Marta Knaflewska
“Nadia Chacky”
Nadia Czacky is an immersive work. Scenography, smell, sound and performance interact with each other. Set design is inspired by frames from over a dozen American films. These are mainly films from the 90s, dominated by violents like gangster, horror and films about the Vietnam War.
Performances were placed in an old apartment in Szczecin, Poland in a block from the 70s, where the artist lived for five years.
All aspects combine and exclude, they are like a bug in the system.
Nadia Czacky became polish emigrant from Chicago.
All this cliché we know from both Polish and American film reality.
The Work is an attempt to integrate a cultural identity that has always been unclear for artist, as a generation born in the 90s.
2019
Private Apartment
Natalia Laskowska
“Unproductive Expense”
Sound Objects & Trip
2020
R+ Gallery
Andrzej Mara
“That’s How I Look”
2020
OS17
Jan Baszak
“Rat, Rabbit, Dog, Man, Horse, Room”
2020
ZONA SZTUKI AKTUALNEJ
Marta Romankiv
“IMMIGRANT, TAKE A VOTE!”
In the project I addressed the issue of exclusion of new residents from political decision-making. Initiating impossible events was an attempt to challenge established norms and definitions. Who is a citizen? Are the accepted forms of democracy appropriate to the needs of today’s globalized society? Why do outdated divisions continue to define perceptions of the “other” in light of rapid changes? The intervening happening, which took place June 22-28, 2020 – before the first round of Poland’s presidential elections, was aimed at collecting symbolic votes of immigrant women and men. As part of the project, non-Polish residents of Poland could “vote” for the country’s president. The action took place in six cities: Bialystok, Gdansk, Krakow, Lublin, Poznan, Szczecin and Warsaw. The action took place in the public spaces of the cities, as well as at the Biennale Warsaw, the Center for Contemporary Art “Laznia” in Gdansk, the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin, the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok, the Arsenal City Gallery in Poznan, and the Trafo CCA in Szczecin.
2020
Public Space
Martyna Hadyńska
“Care Workers’ Initiative”
2019
Long-term collaborative project in Berlin
project presented in TRAFO CCA
The Care Workers’ Initiative is an interdisciplinary project that deals with the situation of migrant live-in carers in Germany.
There are probably more than one million foreign live-in carers working in Germany, mainly from Poland, Romania and Ukraine. Their labour rights are continuously violated by employers due to the lack of regulation of legal loopholes. It has been known for many years, but still no changes are made. The aim of the project is to support the carers, publicize their situation and jointly act for regulating the care sector in Germany.
The project is the result of my longer engagement with the topic of unjustness in health-care. In May 2019 I started researching and interviewing the caregivers. Then at the turn of 2019/20, I created the film „The Meeting” documenting my meeting with Polish carers in Berlin during which we read anonymous excerpts from the collected interviews and discussed them.
In the next phase of the project I proposed setting up an online group for carers with the aim to enable caretakers to get to know each other, share experiences and work together to improve their rights. Together with a growing group of care workers and an activist Agnieszka Glapa we started to meet regularly online since April 2020.
From April to September 2020, I led weekly online group meetings where we focused on a collaborative creative process. These meetings led to the creation of the manifesto, with jointly developed demands for change. We also worked together to design the banners depicting the key issues that caregivers face on a daily basis. The banners were commissioned by TRAFO Gallery as part of the exhibition „Die Sonne does not shine the same as Słońce”. At the end of 2020, the banners were hung on the Bethanien in Berlin, which attracted media attention.
Another important aspect of our weekly meetings has been the exchange of knowledge and experience between the carers on a self-organized and communal support basis. In addition, there are also online training sessions for the group on labor law conducted by the organization Faire Mobilität (Agnieszka Misiuk and Justyna Glapa).
Currently the Care Workers’ Initiative has almost 800 caregiver members, and our cooperation partners include Faire Mobilität, Migrantifa, FemBunt, Dziewuchy Berlin, Cedos, Freie Ungarische Botschaft and Alternatywa Opiekunek. Recently we worked on the co-organization of the Revolutionary 1st May Demo “Yallah Klassenkampf” in Berlin, as well as a conference and campaign Wir Sind Relevant (together with Dziewuchy Berlin, FemBunt and Freie Ungarische Botschaft) about migrant workers’ rights in Germany which resulted in a meeting with politicians from die Linke.