Filmoteka Muzeum

Skra shows the death of a place and ideas that had called it into being. Built at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s in Warsaw's district of Ochota and housing for many years the Olympic Training Centre, the presented stadium has sunk into oblivion. Niesterowicz's film depicts in static shots the process of slow appropriation of the facility by its unintended users – wild animals, amateur sportspeople, enthusiasts of exotic martial arts. The time of shooting (late autumn) and the soundtrack of the film (aria Dido's Lament from Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas) amplify the 'vanitas' character of the work. The presentation at the Studio Gallery in February 2012 was accompanied by a series of monotypes – prints of withered grass on white cardboard.

References: materials of the Studio Gallery.

(AK)