The Forgetting of Proper Names

Associated media

25 January – 18 March 2012

Wojciech Bakowski, Anna Molska, Agnieszka Polska

The Forgetting of Proper Names is a two‐month season that focuses on Poland’s vibrant contemporary art and culture, and explores the way the past is reshaped over time and reinterpreted as it crosses cultural boundaries.

The main event is an exhibition of three young Polish artists who show for the first time in London:

Wojciech Bakowski (b. 1979), Anna Molska (b. 1983) and Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985). These artists primarily work with the moving image and cross‐discipline methods. Hence, there will also be performance, screenings, literary readings and discussion that explore the artists’ innovative engagement with the avant‐garde’s history and Poland’s changing social conditions today.

Now in their late twenties and early thirties, Bakowski, Molska and Polska grew up in post-communist Poland. Although close in age and sharing a use of media and materials, each artist interacts with their subject in individualized and diverse ways.

Wojciech Bakowski’s animated films record observations of his most immediate and intimate surroundings. Bakowski, who is perhaps the most prolific and visible member of Poznan’s vibrant art and music community, weaves together video, audio performance, sound and installation.

Anna Molska’s video works are filmed performances. Instead of using professional actors, she invites ordinary people to be protagonists, allowing for uncertainty and spontaneity. She reconsiders revolutionary thought’s power to cause social change, through investigations of the avant‐garde visual and political idioms.

Agnieszka Polska’s visually powerful forays into bygone eras or of half‐forgotten figures of the Polish avant‐garde show how the past is fictionalized and re‐worked. Her animated videos juxtapose black and white photographs of performances, and illustrations from old textbooks and magazines, allowing the viewer to enter a false melancholia and to feel a longing for something that perhaps never was.

‘The Forgetting of Proper Names’ emphasizes the potency of each artist’s individual language, as well as shared sensibility in the re‐imagining of historical events, investigations into the relationship between live events and objects, the use of the body as subject within performance, and the use of sound as a narrative tool.

‘The Forgetting of Proper Names’ is curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Dominik Czechowski and is accompanied by an in‐depth publication, digital resources, curator and artist gallery talks, and a special performance by Wojciech Bakowski. Details for all events can be found at www.calvert22.org

Calvert 22 Foundation
22 Calvert Avenue
London
E2 7JP