Participant: Mathias Pelda

For me painting is an expression. An expression of life which is putting across feelings like that of a language. A language that connects people around the world. When you are looking into a painted picture you may get lost in time or notice colours, movements, space and the never ending line of your eyes. Even if it’s difficult to see, try discovering the energy of yourself!


Mathias Pelda (born 1980) studies art at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz since 2005. He took part at the exhibitions „Cross The River“ (2005) and „Magie des Lichtes“ (2006), Internationales Forum, Berlin

Participant: Zuzanna Malicka

Zuzanna Malicka- studies History of Art at University of Gdańsk (MA degree in September 2007). Collaborates with Wyspa Institute of Art since 2005. She has been involved with several art projects, such as “Dockwatchers”, “Absolwent”, “Mousetrap”, “Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space”, “Tektonika Historii” and “PL ART 2007”.

Participant: Igor Duszyński

Igor Duszyński - Originates from Gdynia is studying in the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk; sculpture department. Took part in collaborative exhibitions:

SOFT LOVE?, MODELARNIA, GDAŃSK, 15 NOVEMBER 2006;

MAJÓWKA, MODELARNIA , WYSPA PROGRESS FOUNDATION, GDAŃSK, 20/21 MAY 2006;

REVIEW OF INTERMEDIA STUDIOS, ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, GDAŃSK, 21 MARCH 2006;

ZIMNO 4 YOU TU , MODELARNIA, WYSPA PROGRESS FOUNDATION, GDAŃSK, 17 MARCH 2006;

ABSOLWENT , ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS,GDAŃSK, JUNE 2005;

HOLDER OF SCHOLARSHIP IN POLISHWIDE SECONDARY SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS REVIEW OF THESIS IN BYDGOSZCZ.

Participant: Kordian Lewandowski ( Lee Van Dovsky)

Kordian Lewandowski ( Lee Van Dovsky) is a student of intermedia, drawing and sculpture at the Academy of Art in Gdańsk. In art he is interested mostly in tautology. He is also a member and initiator of great Redneck Artist Association “Ż-art”. In July 2006 Kordian won a Purple Baboon Award for overall of his work.

About Documenta as a Fiction Workshop

Fiction touches on invented stories, fantasies and literary conventions. It sits on the side of creativity, arbitrariness and doubt. Its power belongs to the speaking subject… but also to the listening one, flickering in the instantaneous and capricious relation between the two (or more) of them. In this framework, Documenta as a Fiction is foreseen as both an event and a theoretical figure based on an actual story. Resonating the ontological dissonance between the traditional notions of document and fiction, the workshop seeks for the plots and narratives of contemporary art as well as its institutional visions, giving a space for the performative encounters of individuals.

The participants will investigate the stories and their tellers with reference to the set of narratives grown over Documenta as a discursive engine. Especially over the current Documenta that outsources a part of its intellectual power to the network of art magazines and amplifies interconnections within the institutionalised art world, opening up a broad field of criticality over the predominant language in which art is being conveyed to the public. What is story? What is narrative? What is document and what is fiction? Whose is credibility? Which languages relate to or mediate reality – those of theory or of practice? How does vision turn into visibility? How does artistic action turn into actuality?

Students of art, art history and philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Gdansk University, the Royal College of Art in London and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, none of whom has yet visited this year’s Documenta in Kassel, will analyse public and personal representations of this event. They will examine the languages in which art is being communicated, observe intellectual and institutional frames and create their own narratives through drawings, confessions, interviews, video, photo and textual documentations that will be frequently posted on the web at http://documentaasafiction.blospot.com. Grounded in the performativity of the group, Documenta as a Fiction is aimed at the collaborative process without conclusion. The group will reunite in Kassel on September 18-22 to confront the real and the fictions.

Participants: Maks Bochenek, Igor Duszynski, Ola Grzonkowska, Anne Hoffmann, Hiwa K., Kordian Lewandowski, Zuzanna Malicka, Ulrich Mauer, Mathias Pelda, Roma Piotrowska, Konrad Pustola.

Workshop moderators: Aneta Szylak and Magda Pustola.

Special guest: Artur Zmijewski.

Special project “Ungeklappte Arbeiten” by Hiwa K.

Conceived by Wyspa Institute of Art as a part of the workshops organised by Ghent-based A Prior Magazine www.aprior.org participating in the Documenta 12 Magazine Platform, Documenta as a Fiction is being additionally supported by the Schwerpunkt Polen at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Kunsthochschule Kassel and 3City.pl. Documenta as a Fiction logo was designed by LOWBUDGET www.lowbudget.pl.

