Museum under Construction. Tokyo–Warsaw

  • Museum under Construction. Tokyo–Warsaw

    Muzeum w Budowie. Tokio - Warszawa design Ludovic Balland

venue: The National Art Centre, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Museum under Construction. Tokyo–Warsaw is a programme of lectures and screening prepared by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Co-organisers are the National Art Centre Tokyo and Mori Art Museum. The programme is centered round contemporary institutional critique and the dynamics of attraction / conflict between the artist and the museum.

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The National Art Centre Tokyo

symposium: 14 November (Monaday), at. 13.00-17.00

13:00–15:00 Sebastian Cichocki (Deputy Director, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) and Shoichi Hirai (Curator, the National Art Center, Tokyo) as moderators, and artists: Marysia Lewandowska, Agnieszka Polska and Jan Smaga

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15:30–17:00 Sebastian Cichocki and Akiko Kasuya (Art Historian, Kyoto City University of Arts) as moderators, and artists: Joanna Rajkowska, Zbigniew Libera

Venue: Auditorium (3rd floor), The National Art Center, Tokyo (7-22-2 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, www.nact.jp)

Is there any influence that museums have—through their architecture, collection-building policies or curatorial strategies—on the shape of contemporary artworks? How can artists alter the priorities of an institution and modify their programmes? Can a museum function without artists? The brief history of Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art—one of the youngest European art institutions (established in 2005 with the view of becoming one of the largest museums in the region)—hints at the major problems of modern museum-related policy.

The speakers at the two institutions in Tokyo, National Arts Centre and Mori Art Museum, are Polish artists and critics, and they will join Japanese theorists in dealing with art from Central and Eastern Europe. The artists will talk about their relationships with museums, their expectations from new art institutions, and the strategies of negotiating the meanings of their works. They will also examine the “side effects” and “margins” of museum operation: how museums construct as well as challenge historical standards, how they define our understanding of the processes taking course in large metropols.

In Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw will present the most interesting approaches that have formatted our homegrown artistic scene and provided for its international renown (the presence of Polish artists at the major exhibitions such as documenta in Kassel or Biennale of Art in Venice, as well as in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris or Tate Modern in London). The adopted reference points are the problems of politics and history (artist replacing the museum), social reflection (artist teaching the museum), or activity in public space (artist leaving the museum).

Organisers: the National Art Center, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Partners: The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tokyo
Cooperation: Mori Art Museum; Kasuya Lab. of General Art Science, Dept. of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts




Mori Art Museum / Urgent Talk 008: Star City Film Screening and Performance

film screening and performance: 15 November (Tuesday), at 19.00–21.30

Introduction: Łukasz Ronduda (Curator, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) with Kondo Kenichi (Associate Curator, Mori Art Museum, guest starring: Paweł Althamer

Venue: Gallery 1, Mori Art Museum (53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo)

Star City revisits how the future was experienced and imagined under communism during the Cold War. It focuses on the works of many leading European artists of the post-communist generation. Their films relate to the Soviet space programme and Central European communist popular culture, blurring the distinction between historical residue and artistic invention.

The film programme has been named after the centre for Soviet space programme. Since the lunar landing, the onset of neoliberal globalisation, the shrinking of technology and the climate change crisis, our will to imagine different futures has diminished drastically. The future, such as it was, now often appears abandoned and in ruins, and its new manifestations are rarely heroic, seductive or utopian. This is particularly the case in the post-communist countries, where the future arrived, rhetorically speaking, in the form of a communist utopia, which soon turned into a dystopia, and disintegrated altogether with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The film programme abounds in signs of these future-pasts: the rusting hulks of abandoned rockets, visionary and eccentric science fictions, forgotten modernist monuments to the future, obscure cosmological theories where physics and metaphysics appear to unite. In excavating and recasting these almost forgotten futures, the film programme implicitly asks which of their attributes can be salvaged and redeployed. Star City’s highlights include films by Paweł Althamer, Robert Kuśmirowski, Deimantas Narkevičius, The Otolith Group, Krzysztof Wodiczko, David Maljkovic and Aleksandra Mir.

