PrintThe Forgetting of Proper Names
Events Programme
25 January - 18 March 2012
Calvert 22,
22 Calvert Avenue,
London E2 7JP
All events are free and take place at Calvert 22, unless otherwise stated. Booking is strongly advised. Please contact press@calvert22.org for further information or to make a reservation; visit www.calvert22.org or ask at reception for details.
The Forgetting of Proper Names is a multi-strand, two-month season that focuses on the vibrant contemporary art and culture from Poland, exploring the subjectivity of memory, language and translation, the way the past is reshaped over time and reinterpreted as it crosses cultural boundaries. Centered around a core exhibition of three young, dynamic Polish artists showing for the first time in London: Wojciech Bąkowski (b. 1979, Poznan), Anna Molska (b. 1983, Prudnik) and Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985, Lublin), this unique season also interweaves performance, screenings, readings and discussion exploring the fresh innovative ways in which the artists engage with the history of the avant-garde and the changing social conditions in contemporary Poland, making explicit the connections to contemporary Polish literature, poetry and music.
EVENTS PROGRAMME
Attention fission
Performance by Wojciech Bąkowski
Private View, Tuesday 24 January, 7.30pm
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Reading Group: On (Un)translatability
Every other Wednesday from 25 January until 7 March inclusive, 7pm, Free. Spaces are very limited so booking essential
Join us for friendly, informal readings and discussions that will focus on carefully selected essays, poems and fragments of prose, allowing participants to explore notions of (un)translatability as well as the quest for nostalgia, both of which are themes that are central to this season.
The texts discussed will include excerpts from Sigmund Freud’s The Forgetting of Proper Names (1901); Walter Benjamin’s The Task of Translator (1923), Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language (1989); and others.
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Archive as Strategy: Conversations about Self-historisation across the East
OKTOBAR XXX: The Workshop on Self-Managed Art
Saturday 28 January, 2-5pm
Free entry, advance booking essential
The second event in the Archive as Strategy series, one of Calvert 22’s core research strands, will take place in two parts over Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 January. OKTOBAR XXX: The Workshop on Self-Managed Art will be conducted by Jelena Vesić – independent curator, cultural activist and editor from Belgrade – with guest Lutz Becker, London-based filmmaker and curator.
Jelena Vesić will present The Case of the Student Cultural Centre in the 1970s, a research-based exhibition project by Belgrade’s PRELOM kolektiv, which examined the notion of the “progressive art institution” in the 1970s and dealt with the politics of the historisation of conceptual art in Eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia. The presentation by Vesić will be accompanied by a screening of Cinema Notes, the 1975 film by Lutz Becker on SKC artistic production.
Sunday 29 January, 12-5pm
Free entry, spaces are very limited so booking essential
Dedicated to a participatory reading of the project Oktobar 75, released in SKC in 1975, this workshop will be centred around the issue of self-management in art. The participatory reading will include elements of the interpretation and actualisation of the questions originally raised by the participants of Oktobar 75.
Please note: this workshop is only open to participants of the Saturday’s event
For further information or to book a place, please email press@calvert22.org
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Gallery Talk: Magda Raczyńska
First Thursday, 2 February, 7pm, Free
Join the Head of Literature of the Polish Cultural Institute in London for a personal tour of the exhibition investigating the themes of untranslatability and displacement.
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Curator’s Talk: Lina Džuverović, Calvert 22
Thursday 9 February, 7pm, Free
Join one of the exhibition’s curators discussing the curatorial strategies, central themes and core ideas behind the exhibition.
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Studio Visit: Joanna Rajkowska
Sunday 12 February, 3pm, Free
Light refreshments provided
Internationally acclaimed artist Joanna Rajkowska, one of the most recognised and influential Polish practitioners to emerge since 1989, gives a talk on her practice in relation to the themes of memory, trauma and their residue in body and language.
This event will see the inauguration of Calvert’s Studio Visit series, a monthly artists’ ‘show-and-tell’ event featuring artists from Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS countries who are based in the UK.
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Gallery Talk and Screening: Irene Revell with Films by Naomi Uman
Thursday 16 February, 7pm, Free
Join Irene Revell, Director of London-based arts organisation Electra, in conversation with Calvert 22's Lina Džuverović on (im)migration, memory/loss and displaced identities. This exchange takes as its starting point a personal reflection on Irene's own Polish and Belarusian descent and will be followed by a screening of selected films from Naomi Uman’s The Ukrainian Time Machine cycle, including some of her latest works in the series. This cycle charts the filmmaker’s experiences of 'returning' to live in the rural Ukrainian region that her great-grandparents emigrated from in 1906.
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Curator’s Talk: Dominik Czechowski, Calvert 22
First Thursday, 1 March, 7pm, Free
Join Dominik Czechowski, Polish-born, London-based curator for a personal tour of current developments in Polish contemporary art, with a special focus on the work of the exhibition artists in the wider context of today’s Polish art scene.
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Archive as Strategy: Conversations about Self-historisation across the East
Seminar: Archiving the Past Tense
Saturday 3 March, 2-6pm, Tickets £8/£5, at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R
In collaboration with The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum in London
Calvert 22’s core research strand, ‘Archive as Strategy: Conversations about Self-historisation across the East’, continues with this half-day seminar which explores collective and individual memory and forgetting, archives and nostalgia and processes of the archivisation of the past. The event includes a presentation of the work of the Avant-Garde Institute in Warsaw, previously an apartment of avant-garde artists Henryk Stażewski (1894-1988) and Edward Krasiński (1925-2004).
Speakers include writer Eva Hoffman, author of ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Exit into History’, artist Marysia Lewandowska, and academics Klara Kemp-Welch, Karolina Lewandowska, Luiza Nader, and Karol Sienkiewicz.
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International Women's Day: Electra Presents Works from the Archive of Polish Experimental Film
Thursday 8 March, 7pm, Free, Advance Booking Essential
In celebration of International Women's Day, Electra, the London-based arts organisation, which has a long-standing engagement with feminist discourses, selects films from the Archive of Polish Experimental Film, looking at pioneering explorations of female self-representation under state socialism.
Electra is a London-based arts organisation with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts (www.elektra-productions.com).
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Performative Lecture by Agnieszka Polska
Sunday 11 March, 4pm, Free
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Anna Molska in Conversation
Thursday 15 March, 7pm, Free
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WHAT YOU WILL NEVER SAY AGAIN: an evening of Polish poetry and readings in association with OFF_PRESS
With special guest, poet Wioletta Grzegorzewska
Friday 16 March, 7pm, Free
Marek Kazmierski, editor of OFF_PRESS, a UK-based independent publisher promoting contemporary creative writing in English and Polish translations, hosts this unique event, which draws to a close our season's exploration of (un)translatability through exhibition, readings and discussion. Book presentations and signing afterwards.
This programme has been kindly supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum.