Filmoteka Muzeum

A found-footage film composed of scenes showing the tearing of pages out of books, files, annuals, magazines, etc. These arrogant acts of illegal appropriation of a common good (which, in a certain, limited, and regulated scope, is to serve everyone) are usually carried out in public places – libraries, archives – and are camouflaged in a comical way. At the same time, the scenes are an allusion to the practice, used by Lewandowska and Cummings, of ‘tearing’ them out of other people’s films. However, the multiple repetition of these scenes brings to mind the never-ending process of the appropriation of other authors’ (as well as common) images, texts, etc. and their recycling, reuse for various – all possible – purposes.

The work was originally presented on a monitor hidden deep in the recesses of a Manchester library. Visitors who happened to look upon the monitor were provided the stimulus and the jocular instruction to ‘liberate’ the knowledge stored therein.

Quoted from the brochure of the film programme Image/Text, curators: Ł. Ronduda, M. Woliński, Tate Modern, London 2006.