Primary Forms (2021-2022)

What is Primary Forms project? 

Primary Forms is a cyclical program for pupils at Polish primary schools. It has been carried out by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Roman Czernecki Educational Foundation since 2021. In each edition of the program a new set of artistic instructions, games, scores and objects are created and delivered to schools packed in specially designed boxes. These are used at the schools as a base for creation of artworks, art activities and exhibitions. The works are not necessarily tangible; a range of performances, concerts and happenings have been executed during the first few editions. 

Inspirations and Historical References 

Primary Forms was inspired by the School Prints program launched in the UK immediately after the Second World War, during the turbulent times of forging a new political and social order in Europe. An identical set of lithographs by a group of well-known artists were distributed to primary schools and displayed in classrooms. In the scheme, new works were created by artists such as Barbara Jones, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, John Nash and Pablo Picasso. The Primary Forms program also alludes to numerous other experiments connected with art and education in the 20th and 21st centuries. One point of reference is Marcel Duchamp and his travelling “museum in a suitcase,” or “Fluxkits ”—boxes prepared by artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, containing scores, models, audio recordings, games, puzzles and stencils. Another example is Pure Consciousness, a series of exhibitions begun at preschools in 1998 of works by the Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. In the educational context and in the company of children, Kawara’s paintings were used as a teaching instrument helping children learn numbers and the days of the week. Primary Forms is also inspired by the exercises and methodologies of artists who worked in schools or established their own educational institutions, such as Joseph Beuys, Cornelius Cardew, Jef Geys, Anna Halprin, Oskar Hansen, Asger Jorn, K.G. Subramanyan, and many others.

The School as Exhibition, Children as Creators

The boxes distributed to the schools contain within themselves a “dormant exhibition,” which can be materialized in the form chosen by the pupils. The activities in the program play out in the rhythm of the school year. Teachers, with the support of museum educators, work with teams of pupils from grades 4 through 8. The essence of the process is to place agency in the children’s hands and for them to learn from one another within the creative activity. The group has time for experiments, asking questions, stretching their imagination, and testing themselves in new roles (for the teachers as well). The teachers involved in the program take part in training, workshops and plein-air sessions, to prepare them for work in the project—to familiarize them with contemporary, conceptual art based on process, actions and relationships, not only on creating objects, so that they can integrate these activities into their future work as teachers.

What Can an Exhibition Be? 

The exhibitions which are the fruits of the teams’ efforts are created within school spaces—in classrooms and corridors, in the gymnasium or the playground. They can be performed numerous times and interpreted in various ways, much like playing a musical score. Through the Primary Forms program, we pose questions like: What can we do with art? What can be an exhibition? Where and when does an exhibition start and end? What can we learn from artists? Does contact with art give rise to knowledge? How to understand art—and also enjoy not understanding it?

Paweł Althamer
"Sowers"

The golden sack with a tree motif on it is almost empty. There are just a few seeds on the bottom. Find a good place for them in the vicinity of the school or on your way home. Look after the place. If a little plant sprouts there in spring, water it at least once a week. Go with your group on a trip to find seeds, fill the golden sack with them in order to plant them the following year. Paweł Althamer will be happy to join you on your walk and tell you about his relationship with trees. Write to us (you’ll find a postcard in the box) and invite the artist to your school.

Questions:
Can art be grown like a plant?
How long does “long” last? How short is “short”?
Would you be able to pretend you’re a plant for fifteen minutes?
Or perhaps throughout one short break between classes?
Can you make friends with a plant?
Which plants in the city are edible, and which are poisonous for us?
What are invasive species?
Are plants allowed to stow away?

Kasper Bosmans 
"Flag, Postage Stamp, Kiss"

The box contains two sets of stencils. These are two versions of the same image – mouth and chin. They may become a flag on a pole or a postage stamp. Find a place in your school where you will create a mural using these stencils, on a wall inside or outside the school building, in the classroom or in the corridor. Use all the stencils, one after another, to form a postage stamp or a flag. Colour the stencil with paints. Begin from the mouth, you’ll find red paint in the box. Choose other colours and paint the rest of the mural.

Questions:
What is a symbol?
What is a flag for?
Do you need to know what an image means to like it?
If you could choose what will be on a postage stamp, what would you choose and why?
If you were to create the flag of your school, what symbol would it feature, what colour/colours would it have?
What happens when a postage stamp becomes so huge?
Why do the scale and size of an image matter?

Gabo Camnitzer
"Off-site Classroom"

The box contains a large sheet with a printed photo of a classroom seen from above. It’s an off-site classroom. You can take it on a walk around your school, to the schoolyard, wherever you want. Lay it out on the grass, wave it, play on it, arrange objects on it, you can also cover yourself with the cloth like with a quilt, or even hide under it. Pay attention to the photo printed on the sheet. Compare it to your classroom, look what’s missing in the photo.

Questions:
How to tell the difference between the classroom and other rooms, and how does it differ from your own room?
What is architecture?
What is a building made of?
Can a building have no ceiling? Floor? Walls?
What does your classroom look like at night, does anything change?
What would you change in your classroom to make you want to live in it?

Sharon Lockhart
"Spreading News"

The work prepared by Katya Buchatska is a deck of multicolour cards.

The blue ones are objects. They are used inside the building: in the classroom, gym hall, corridor. Draw one and imagine yourself as an object. You’re a book, a bottle, or maybe a pair of shoes? Find a place where you’ll feel comfortable in your role. It is known that, for example, books like lying on the shelf or on the table, but be careful – you won’t fit everywhere. Stay there motionless for one or two minutes. How do you feel?

