Collection

Aernout Mik is one of the most important visual artists in Europe. He creates films and video installations based on "political event choreography", where the border between fiction and actual documented events is blurred.

Communitas is the first film work, which the author created in Poland. This performed documentary was wholly recorded in interior part of the Palace of Culture and Science, during summer of 2010. In one-hour film, we observe the crowd trapped inside of the building, or occupying its rooms. People of different age and nationality (presence of Vietnamese society is clearly noticeable) occupy the theater, corridors, concert and conference rooms within the whole building. Their actions are ambiguous – they are a political meeting in nature, speeches are delivered, voting takes place, demands are submitted.

During the film – there is a loop sequence of images at three screens (at any time watching the film may start and end), which does not reveal reasons for stress and agitation in the crowd. Images from Communitas seem to come from near future, when the Palace of Culture and Science belongs to completely new symbolic order, without any connections with communist past. Premiere of the film took place in the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw and this year during Biennal de São Paulo.