Organisers: Mori Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Partners: The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tokyo
Cooperation: the National Art Center, Tokyo; Kasuya Lab. of General Art Science, Dept. of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts



Full infomation in PDF, in english or japanese.

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PAWEŁ ALTHAMER, born 1967 in Warsaw. Sculptor, performer, installation and video artist. He studied at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and was awarded The Vincent Award. He is author of numerous self-portraits: Paweł Althamer (1993), Balloon (2007). In the film The So-Called Waves and Other Phenomena of the Mind (2003–2004), co-produced with Artur Żmijewski, Althamer documented the experience of non-rational cognition. Other projects include, Bródno 2000 and Sculpture Park. Lives and works in Warsaw.


MARYSIA LEWANDOWSKA, born in 1955 in Szczecin. Received her MA from the University of Warsaw. Between 1995 and 2008, she collaborated with Neil Cummings. As artists they have been interested in thinking about and working alongside many of the institutions that choreograph the exchange of values between art and its public. Research has played a central part in all their recent projects, which include a book The Value of Things Birkhauser / August 2000; Give & Take at the V & A Museum and Capital inaugurating Contemporary Interventions series at Tate Modern 2001. Marysia Lewandowska is Professor of Fine Art at Konstfack, Stockholm. She lives and works in London.


ZBIGNIEW LIBERA, born in 1959, is author of installations, objects, videos, drawings and photographs. Ranked among the classics of critical art. Libera is author of Intimate Rites (1984): a record of activities involved in looking after his dying grandmother; and How to Train Little Girls (1987) which captures the imposition of social and cultural roles. 1996 saw his most notorious work Lego. Concentration Camp. At the turn of 2008/2009, he ran the Open Form Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Lives and works in Prague.


AGNIESZKA POLSKA, born in 1985 in Lublin. Studied at the Artistic Faculty of Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin and the Faculty of Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Makes photographs, videos and animations using pre-war newspapers, photographs. In her works – designs of modernist works of art from the past—she indicates what should be remembered and how (Correction Exercises (2008), Three Videos with Narration (2010)). Lives and works in Cracow and Berlin.


JOANNA RAJKOWSKA, born in 1968 in Bydgoszcz, and is author of a wide array of objects, films, installations, actions and interventions in public space. Represents the field of engaged art. Graduate in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and History of Art at the Jagiellonian Universiy, she was awarded the “Polityka” Passport Award in the category: Visual Arts. Her works include Dream Diary (2001), Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (2002), Oxygenator (2005–2007). Lives and works in Warsaw.


JAN SMAGA, born in 1974 in Warsaw. Polish graphic artist and photographer. In 2000, he graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In the late 1990s, he started a joint-practice with Aneta Grzeszykowska. They were shortlisted for the 2005 Deutsche Bank Award, and in 2006 for the “Polityka” Passport Award. In their works, they merge classic photographic techniques with digital editing, constructing three-dimensional objects. Their joint projects include: Plan (2003), YMCA (2005).


AKIKO KASUYA, born in Hyogo in 1963. Akiko Kasuya is an Associate Professor at Kyoto City University of Art. She studied aesthetics at Jagiellonian University, with the Faculty of Philosophy, in the Institute of Aesthetics (Krakow, Poland) from 1989 to 1991. She graduated from the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters Division of Philosophy Doctoral Program in 1991. Kasuya has worked as part of the National Museum of Art, Osaka (NMAO) Curatorial Department from 1991. Her major exhibitions at NMAO include Art and The Environment (Geijutsu to Kankyo, 1998), Miroslaw Balka—Between Meals (2000), A Second Talk (Ima Hanaso, 2002); Positioning-In the New Reality of Europe (Tenkan Ki no Saho, 2005); Still/Motion: Liquid Crystal Painting (Ekisho Kaiga, 2008); etc. She joined the faculty at Kyoto City University of Art in 2008. Major Publications: Avant Garde Declaration—Modernism in Central-Eastern Europe (“Avant Garde Sengen—Chu To O no Modernism”) (Sangensha, 2005, Joint translation), For Those Who Learn Poland (Poland Gaku wo Manabu Hito no Tameni; Sekaishisosha, 2007, Joint authorship).


