Mirror Kiosk
Newcomer's Open Studio

  • Mirror Kiosk

The mirror kiosk will become the starting point and the base from which to engage in activities driven by the need to meet people and pursue broadly understood human creative collaboration.

It will serve the needs of working around the pavilion and with the pavilion, working with the square and in the square, with people and about people. The goal of the work will consist in shifting the focus from the urban macro scale to the humanistic micro scale. Creative activities pursued together with people who experience the square on a daily basis will provide an opportunity to hear and understand their perspective. During the festival WWB9 the mirror kiosk will become the square’s meeting centre. Warsaw walks and guided tours will begin here. The kiosk will also function as a venue of educational activities. The space will be hosted by the artist Michał Mioduszewski.

The mirror kiosk of the Virtual Economic Zone flickers to deform and absorb its surroundings. It blends into Parade Square.

Dozens of rotating mirrors, whose divisions form the irregular rhythm of its elevations, reflect kebab bars, the commercial buildings of the Eastern Wall, the void of the square, the advertising banners and the Palace of Culture, which towers above everything else. The mirrors are left at the disposal of passers-by; when set at appropriate angles, they generate ephemeral collages of snapshots of their surroundings. The zone is an improvisation around the urban text, a slip of the tongue in the urban narrative of Parade Square. It is an afterimage of stalls that used to dominate the site during the first decade of the country’s free market transition. It captures the spirit of democratic centralism with a capitalist face.

Built on a quadrilateral plan, the openwork structure of the kiosk comprises multiplied doors, windows and mirrors. It is hospitable. It accepts everyone. Dust from the street flows freely through, yet the interior offers shelter to exhibition visitors, participants of discussions and walks as well as children taking part in workshops. The roof of the kiosk functions as a viewing terrace from which to admire the urban chaos of the centre of Warsaw. The kiosk itself is an info point and the centre of the workshop and research programme of this year’s WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION, devoted to reflection on the unaccomplished future of the square, rolling reprivatisation, underlying restitution and plans that never never succeeded.

The Virtual Economic Zone project was founded in 2013 in Gdańsk within the Alternativa festival with the production, financial and content-related support of the Wyspa Progress Foundation – Wyspa Institute of Art. Devised as an intervention in St. Dominic’s Fair, the conceptual stall of the VEZ functioned as a laboratory of virtual economies and a temporary centre of street commerce à rebours.

Project founders

Maciej Czeredys, Natalia Romik, Kuba Szreder

Implementation and production

Agnieszka Szreder and Rafał Żwirek

Michał Mioduszewski

host of the kiosk of the Virtual Economic Zone.

Artist, social psychologist, animator of cultural activities. Graduate of the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Social Psychology at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. In 2010 at the Bródno Sculpture Park, Mioduszewski initiated the cashless meeting spot – Teahouse – and the neighbourhood cinema on a staircase. The same year, in a group of Paweł Althamer’s students he participated in the Gwangju Biennale, and one year later – in Moscow. In 2013, during Grolsch Artboom Festival in Krakow Mioduszewski initiated the money-less coffee shop Cafe Fińska. He currently co-creates 3 Rooms with a Kitchen – a neighbourhood meeting place based on non-financial exchange of knowledge.

See also:

Other archival events from that cycle:

DzieńGodzinaNazwa wydarzeniaMiejsce wydarzenia
16:00 Guided tours Curatorial guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
15:00 Guided tours Guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
18:00 Guided tours Guided tour in Russian of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibitionТур на русском языке по выставке „Парадная площадь: шаг вперед” Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
17:30 Guided tours Curatorial guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Curatorial guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
16:00 Guided tour Guided tour in English of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
16:00 Guided tour Guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
15:00 Guided tour Guided tour of the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw
18:00 Guided tour Guided tour in Spanishof the „Plac Defilad: a step forward” exhibition Galeria Studio
Plac Defilad 1, Warsaw