Will there be war tomorrow?
Museum at Open’er Festival 2018

The title itself expresses the premonitions and fears that have become so common in today’s world. At the same time, it draws on military tradition and symbols of armed combat, quoted so often in the context of the centenary of Polish independence.

Through the exhibition and a variety of activities prepared for the four festival days, the Museum will pose questions on who the Poles are as a political community, along with asking when and why has the modern nation been invented, and could any of this have been done differently. What is the other side of history as we know it as seen from an alternative, class perspective? In their quest for answers to these questions, the exhibition’s organisers will go beyond the one hundredth anniversary of Polish independence (1918–2018), studying inter alia the highly romantic spirit of the assumptions for the social and political revolution surrounding the Enlightenment era Kościuszko uprising. Other “people’s” social stories will be shown to us in the works of artists such as Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and Daniel Rycharski. Tomasz Machciński and Karol Radziszewski will also find different ways of toying with the political imagination canon, founded on Polish royal portraiture as well as commanders and political leaders’ grand ideas.

The “End of violence” show, directed by Bogna Burska and Magda Mosiewicz, will come as a contemporary summary of all these deliberations. In it, the authors fantasize about putting an end to constant exclusion or inclusion of individuals into the nation. They search for a means to do this in the form of a social divorce of sorts. On every festival day at 4 p.m. the exhibition space will become a stage for theatre activities drawing on the issue of the most recent political divisions.

Outside the Museum hall, as part of a “military dance training area”, Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk with his team of art militants (including, among others, Mariusz Waras “M-city” and Michał Szlaga) will lead dance activities forming an anti-war protest on the former military airport grounds. Wearing “anti-camouflage” uniforms, they will encourage visitors to the exhibition to interact, attempting to use artistic means to disarm military moods.

Artists

Andreas Angelidakis, Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Bownik, Maciej Chodziński, Jill Godmilow, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, Michał Korchowiec, Goshka Macuga, Tomasz Machciński, Karol Radziszewski, Daniel Rycharski, Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk (with Paweł Althamer, Mariusz Waras, Michał Szlaga), Jadwiga Sawicka, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jakub Woynarowski, Lynette Yiadom- Boakye

Spectacle "End of Violence"

Scripted and directed by: Bogna Burska and Magda Mosiewicz
Scenic desing: Maciej Salamon (in cooperation with: Bogna Burska, Magda Mosiewicz, Adam Witkowski)
Music (composition and live performance): Maciej Salamon and Adam Witkowski (Nagrobki band)
Cast: Anna Grycewicz, Izabela Warykiewicz, Konrad Wosik
Curator & Producer: Emilia Orzechowska

Museum at the Open’er is financed by Alter Art.