When: August 2-4, 2007

Where:

Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk

1 Doki Street, building #145B

80-958 Gdansk, Poland

Tel./fax: +48 58 320 44 46

www.wyspa.art.pl

http://documentaasafiction.blogspot.com

Participant: Maks Bochenek

Maks Bochenek is a student of art history at the University of Gdańsk. Currently
works at the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk. As co-author he contribute
regulary to "Modelator" - blog about contemporary art in 3City.

http://www.myspace.com/modellator

Participant: Hiwa K.

Hiwa K.

Visual artist and musician. His major interest circles around the notion of event, performativity, as well as the figure of the artist as an amateur. Since 2005, he has been developing a series of projects involving paradoxes of cultural competence, participation, dissemination of knowledge and distribution of the event.

Born in Iraq, he is currently preparing his diploma in visual arts in the Akademie der Bildende Kunst in Mainz, Germany. He graduated from secondary school in Iraq and continued his education in the self-education circles of his home country with other visual artists, intellectuals, musicians and theatre artists. The major fields of these informal and non-systematic studies were European literature and philosophy, learnt from books translated into Arabic.

In parallel, since 1985, he has practised painting - also in the public space. He abandoned painting around 1998 and started to play flamenco guitar music. For a period of three years he took guitar master classes under Paco Serrano, Anton Jimenez, Oscar Largo and other legendary Spanish flamenco musicians. Since 2002, he has been living in Germany as a political refugee.

In 2005, he decided to get back to visual arts and began studies in Mainz, with a master class in painting under Professor Friedemann Hahn, art theory with Astrid Ihle and critical artistic practice with Aneta Szylak. Since 2006, he has been collaborating with Wyspa Progress Foundation in Gdansk. He was also selected for the never realised Manifesta 6 School in Cyprus.

He speaks six languages: Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, English, Dutch and German.

In 2007-2009, he is co-curating with Aneta Szylak a project entitled “Estrangement”, dealing with cultural translation and dissemination of knowledge between Europe and the Middle East through visual means and the fostering of discourse over cultural competence.

One-person projects:

2007 Moon Calendar, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

Cooking with Mama, webcast event for World Chat 7080 at Wyspa Institute of Art

2006

• Silicone, event, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Untitled performance for the IGBK conference "Reality Check: Who is afraid of Master of Arts?”, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Cooking with Mama, webcast event, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Cooking with Mama, United Nations Plaza, Berlin, Germany

Group exhibitions, projects and participations:

2007

You won’t feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia, curated by Aneta Szylak, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland

2006/2007

• Participated in The Institute for New Social Research, a project organised by the United Nations Plaza e.V., Berlin, Germany

2006

• You won’t feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia, curated by Aneta Szylak, Kunsthaus Dresden

• Cold 4, Modelarnia/Wyspa Progress Foundation, Gdansk, Poland

Cooking with Mama, 2006
Hiwa K., Eating, video, 2006
Hiwa K., See/Saw, documented performance, 2006
Hiwa K. Country Guitar Lessons, 2005-2007
Hiwa K., Moon Calendar, performance, 2007

Participant: Anne-Louise Hoffman

Body and photografy are the main elements of my work. I am interested in the many different meanings of what an object can be. In that it is interesting for me to work with textures to question an object meaning.
I worked in different rooms with several objects and my body.
In "Gemach" the person, the body becomes a texture and also background.
For me it is a philosophical question about the importance of somebody or even the unimportance. Different matrials are forming the space.
Things get lifely through the background of the body.
These are important things for me and I know taht they are not fullfiled any time. I would like to discuss about that situation, about the general vanity of thoughts.

Gemach
Gemach
Anne-Louise Hoffman - born 15.06.1984, since 2003 studies in art in Mainz.

Moderator: Aneta Szyłak

Aneta Szylak - curator and art theorist, co-founder and currently director of Wyspa Institute of Art - the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture - in the former Gdansk Shipyard premises in Poland and Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation.