KENICHI KONDO, born in 1969, Associate Curator, Mori Art Museum. Graduated from the Faculty of Letters at University of Tokyo and completed a Master’s in Art History at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Kondo started to work at Mori Art Museum in 2003. He curated solo shows with John Wood and Paul Harrison (2007), Meiro Koizumi (2009), and Katerina Seda (2010); and co-curated Roppongi Crossing 2010 (2010). He will co-curate a Middle Eastern contemporary art exhibition in 2012. Kondo was guest curator for the art fair, ARCO in 2006 and also curated a video art show with young Japanese artists for Sala 1: a non-profit gallery in Rome in 2010.


SHOICHI HIRAI, born in Kyoto in 1962, Curator, The National Art Center, Tokyo. He graduated from the Kansai University Graduate School of Letters and is a Doctor of Literature. He worked at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kobe etc. and joined the National Art Center, Tokyo in 2007. His major exhibitions include Earthquake and Art [Shinsai to Bijutsu: 1.17 kara umareta mono] at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (Kobe 2000); GUTAI 1954-1972 [Kessei 50 syunen kinen Gutai Kaikoten] in the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art (Kobe 2004); ANZAΪ: Personal Photo Archives 1970-2006 [Anzai Shigeo no Shi Sya Roku 1970-2006] at the National Art Center (Tokyo 2007). His major publications include: Collection: Japanese Surrealism vol.12 Migishi Kotaro and Jiro Yoshihara: Cosmology of lyricism [Collection Nihon Surrealism 12 Migishi Kotaro and Jiro Yoshihara: Jyojyo no Kosumoroji] (Honnotomosha 2001), What’s Gutai? [Gutai tte Nanda?] (Bijutsusyuppan-sha 2004).


SEBASTIAN CICHOCKI, born in 1975, works deputy director at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Between 2005 and 2008, he worked as director of the Centre for Contemporary Art Kronika in Bytom, Poland. He often refers to land art and conceptual traditions in his curatorial and publishing projects. Selected curated exhibitions include: Yael Bartana, ...and Europe will be Stunned, Polish Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition (Venice 2011); Early Years, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin 2010); Monika Sosnowska, 1:1, Polish Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition (Venice 2007); Bródno Sculpture Park, Park Bródnowski (Warsaw 2009–2011); WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Warsaw 2009, 2010). Cichocki has authored a number of critical texts and art-related literary fictions; he has also published in major contemporary art periodicals.


ŁUKASZ RONDUDA, born in 1976, writer and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Authored books include, Polish Art of the ‘70s (Warsaw 2009), Half Empty (Warsaw 2011); edited publications, among others: KwieKulik (with Georg Scholhammer, Warsaw 2011), 1,2,3...Avatgarde. Film / Art between Experiment and the Archive (with Florian Zeyfang, Berlin 2007); Star City Future Under Communism (with A. Farquharson, 2011). Ronduda has recently curated the exhibitions: Black and White (with Galit Eilat, Moma Warsaw 2011); Zbigniew Libera’s Open Form Studio (Tranzitdisplay 2011), Warpechowski, Konieczny, Uklański, Bodzianowski, Dawicki (Museum of Art, Łódź 2011), Operator’s Exercise. Open Form Film and Architecture (Arthur Ross Architectural Gallery, Columbia University, New York, 2010); and Star City, Future Under Communism (with A. Farquharson, Nottingham Contemporary, 2010).


Project cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland

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