As a group, act like the objects you’ve drawn at the same time. Ask someone to take a photo when you’ve all become things. Looking at this photo, can you guess who plays what role?

The green cards are animals. They are used outside the building. Take one and imagine yourself as the animal you’ve drawn. Move like it, make appropriate sound. Play together with the rest of the group for a minute or two. Ask someone to take a photo of you as a herd. Can you tell who plays what role? What animal are you? Do you crawl, fly or jump in the trees (just be careful!)? Are you a warm-blooded or a cold-blooded creature? What do you feed on? How do you feel in this role? 

The red cards are emotions. Return to the classroom or, if possible, to the auditorium. Go on stage; the same box contains Alicja Bielawska’s fabrics, and you can use one to sit on. Choose a card and show it to the other players. 

Talk about how you feel about the emotions you’ve drawn. How often do you experience it? Where? Do you fell all right with it?  There are no winners and no losers in this game. People, objects, animals and emotions win. But you can award special prizes, for example, for the most convincingly played role of a book!

Goshka Macuga
"Your Own Propaganda Is Your Poetry"

Remove the box with a set of stamps from the sack. Each stamp is a different word. You’ll find fifty words in total; these are frequently used pronouns, verbs, nouns.

Use them to compose poems, print them on photographs, walls, notebooks, try forming sentences and images (can you draw a dinosaur with the word “climate”?), make a mini-banner, leave your trace outside the school.

Questions: 
Can you write a poem with only one word?
Who are “we”, who are “they”? What do you think when you hear these words?
Can you arrange these fifty words from the most to the least liked? Do you agree in the group about this order?
Where can poetry be created if not on paper and in a book?
When does a word change its meaning?
What is a banner?
What is propaganda? Can it be a good thing?

Mikołaj Moskal
"Untitled"

The sack contains a pottery mask. Unpack it carefully because it’s very fragile, and put the mask on your face. Use it in special circumstances – when you’re quizzed in class, recite a poem or want to vanish from your colleagues’ sight.

The mask has special powers. Try to find out what they are.

Questions: 
How to disappear at school? What can be used a cap of invisibility? 
Am I as others see me?
What is forbidden in my school and do I agree with it?
What animal mask would I like to wear? Or perhaps it’s not an animal?
What is stage fright?

Ramona Nagabczyńska
"Third Person"

Form pairs, you’ll find headphones in the box. Listen to the recording together. You’ll hear a voice that will tell you what to do. During the first stage try to relax and take some rest. You may stand, sit, lie down on the floor. Grab each other’s hands.

At a certain point, the voice will prompt you to take a walk around the school. Keep holding each other’s hands and imagine you are guided by a third, invisible person. Explore the school building and its nooks and crannies, walk up and down the floors, you may crawl, roll, walk backwards, walk on all fours, on your knees, jump. The whole school is yours. The voice in the headphones will announce the end of your journey.

Questions:
What can we learn about the world by wandering and getting lost in our own city?
Who do you think is the third person introduced by Ramona?
What is choreography?
How do you feel when you’re in a place you’ve never been before?
Can you travel without moving?

Agnieszka Polska
"Plate 1"

There is a poster in the box. Look at it carefully and decide in the group where it should be displayed in your school and why. Think about the choice of the room, the wall (ceiling, floor?), the height. Talk about your choice. Compare this poster to other educational props and posters in your school. Can you guess what creatures it shows?

Questions:
Why are some species threatened with extinction? How to help them?
Should you believe everything you see?
What does classification (of species, genera, objects, phenomena) mean? Do you think it’s useful?
How do you react when you see something you don’t understand?
Are humans an endangered species?
What is artificial intelligence?

Katarzyna Przezwańska
"Solar System"

We are all on the Earth, which is part of the system of planets revolving around the Sun, hence its name: the Solar System. How about re-creating it in your school? Remove the poster from the box. It shows the size of each planet and the distances between them and the Sun. Follow these hints and find objects that will serve as models of planets. These may be different things from your surroundings: pips, cones, stones, or seeds. You may find many of them on a walk around your school. When you come across the Earth, put it in the showcase you’ll find in the box, sign it and hang it in an appropriate place in your school. Now it’s time for the Sun; did you know it’s a star and it’s so huge that it could contain more than a million planets the size of the Earth? The Sun is in the centre and all the planets revolve around it. Treat it special; build a metre-high sphere using any materials and install it at an appropriate distance from the Earth (according to the poster with distances shown). You can do the same with the other planets; find them and arrange at a correct distance from each other. Take a long walk with your group to arrange all the planets.

Questions:
Where are we and what do we look like when the Earth is seen from very, very far away?
What is distance? What does it mean that something is “close” or “far away”?
What is size? How small is “something small”, and how big is “something big”?
If the Earth was a cherry pit, how big would your school be on the same scale?
Do things look different when seen from above?
If you could be part of the Solar System, which planet would you like to be and why? What superpowers would you have?

Slavs and Tatars with Olga Micińska
"Bookivore"

The sack contains a large stamp. It’s an ex libris, used to mark books in library collections. Create a collection of books that will form your new canon of (absolutely non-compulsory) school reading. Do you only want to read about frogs or trolls? No problem!

You can find books in the school library. Choose those that will become your school reading and mark them with the stamp. If you cannot find the books you need, write to us (use the postcard in the box), and we will help deliver them to your school. Talk to your colleagues about the books with the ex libris on them. Read them aloud. Record radio plays.

Questions: 
What is a canon?
Does a story need to have a beginning and an end?
What do I choose myself and what is chosen for me by someone else? Do I know when this happens?
Can reading end up with a brawl?
What is a collection, a set, an archive? How to build them and how to mark them?
What would I like to save from a huge tornado?