Early in her career, she became interested in participatory practices, which resulted in her commitment today to performativity, contextuality and open, dynamic forms in exhibition- and institution-making. Her long-term involvement in the groundbreaking, alternative and politically involved Gdansk art scene bore fruit in her interest in collective forms of work. In 1998, Ms Szylak founded the Laznia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art and was its Director until spring 2001. Her exhibitions were characterised by a strong response towards the cultural, political, social, architectural and institutional context and included in 2006: Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space at Wyspa and a group show You won’t feel a thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia in Kunsthaus Dresden. Earlier work includes: Artur Zmijewski: Selected Works at Wyspa. Dockwatchers [2005, Wyspa], Palimpsest Museum [2004, I Lodz Biennale], Health & Safety [2004, Wyspa], Architectures of Gender [2003, SculptureCenter, New York], All You Need is Love [2000, CCA Laznia].

Her writings have been published in Aprior Magazine, n.paradoxa, Art Journal, ArtKrush. Art Margins. She co-edited a book The Site of Idea. The Idea of Site [1995] covering the first 10 years of the Gdansk alternative art scene. In 2005, she was given the Jerzy Stajuda Award “for independent and uncompromising curatorial practice”. She has lectured at many art institutions and universities, including New School University, Queens College and New York University, both in NYC. She taught Curatorial Studies at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow) and worked as a guest professor at the Akademie der Bildende Kunste in Mainz, Germany.

Currently she is writing her PhD thesis, entitled “The Palimpsest” at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Visual Cultures Department [Curatorial/Knowledge Research PhD]. She is also co-curating with Hiwa K. a series of workshops and an exhibition Estrangement [2007-2009] dealing with cultural translation and dissemination of knowledge between Europe and the Middle East through visual means and the fostering of discourse of cultural competence.

Participant: Konrad Pustoła

Konrad Pustoła (b.1976) - artist, photographer. Graduated from Economics department at Warsaw University, studied photography at Lodz Film School. Member of the editorial of Krytyka Polityczna (a political and cultural quarterly magazine published in polish since 2002). Co founder and a photographer in a activist campaign "T-shirt for freedom". His work was published in all major art magazines and newspapers in Poland. His projects were shown in the numerous sola and group shows in Poland and abroad, recently in CCA Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw ("New Documentalists", "Author") and during the V Biennial of Photography in Poznan ("Antiphotography"). In 2005 he presented his first multimedia installation S(t)imulations in Galeria Otwarta Pracowania in Krakow. His projects deal on the one hand with the issues of institutional critique, the problem of authorship, access and identity and on the other hand with the mechanisms of media and public discourse and the potential of the impact of an image on the real and modes of its representation. Last year he began an MA course in photography at the Royal College of Art in London where he now lives and works.

Participant: Roma Piotrowska

Roma Piotrowska - studies art history at the University of Gdańsk and works at Wyspa Instytute of Art. As a co-founder she contribute regularly to the blog about contemporary art in 3city „Modelator” (http://www.modelator.blogspot.com). She has organised such cultural project as „PL ART 2007” or „7080: Worldchat”. She was an project assistant in several exhibitions at IS Wyspa. Author of several articles about art in magasines and online publications (e.g. Sekcja, Obieg, Visual Communications). She is interested in political and critical art, activism and art in public space.

Participant: Ola Grzonkowska

Ola Grzonkowska - studies History of Art at the University of Gdańsk (2nd year of the Master’s degree). Since 2 years she has been collaborating with Wyspa, Insitute of Art. Together, with Roma Piotrowska and Maks Bochenek they are writing about contemporary art in Trójmiasto on their blog: www.modelator.blogspot.com. She was a co-ordinator in several art projects and an assistant in several exhibitions in Wyspa.
She is interested in contemporary art, especially in multimedia art, cyber-culture and subjects focused on informative society.

Moderator: Magda Pustoła

Magda Pustoła - sociologist, art theoretician, author of numerous articles about art, culture and politics published in various newspapers, magazines and online publications (e.g. Obieg, Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, Krytyka Polityczna), as well as of essays to the catalogues of art exhibitions (e.g. 'Enthusiasm' in Whitechapel Gallery, 'You won't feel a thing' in Dresden Kunsthaus). Collaborates with Wyspa Institute of Art, Obieg and Krytyka Polityczna. Currently completes the MA in Contemporary Art Theories at the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, and her PhD in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Warsaw University. Her interests oscillate around the post-identitarian modes of subjectivity and the conditions of producing a polythetic space for uncompromisable, untranslatable, often conflicted practices. Lives and works in London. Blogs irregularly at http://www.whatevermaida.blogsome.com/.