12/6 (The Trouble with Value)

"To investigate the sources of an artwork’s value, the values it may create and the value systems it is subject to, in the light of the above, is an arduous task, if not simply naïve—for all methods, theories and ideologies fail. Only poets and artists can rise to the challenge and make their individual contributions by producing impressions on this matter. It is impossible to lay out the basic arguments in a one-and-only, clear and precise manner—but it is possible to single out at least several attitudes, within practices of contemporary artists, as noticeably reflecting on the difficult process of cultivating value in a work of art. One such is, without a doubt, careful consideration of the role of language in building narratives and giving works meaning so that they are either comprehensible or deliberately entropic."

Featured artists: Rachel Carey, Fokus Grupa, gerlach en koop, Sława Harasymowicz, Monique Hendriksen, Femke Herregraven, Gert Jan Kocken, “Kra Kra Intelligence” Cooperative, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Louise Lawler, Adrian Paci, Ewa Partum, Mladen Stilinović, Feliks Szyszko, Maciej Toporowicz, Timm Ulrichs

Curators: Kris Dittel, Krzysztof Siatka.

I took part with 12/6 which was an installation about a tenement building at 12, Łobzowska Street in Kraków, post-war a transient mass shelter for the displaced, including my family, and later my childhood home. My project posed questions about ‘value’ of memory attached to a place. 

I used murals on the main gallery wall, and on the gallery lift’s concrete shaft, screen prints, objects, found footage video, photographs, hand-made envelopes including a photo-documentation of my ‘break-in’ to my former home, stickers, sound.                                             

My short story “The Jacket”, based on archival police investigation documents tracking a winter jacket assumed to have been stolen by one repatriate from another at the shelter at Łobzowska, in winter 1947,  was included in associated publication (Onomatopee 151, ed. Kris Dittel).