PLEASURE CULTURE
(2015)

A site-related iistallation in three parts; one 17h long performance (that went on for two nights), one video installation and one sound-installation.

The work was made for the public exhibition Narracje #7 by curator Anna Smolak in the district of Nowy Port in Poland Nov 20-21 2015 between 17.00 and 01.00.




Kultura przyjemno?ci / Pleasure Culture, 2015
sound installation, performance, video projection by the former Morski Dom Kultury at 15 Marynarki Polskiej Street (1A), fence by the ferry (1B), watchmaker’s workshop at 5 Wilków Morskich Street (1C)

Pleasure Culture combines three different points on the map of Nowy Port: the building of the Cultural Centre, the canal embankment and a clockmaker’s shop. Employing mutually complementary languages – text, action and image – the artist constructs a narrative about culture faced with changing times and the transformation of the city. Time is subject to deformation, as is social space. It can speed up, rewind or go forward.

Lisa Torell has based her message on the figure of the Master Clockmaker, one of the last active craftsmen in Nowy Port. A clockmaker is a link between the present, the future and the historic past (utopian romanticism). Time resonates in the ticking of the clocks, in the contemplative movement of the painter delineating the boundaries, and also in the words spoken by the narrator. The work Pleasure Culture resists current consumerist praxis. It counts on the indulgence of the patient viewer and the “space in-between” – the, hard to come by nowadays – slot for going for a walk, for contemplation. Lisa Torell takes on board the values that have been distorted, such as language and manual work. The artist asks: How should we best use our time in a world governed by a dramaturgy of the pecking order of perks, “being there” and “likes”?

Created in 2009, NARRACJE  is a festival of artistic visual installations that illuminate the Gdansk public space after dusk. NARRACJE explore urban contexts and plots and build new tales of Gdansk. Until 2011 the Festival programme was created by a German curator, Bettina Pelz. In 2012, the curator was Steven Matijcio – a Canadian based in the United States. The author of fifth edition in 2013 was Rob Garrett, an independent curator from New Zealand and in 2014 the programme was created by Anna Witkowska and Adam Witkowski

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VOICES:
Timothy Gonchoroff David
Dominika P.

Production assistance:
2BEEART PRODUCTIONS

Exhibition documentation:
BOGNA KOCIUMBAS
MICHAEL SZYMONCZYK

Research trip assitance and espionage:
BEATE PERSDOTTER LØKEN

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Photo's, filming, assistance and espionage
VIKTOR PEDERSEN

>VIMEO
>animals records
>academy of contemporary art and creative writing BA student 2013-2016

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Curator of this year’s edition of NARRACJE (20-21 November 2015, Nowy Port, Gda?sk, Poland) is Anna Smolak.

CURATORIAL CONCEPT

SMUGGLERS

The 7th edition of the NARRACJE Festival smuggles in stories and legends related to Nowy Port. It navigates between the narrow streets and backyards, tracking the canal, in whose waters historic experiences and private stories have been reflected. The Festival transcends physical and mental barriers and limitations, collecting sounds and images that – resonating in the past – gently evoke the future. It brings to life and fills with new meanings places that, left to themselves, would have stagnated in inertia.

Smugglers carry the ambiguity of the contemporary world. They are part of the remembered local landscape and today’s global reality, an answer to the increasing social and economic stratification of the world; they are the messengers of the excluded and at times – their only hope for a better tomorrow.

Transferring the phenomenon of smuggling into the arena of contemporary art, we operate amongst contradictory concepts. We look for the accessible and the hidden, the collective and the individual, the material and the ephemeral. Acting under the cover of darkness, we take advantage of a momentary lapse of attention and set out new spaces for encounters and exchange. We penetrate the found boundaries and structures and create new channels for the flow of knowledge, matter and energy. What we leave behind is not so much solid transformation as the potential for it.

Anna Smolak

NARRACJE - N#7

Contributors: Anna Witkowska and Adam Witkowski Katka Blajchert, Aleksandra Ciapka, Witos?awCzerwonka, Monika Dro?y?ska,Andris,Egl?tis, Klara Hobza, JonIrigoyen, ?ukasz Jastrubczak, Olga Jitlina, Alejandro Ramirez, Flo Kasearu, Daniel Knorr, Olga Kowalska, Xawery Wolski, Adrian ‘Lipskee’ Lipi?ski,Micha? Iwlof, Odnawianko, ZosiaMartin,MajaZaleska,Micha? Szymo?czyk, PatrycjaOrzechowska, Pomme de Terre, Hans Rosenström, LisaTorell, Anu Vahtra, Ma?gorzata Weso?owska, Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak and Anna Weso?owska–Owczarska.

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An euloge to Janusz Drozdzowski who was the man who painted the fence - that actually was a retired painter - He made a really good work and was really good to work with.