A Gentle Seismograph – Contemporary Conversations. Performance-meeting with Kuba Bąkowski

Wrocław Contemporary Museum invites you to a performance-action and meeting with Kuba Bąkowski.

Kuba Bąkowski’s practice oscillates between fascination with new technologies and issues from various fields of science, anthropology and natural history. The installation I Do Not Pay for my Pleasure, which was acquired for the MWW international contemporary art collection earlier this year, takes us precisely to these areas. This kinetic sculpture-machine will be the starting point for the Friday meeting with the artist.

The steel object whose shape triggers associations with primitive marine organisms –cephalochordates – is able to communicate with the audience using the Morse code. In this way, Bąkowski’s work perversely comments on investigations from the field of transhumanism, indicating the technical possibility of replacing all living creatures with machines. What can result from the combination of modern technoculture and nature? What technological changes can affect the definition of the individual and their biopolitical boundaries? What is the impact of technology on wider social and environmental processes?

The second day will bring the opportunity to look at the artist’s work during a performance-action – a peculiar interference with the architecture of the MWW building, carried out in cooperation with “rope-jumpers” (specialising in jumping from buildings, chimneys or bridges). Their task will be to jump from the museum building on the so-called dynamic ropes. The action will include preparations, trial jumps and final jumps made after sunset, which will be photographically documented.

The action could be described as an experimental “drawing performance” created by the jumpers-performers on the museum building, which will thus become the tool and material for this work.

The final effect will be presented at the exhibition New Normativity. Wrocław ’70 Visual Arts Symposium, which will be held at Wrocław Contemporary Museum in June 2020.
 
 
Kuba Bąkowski (b. 1971) is an artist working with installation, photography, performance, video, objects and sculptures. A graduate of the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of the University of Fine Arts in Poznań (2001), he lives and works in Warsaw. He has received scholarships of the Location One programme, Skowheagen International Residency, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the National Institute of Culture and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. His works have been presented at exhibitions at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Musée d’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne, Artspace in Sydney, the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Palazzo delle Arti in Naples, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Chelsea Art Museum in New York. Bąkowski’s practice could be viewed as an attempt to explore the area of real and potential collective consciousness, contemporary phantasms, fears and perceptions in a world whose reception has been dominated by media coverage. At the same time, his works are full of irony and humour. In recent years, the artist has been interested in futurological visions, science fiction culture and the conquest of space.

2Wieże – Extreme Sports Centre
Established in Warsaw in 2008, the centre promotes high-altitude sports, especially jumping. It specialises in sporting, commercial and industrial activities, creating systems that are also used as advanced stunt effects in cinematography.
 
 
A Gentle Seismograph is the shorthand for an irregular cycle revolving around the problems of modern times. Each meeting is an attempt to better understand the social, political and economic reality, which changes every day right in front of our eyes.
 
 
Purchases of works for the MWW collection
were co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
under the National Contemporary Art Collections programme.