16 Apr 2012

Alternativa 2012 artists and themes

Wyspa Institute of Art invites you for the opening days of Alternativa 2012, a project that seeks diverse modes of knowing and explores possible ways of being and acting in contemporaneity. This year's programme comprises two exhibitions, entitled respectively 'Materiality' and 'Wyspa. Now is Now'.

Aneta Szyłak, the artistic director, and the curators, Arne Hendriks, Ines Moreira and Leire Vergara, assisted by Maks Bochenek, have worked on 'Materiality' as the project that explores the visual, sensual, transformative, political and scientific aspects of materials. It is a space-distributed research attempt towards material graspability, accumulation, densification and transformation, looking at its political, scientific, performative and experimental capacity. It seeks potentiality in the way the material vibrates or circulates formlessly and how it comes into shape. It explores the emotional relationship to things and softens the boundary between the body and the materials as well as the material of the body itself.

'Materiality''s artist list includes:
Lara Almarcegui, Rosella Biscotti and Kevin van Braak, Maureen Connor and Kadambari Baxi, André Cepeda and Eduardo Matos, Marcelo Expósito, Iñaki Garmendia, Martí Guixé, Sally Gutierrez, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sjef Henderickx, Arne Hendriks, Mateusz Herczka, Hiwa K, Ernst van der Hoeven, Katarzyna Józefowicz, Grzegorz Klaman, Kasia Krakowiak, Robert Kuśmirowski, MML STUDIO [Michał Mądracki, Maciej Mądracki, Gilles Lepore], Erlea Maneros Zabala, Paulo Mendes, Partizan Publik, Lex Pott, Patrícia Azevedo Santos, Hito Steyerl, Michał Szlaga, Ronald van Tienhoven, Mariusz Waras, Jólan van der Wiel, Silvia Zayas as well as Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger and Florian Zeyfang.

The second exhibition, 'Wyspa. Now is Now', is curated by Ewa Małgorzata Tatar, Dominik Kuryłek and Anna Ptak and architecturally defined by Krzysztof Skoczylas. The team focused on the legacy of Wyspa and the content of its archive while insisting on the functional context of contemporaneity. The exhibition communicates both the interpretative capacity of the archive and explores Wyspa's methodologies, concepts of communality, discursive approach and what the curators of the project call 'an effort of continuity'. 'Wyspa.Now is Now' consists of rich archival material including documentation of early Wyspa-associated artists and opens the site of ephemeral projects and performative interventions by the young generation of artists, such as Agata Biskup and Przemek Czepurko, Mateusz Kula in collaboration with Aleksandra Jach and Krzysztof Skoczylas, Mikołaj Moskal, Konrad Smoleński, Pavel Sterec as well as Zorka Wollny.

Artists' talks and lecture performances include those by Hito Steyerl, Lara Almacequi, Emilio Moreno, Marcelo Expósito, Sally Gutierrez and Oliver Ressler.

The list of distinguished speakers who will deliver talks during Alternativa 2012 includes: Franco Berardi, Alfredo Camerotti, Okwui Enwezor, Pascal Gielen, Miguel Robles Duran and Irit Rogoff. Please check our website regularly for schedules of talks and workshops and updates.

Alternativa 2010–2012 is a project prepared by Wyspa Institute of Art and the City of Gdańsk, with additional committed funds from the European Commission, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as well as the Province of Pomerania, among others.
Materiality is a two-year European project that is being developed in collaboration between Wyspa, Vessel in Bari, Polytechnico in Tomar and Kibla in Maribor.