2010-07-07 - 2011-01-16

Curated by: Marlena Chybowska-Butler, Magdalena Lewoc

Artists: Radek Szlaga, Raul Keller, Wojtek Doroszuk

Creative Geography – Mental Landscapes is a program of exhibitions, presentations, lectures and workshops aimed at revealing the mechanisms of identity formation through a critical examination of the artistic output and intellectual attitudes that rise from them.

The late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said first articulated the concept of creative geography in his research on collective European perceptions about the non-European world. Said framed his posit using the terms 'us' and 'others,' purely arbitrary distinctions that take root among members of a given culture. Through the dramatization of difference – most often based on self-fulfilling ideological fictions – these divisions strengthen the sense of personal identity in ways that reinforce both the culture – the 'us' – and the cultural stereotyping of the 'other.'

Prof. Michał Buchowski, from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, approaches this topic from a universalist perspective based on his work in theory and methodology of cultural anthropology. Krakow-based visual artist Wojciech Doroszuk offers an insight into city’s  society, who has consistently subjecting to a critical observation about Otherness, exclusion and xenophobia.

The topics of creative identity and creation of national myths in Polish culture are analyzed by Dr. Dariusz Skórczewski, a cultural theorist and literary critic from the Catholic University of Lublin, and by Poznan-based painter Radosław Szlaga, whose work unites Polish history with Western consumerist icons.

Guests from Estonia offer a transnational perspective, with Eha Komissarov, a curator from the KUMU Museum of Art in Tallinn, presenting the newest trends in Estonian animation. She is joined by Tallinn-based performance artist and musician Raul Keller, whose project Paul Cole & The Great Outdoors focuses on the myths the American West and its musical genre.

Artists Maria Stafyniak and Pawel Kula, leaders of the Szczecin-based Taming Art Association (Stowarzyszenie Oswajanie Sztuki), will conduct a cycle of hands-on workshops for young people based on the matrix of themes that are addressed within the program framework. 

 

PROGRAM

7.07–8.08.2010

MARE ARTICUM Program 1995–2010 - presentation

Museum of Contemporary Art, Dept. of the National Museum in Szczecin

30.10–28.11.2010

Radosław Szlaga, DROGA

Individual exhibition

Museum of Contemporary Art, Dept. of the National Museum in Szczecin

 

10.12.2010–16.01.2011

 Wojtek Doroszuk, 5 filmów

Individual exhibition

Willa Lentza, Szczecin

 

14.12.2010

Lecture by Prof. Michał Buchowski

Co-organized by the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Szczecin

 Museum of Contemporary Art, Dept. of the National Museum in Szczecin, 6 pm

 

16.12.2010

Lecture by Dr. Dariusz Skórczewski

Co-organized by Szczecin’s bimonthly culture magazine ‘Pogranicza’

Willa west ende, 6 pm 

 

9.12.2010

Animated Dreams – the Newest Trends in Estonia Animation

Presented by curator Eha Komissarov

Kino Pałacowe, 7 pm

 

10.12.2010 

Paul Cole & The Great Outdoors

Concert / Original project by Estonian artist Raul Keller

Piwnica KANY, 8 pm

 

November – December 2010

A Cycle of Workshops

Conducted by Paweł Kula and Maria Stafyniak - Stowarzyszenie Oswajanie Sztuki

Museum of Contemporary Art, Dept. of the National Museum in Szczecin