in cultural anthropology. She is interested in the oscillation between ethnographic observation, political involvement, agency of artistic practice and exhibition or project as an experiment and experience of collective formation. Her work is interdisciplinary with a strong emphasis on collaboration between different audiences and milieus.
Since 2008 Anna Ptak has been a curator at A-I-R Laboratory – a research oriented residency programme at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Apart from multiple art productions, together with her colleagues, she has pursued long term research on institutional and social conditions of art making, such as Studio Warsaw (2011/12) and Re-tooling Residencies (2010/2011; she has edited a reader of the same title). Currently she works on the Re-Directing: East Curatorial Residency (since 2013) and The Blue Box. Common Places and Contemporary Artistic Practices (since 2015).
Some of her recent curatorial research projects include: kurz / dust / ghobar (2015, in collaboration with Amanda Abi Khalil), an exhibition on the politics of materiality, between Warsaw, Tehran and Beirut; The Make Yourself at Home Guide to Warsaw (2015, with Rani Al Rajji and Monnik collective) – an anthology of vernacular urbanism; Rural Filmworks Company (2007-09, with Paweł Ziemilski) self-organized, community-specific project; Wyspa. Now is Now (2012, with Ewa Tatar and Dominik Kuryłek) – an exhibition-archive at Wyspa Art Institute in Gdańsk; Politics of Curiosity (2014, co-edited with Kacper Pobłocki); a book On Polish Artist Run Initiatives and Spaces (2014; co-edited with Agnieszka Pindera and Wiktoria Szczupacka).
Alicja Rogalska is a Polish-born artist based in London. Her practice is interdisciplinary and encompasses both research and production with a focus on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works on projects with contexts that involve participation, creating situations and collaborations with others, brought to the project for their particular skill or expertise. These events and ephemeral moments act as catalysts for collective questioning, imagining, reflecting and testing different ways of being together. Being both rooted in a context and speculative, her projects aim to occupy the space between what already exists and what is possible. Alicja graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2011) and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw (2006). Exhibitions and projects include: All Men Become Sisters, Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź, 2016); Myth, Artisterium, Europe House (Tbilisi, 2015); Rehearsal, National Museum (Kraków, 2015); No Need For References, Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, 2015); Critical Juncture, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kochi, 2014); Avantgarde and Socialist Realism, Teatr Nowy & Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź, 2014); A Museum of Immortality, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, 2014), Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Flat Time House (London, 2013); General Strike, Mews Project Space / Art Review (London, 2013); Melancholy In Progress, Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei, 2012); Jour de Fête, The Private Space Gallery / LOOP Festival (Barcelona, 2011); To Look is to Labour, Laden Für Nichts (Leipzig, 2010) and No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern (London, 2010). www.alicjarogalska.com
Konrad Schiller (b. 1982) – PhD Candidate at the Institute of Arts at the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw; MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy at Goldsmiths Collage in London and an MA in Art History at The Warsaw University in Poland. In academic research he is focused on the trans-contextual connections between visual arts, cultural movements, politics and social changes. He is interested in the postcolonial condition of cultural movement across nations, countries and social groups. He is the author of a monograph about art symposiums and open-air artists’ submits between 1963 – 1981 called “Exhibition and Symposium of "Golden Grape" in Zielona Gora on the west side of Poland. He also published a monographic essay regarding the activity of the Museum of Modern Art in Lodz in the 80s. Konrad Schiller connected his academic interest with art criticism (he collaborated with major Polish art magazines: Obieg and Szum) and curator practice. He curated over 20 exhibitions in total in Poland and London. Currently he is a curator of the discursive program at CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Recently at the CCA, he curated three lecture programs: “Re-orientalisation of Islam”; “Travelling ideas” and “Travelling ideas of pop-culture in Africa”.
Iza Szostak (b. 1984), dancer, choreographer. A graduate of the School of Ballet in Warsaw and the Codarts/Rotterdam Dance Academy in Holland. Currently she studies at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She worked together, among others, with Isabelle Schad, Michael Schumacherem, Amy Raymond, Anna Holter, Taldans, Wojtek Ziemilski, Marysia Stokłosa, Edyta Kozak. She co-creates the Warsaw-based Centrum w Ruchu (Centre in Motion). For a few years now she has been fascinated with the work of people who are not professional dancers. Her practice refers to authentic movement, choreologies and elements of Forsythe improvisation. She also runs a dance school for children in the Mokotów district of Warsaw (Taniec dla dzieci) as well as regular dance classes for senior citizens. She authored the following performances: Karmi-go, Feedback, From culture to nature, The glass jar next to the glass jar, RE//MIX Merce Cunningham, Body. Child. Object, Europe. Inquiry, Excavatory ballet.
Jaśmina Wójcik Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Doctor of Arts at her alma mater. Diploma with distinction in 2008 at the Multimedia Artistic Creation Laboratory (head: prof. Stanisław Wieczorek) and annex at the Atelier of Audiovisual Space (head: prof. Grzegorz Kowalski) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2016 received 1st prize in the Film Awards Competition, granted by the Museum of Modern Art and the National Film Institute, for the feature-length film “SYMPHONY OF THE URSUS FACTORY”. In 2015 received (together with Iza Jasińska, Pat Kulka and Igor Stokfiszewski) Grand Prix of Warsaw Cultural Education Awards for “Factory. Ursus 2014” project implemented in the urban space of former Mechanical Plant in Ursus. Two-time scholar of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2007 and 2013. Winner of the 1st prize in Samsung Art Master Awards in 200 (for the video "Improvisation").
In 2015 participated in the „Radical Democracy: Reclaiming the Commons“ project: as a member of the Warsaw team was one of the initiators of the „City – a Common Cause“, an informal coalition of Warsaw's initiatives working for the protection of public space.
Born in 1983, lives and works in Warsaw.
Iga Kołodziej – landscape architect, urban gardener, cultural producer. Graduated from Warsaw University of Life Science (2009). Owner of Mint&Lavender landscape architecture studio. Active guerrilla gardener, having extensive plant and urban environment knowledge, experienced in reviving neglected spaces. Member of Odblokuj Association. Since 2011 a secretary of Urban Trees Section of Polish Dendrology Society. Cooperated with Fundacja Centrum Architektury, Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, The Warsaw’s Praga Museum and numerous cultural institutions. Currently works in Bęc Zmiana Foundation, coordination two projects: Synchronicity and Polish section of Biennale Urbana (www.fontegodepolacchi.beczmiana.pl).
The Re-Directing: East project is co-financed by the City of Warsaw and Culture.pl